Merry Christmas 2013

You know... 2013 has been quite a bad year for me in NUTS4R2land.

My love life is in ruins, my real-life daytime job is getting more and more stressful (and seemingly less and less relevant), my cousin (and good friend) and his girlfriend moved to Australia and I am seeing various people I love or get on with either getting worn down by the harsh grind of 21st Century living or, in at least one case, perishing altogether. And this has all manifested itself on here in the fact that I’ve only written just over 160 reviews so far this year... which means I’ll be slightly down on my batting average by the 31st December.

So I’m pretty down right now and, truthfully, the last thing I thought I needed to write right now is a Christmas post...

But hold up.

 It’s also a time of taking stock on some of the brighter things that have happened in my life this year. I got involved with some design work (some of it you’ve still not seen yet) for director/writer/actor/producer James Devereaux’s Noirish Project movie and that was kinda fun. I also met up with some of the people who worked on the film (James Devereaux, Liane-Rose Bunce, Jay Harris and Alfie Black) and that was a really lovely experience for me.

Also, I had been nursing a heck of a large rift with a long standing friend of mine which had burned a whole in my heart for about three years or more now and I finally forgave him for something he, possibly inadvertently, did to me. I learned something about myself from that process too and am feeling a little more responsible for my initial reaction to a situation than I at first realised I should do. So even though I am in no way, really, culpable for our falling out for all that time... I hope that he finds some time to forgive me for my state of mind at the time too. Anyway, funnily enough, that all happened on the very same day that I met some of the Noirish Project bunch and so... yeah, that was a good evening.

And then my twitter friend Charlie of Entr'Acte asked me to write a post for him about European scores, which can be found here, and that was a lot more fun than I'd imagined and, also, a real conifdence boost.

So that’s three things, at least, that I can say made the year a little brighter at any rate.

The fourth thing is you lot.

Yeah you... you readers.

Whether you are one of my long standing twitter buddies, a regular reader or are even just visiting this page for the first time, I am absolutely, hugely grateful to you for taking the time to read this. Writing this review blog has been pretty much the only thing, honestly, that has kept me sane all year. So please believe me when I say that, without you lot and the steady reader stats I see, these pages wouldn’t exist.

So with that in mind I’d like to raise a glass to you all and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And thank you for being my readers... it certainly means a lot to me.

Oh, and please have a go at my Annual Movie Christmas Quizwoz here... the one who gets the most right (not expecting anyone to get them all right) wins.

I’ll be back here in the next day or so with the new Doctor Who episode review (looking forward to watching that with family on Boxing Day, which’ll be the first opportunity I get to see it) and the last of my EON Bond reviews should be up here soon too. Next year I’m hoping to rewatch and review the majority, if not all, of the Zatoichi movies, various new releases and, well, as you can guess, there’ll be some fairly bizarre stuff on here too. Some of it may even get me into trouble, you never know. Plus my annual movies and scores of the year lists will be going up within the next couple of weeks too, I hope.

But, as always, thanks for reading. I hope you have a good Christmas period.

All the best,

NUTS4R2.