“Have laptop, will travel.”
My name is Peter A. Martin, writer, editor and critical reviewer of movies, mostly. Currently I’m editor of Dallas Film Now (since December 2009), and write about movies for Twitch (since November 2005) and Fandango / Movies.com (since May 2011). Also, I write a regular column for the Fright Fest UK online magazine, and have contributed recently to Red Carpet Crash, Pegasus News, and Big Fanboy. In my spare time, I’m an on-call content creator, specializing in creating, refining, and expanding websites.
In the past, I served as a columnist, feature writer, news blogger and film critic for Cinematical from May 2007 until April 2011 (R.I.P.). Before that, I worked at film festivals, contributed a column to Mobius Home Video Forum, produced online content for HKFlix.com (R.I.P.), wrote more than 100 reviews for Brian Thomas’ book VideoHound’s Dragon: Asian Action & Cult Flicks, founded a Hong Kong movie site, and moved around the country.
Details below.
I’ve been writing about films since 2000, but I first began thinking seriously about them in the late 1970s, guided initially by Michael Ventura and Ginger Varney of the LA Weekly and then by Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice. At the time I was living in Los Angeles and benefiting immensely from the repertory programming available at a handful of outstanding venues. Later, I spent more than a decade in tiny Manhattan cinemas before moving to North Texas in 1997.
In an effort to get free DVDs to feed my habit, I applied for a reviewer position with the pioneering site DVD File. I didn’t get the job, but I was moved to start my own site, A Better Tomorrow, focusing on upcoming Hong Kong releases and the review of more recent films. I wrote the column “Hollywood to Hong Kong Express” at Mobius Home Video Forum from 2001 to 2002, contributed more than 100 reviews and articles to Brian Thomas’ book VideoHound’s Dragon: Asian Action & Cult Flicks (published by Visible Ink Press in July 2003), and served as staff writer and contributor for AFI FEST Daily News in 2004 and 2005.
In 2002, I volunteered at the first Asian Film Festival of Dallas and AFI Fest in Los Angeles. That led to my working as an intern and then as programming associate at AFI Fest from 2003 to 2004. I helped screen film submissions for the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2005 and 2006 as well as the inaugural AFI Dallas International Film Festival in 2007. I also wrote program notes for each of those festivals. I served as a member of the horror jury at the 2006 edition of Fantastic Fest in Austin. Over the years I have also attended the Seattle International Film Festival, South by Southwest in Austin, and the first Marfa Film Festival in West Texas.
My current home base is Dallas, Texas, USA, where I’ve been freely roaming in multiplexes and art houses for most of the 21st Century. Feel free to contact me by completing the form below.
