The 7x7 Award

The Magnificent 7x7

I must confess I’d never heard of the 7x7 Award before.

Not until last night when a fellow blogger Raghavmodi tweeted me to let me know I was one of his seven recipients of this honour.

As soon as I saw it took the form of a chain, passed on in a widening circle, my back was up because... well, we’ve all seen those silly chain letters and emails. But then I realised I was kinda missing the point on this one because... well it actually is a great honour if you think about it. A fellow blogger has thought my stuff good enough to receive this kind of attention. The award may well spread the same way as a virus but it’s actually a really nice thing...

It’s an antidote to all the cynicism that you see around you and have to wade through on a daily basis both in the real and virtual worlds. Something which says your fellow bloggers are taking notice and giving you a pat on the back and so, it’s in that spirit, that I now accept the award and will do my best to point you in the direction of the seven people who I will do the same favour for.

So big thanks to Raghavmodi for thinking of me in this manner. Please check out his blog at http://tickertalksfilm.blogspot.co.uk/ which is one of his many blogs on a range of subjects. This is the one of his I go to the most, obviously, because it’s about movies... my "not so secret" passion.

So, from what I can make out, there are three rules which I have to obey to be able to retain and pass on this beacon of illumination to another seven recipients.

Rule 1. Tell everyone something that nobody else knows about yourself. 
That’s the scary one I guess.

Rule 2. Post a link to one of my posts that I think best fits the following categories:
a. Most Beautiful Piece.
b. Most Helpful Piece.
c. Most Popular Piece.
d. Most Controversial Piece.
e. Most Surprisingly Successful Piece.
f. Most Underrated Piece.
g. Most Pride-Worthy Piece.

Rule 3.  Pass this award on to seven other bloggers.
Again, not so easy to do as I’d first thought.

Okay then. So here goes... I’ll do my bit with thanks.

Rule 1: Tell everyone something that nobody else knows about yourself.
Okay... when I eat dessert or cereal, I prefer to use the big metal spoon with a little teddy bear etched on to it which I’ve been using since I was a toddler... presumably a toddler with a big mouth... or I’ve got a stupidly small mouth now! One of the two.

Rule 2: Post a link to one of the posts that I think best fits the following categories:

a. Most Beautiful Piece
Hmmm... not sure I’ve written anything truly beautiful and the one I might have put in here would probably have to go in Most Pride-Worthy Piece... so instead, I’m linking to My 100th Blog Post because it was created in memory of the late, great Harvey Pekar (who had just died very recently at the time) and I at least used a lot of colours in it. I’m naked in it and that’s not particularly beautiful... but not in all the panels...

http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/my-100th-blog-click-to-embiggen.html

You used to be able to make this comic page much bigger but the blogger interface seems to have changed and removed this option... so just copy it into another piece of software if you want to read the panels comfortably, I guess. Like Photoshop maybe?


b. Most Helpful Piece.
Well, although it’s already fairly out of date, my most helpful post to film novices would have been my DVD Couture post here....

http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/dvd-couture-remixed-multi-region-in.html

It could really do with updating at some point to reflect the fact that labels like Encore, who did some fantastic Jean Rollin boxes, no longer seem to be players in the market and to reflect more recent great labels like Arrow Films and Sazuma.


c. Most Popular Piece
Hmmm... well I don’t know why but this review of the not too terrible remake of 13 Assassins is visited a number of times a day from people all around the world doing google searches. It’s a very rare day indeed that it doesn’t get read at least once... but it’s not one of my favourites. You can read it here...

http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/assassin-8-plus-5-13-assassins-japanuk.html


d. Most Controversial Piece.
Blimey. I dunno. Controversy implies a difference of opinion... so I suppose that means a post where most people would disagree with me? I haven’t had too many disagreeable comments, thankfully, but I did quite like, despite the obvious problems of bad decisions at the adaptation stage, the new movie version of John Carter. and I know a lot of critics and viewers were a lot less impressed with this movie than I was. So maybe I’ll pick that one. Read it here... http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/john-carter.html


e. Most Surprisingly Successful Piece.
Well... technically my most popular post was also my most surprising but, to be fair, I was surprised that my January 2011 review of TinTin And The Golden Fleece, the first of the live-action TinTin movies, has had as many reads as it has. Take a look if you’re into the adventures of the boy reporter... http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/fleecing-herge.html


f. Most Underrated Piece.
Well... I hate to trash movies, to be sure, and I don’t do it that often if I can help it. I usually can find at least some redeeming features in it. But there was one particular film called The Haunting Of Winchester House 3D that was just so awful and incompetent that I couldn’t help but poke fun at it just in order to preserve my sanity. I don’t wish any of the cast and crew on this any hurt and it was probably wrong of me to let rip quite so badly... but I also think it’s one of my more entertaining reviews and, for better or worse, here it is... http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/rifling-secrets-of-winchester.html

g. Most Pride-Worthy Piece.
Actually, My 300th Blog Post - Faces Of Caroline Munro is also one of my most popular postings... but let me tell you why it’s also the one I’m most proud of. The minifigure drawings I did to celebrate my fondness for Caroline Munro were actually spotted by Caroline herself and for a while I had a shout out on her website saying how much she liked them. Then, earlier this year, I had a canvass print made of them and gave it to Caroline when she was doing a signing at the Westminster Film Fair. She seemed to really love it and that made me very happy, I can tell you. So here’s the link to that one... http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/my-300th-blog-post.html


Rule 3.  Pass this award on to seven other bloggers 
Okay... so here comes the really difficult bit. I have to reciprocate and highlight seven other bloggers to take receipt of this award. I thought this was going to be really easy until I realised there were 10 or 12 people who I actually wanted to include. It wasn’t easy to narrow it down to seven... this was not something I wanted to do, to be honest. But then I realised... hey, at least a couple of those seven are as likely to include the people in their recipient’s list that I haven’t been able to in mine. So I figured... time to make some ruthless decisions. Here then are my final selections for the 7x7 Award.

Alex Kittle - Filmforager
Alex Kittle’s brilliant creation Filmforager is easily the greatest and most consistently diverse batch of film reviews on the internet. And she also does some great artwork based on her viewings, some of which you can purchase in her etsy shop. If you haven’t even seen her site yet and you're a fan of movies, please take a look as soon as possible here... http://www.filmforager.com/

Pipisnips - Blogging My Dead Dad
This is a blog which isn’t updated as often as I’d like (yeah, I’m greedy for good writing) but Blogging My Dead Dad is, bar none, the most moving set of blog posts I’ve ever read. And it’s bloody well written and intense in its honesty too. You should definitely check Pipisnips blog out if you’re a fan of being alive. Catch it here... http://bloggingmydeaddad.blogspot.co.uk/

Jim Moon aka Hypnogoria - The Moon Lens
If you like fiction and film based on horror and fantasy then Hypnogoria’s blog is absolutely up your street. I’ve never known such a thoroughly researched blogger and his articles are always immensely entertaining and well written. He also regularly records and deposits a lot of quite lengthy podcasts on here, which you can also subscribe to via itunes. If I want an opinion on something to do with ghosts, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, zombies and goodness knows what else... Jim Moon’s The Moon Lens is your best stop off point... http://hypnogoria.blogspot.co.uk/

Buckocowboyland - Cowboylands blog
Before I started reading Buckocowboyland’s compelling Cowboylands blog posts, I’d forgotten that I’d quite liked westerns. But the enthusiasm of the cowboy lifestyle coming across from every post made me a regular reader and reminded me that I love Westerns too. If you want to be able to tell your Gene Autrey from your Roy Rogers and your Tom Mix from your William S. Hart, I suggest you saddle up and head over to Bucko’s blog at a gallop here... http://cowboylands.net/

James Devereaux - The Great Acting Blog
You know that old Hitchcock quote that actors should be treated like cattle? Well I kinda half used to believe that the actors role is a severely diminished one compared to what it actually is. The sincerity, blinding logic and devotion to the craft by actor James Devereaux put me straight on that rubbish. I now, because of this guy, remember to really consider the performances of everything I watch, whereas before I’d just thought of actors as moving furniture. The performances are a very key component in all performing art and it’s this guy and his weekly posts that made me wake up and smell the Kafka! Check him out here... http://thegreatactingblog.posterous.com/

Daniel Martin Eckhart - Write, Write, Write
Sometimes we forget that these compelling and much talked about screen entertainments we constantly consume have hard working writers behind them. People like screenwriter Daniel Martin Eckhart who has a blog called Write Write Write which is worth its weight in gold for anybody who is wanting to get into screenwriting and, frankly, anybody who is writing period. I’m just a blogger but even I found a tip of his about leaving off a long project in the middle of a sentence immensely helpful. You should seriously check this guy out... http://www.danielmartineckhart.com/

Amanda Norman - Gothic and Horror Photography
Last, but by no means least, is the weird and wonderful world of Amanda Norman. She has an excellent eye for taking some very atmospheric and eerie photographs, inspired by the kind of environments you find in old ghost stories and 1930s/40s horror movies. She sells these plus also uses some of her shots in her homemade gothic jewellery which she sells on her website, where you can also find her blog here... http://www.amandanorman.com/

So that’s it then. My seven recipients for the 7x7 Award. I hope that you give them all a good look and I hope that they each find seven worthy bloggers to pass the baton to, so to speak.

Again, thanks to Raghavmodi for making me one of his recipients. And thanks to all you readers who look at my posts from time to time. I really do appreciate it. All the best!