My 400th Blog Post

You know, I still find it amazing that, a little under two years since I started writing this blog, I’ve already made it to 400 posts and, surprisingly, the majority of the reviews on here are quite sizeable at that. When I began this, I didn’t realise just how many “virtual friends” my blog would bring me, especially on Twitter where I promote each and every post... this means a lot to me. I’m not all that happy in my “day job” and my private life has been a bit shaky of late... but this blog is something I’m fairly invested in and I hope to be able to continue writing it as regularly as I have been doing over the last couple of years.

One of the more incredible things to happen to me over the last year was when I posted some cartoon artwork I did of Caroline Munro for my 300th post and she liked it enough to mention it on the front of her own official fan page for quite a while. That really gave me a lift and cheered me up no end for a long time. I’ve met Caroline in the flesh three times now, at her stall she sometimes sets up to do signings at various film fairs. In fact it wasn’t that long before I started this blog that I met her for the first time and I believe I even mentioned her in my very first post. Her website is here http://www.carolinemunro.org/ and it’s always worth checking out to see what she’s getting up to next.

The last time I met her was last month at the January Westminster Film Fair and, since she’d been so nice about the artwork I’d posted, I decided to go to a shop with some slightly modified (to suit the required aspect ratio) version of that artwork and get a canvass print done to give to her. I thought, at the very worst, she could hide it in the back of a shed or sell it to some mad crackpot like me and make some cash off of it. Secretly I hoped she’d hang it somewhere but I’m not known for my optimism (the older I get). So I got the artwork sorted and transferred and presented it to her in January and to my amazement, she seemed really happy to receive it... which made me happy (obviously). It’s amazing how little moments like this can sometimes cheer you on and keep you going when life sometimes gets a little harder.

Caroline also signed the page of her as “Miss November” in the recently produced Hammer Glamour calendar I was given by a friend at Christmas... was pretty thrilled by that. There’s a picture of her above holding my artwork... I still marvel at how young the “first lady of fantasy” still looks. I got a shot of myself with her too but... well, you lot won’t want to see my ugly mug plastered on this page, you’ll have to trust me on that one. The cartoon drawing top right is exposure enough. ;-)

I’ve had a few directors, producers, actors and company executives give me a few things to look at over the last couple of years and that’s been very rewarding too. I don’t always get around to doing everything I do in the timescale that I originally tell people I will... but I generally get there in the end and muddle through somehow. Still waiting for somebody to offer me cold, hard cash you can scratch a window with for something I’ve written but, maybe if I’m lucky, that may get thrown onto the table one day too... you never know.

If anyone’s got any “positive” ideas on how I can improve this blog (no, really, I mean positive ones!) then please feel free to either leave me a comment here or jump onto twitter and DM me. I’d like to do more film related design and artwork for the blog but, well I’m a designer in my day job so sometimes it’s a less than relaxing end to my day to carry on making all those tiny, detailed design decisions when my bed is waiting for me... will do my best though. And some more genuine exploratory articles which I have wrapped up in my head, as opposed to just reviews... although, to be fair to myself, I always have too many reviews to write up to ever really get around to sketching any article ideas out these days. I’ll have to se what i can come up with.

Ooh... and T-Shirts. What about T-Shirts? I had a fair amount of people looking at that artwork of Caroline Munro on my blog and was wondering if this is the kind of thing which people would like to buy on a T-Shirt. What do you reckon? Is this something you would like to see produced? Again, let me know... or, you know, head over to Caroline’s site and let her know. Maybe she could sell them from her website.

Anyway... that’s my 400th blog post done then. I seem to be watching a lot less movies these days (and barely repeat watching anything) because it takes me a while to write about each one... but “them’s the breaks” I guess. If you’re still reading this post here at the bitter end I’d like to thank you for your continued support and interest and say that, even though you’re probably an anonymous reader... I appreciate it each and every time you read one of my reviews or articles. Thanks for spending some of your valuable moments here from time to time. It makes doing the thing worthwhile.

All the best,

NUTS4R2