10 Years Of NUTS4R2

The Decablog

10 Years Of NUTS4R2

Well, here I am at 10 years of reviews then.

Over the years, when I’ve contemplated this ‘blog anniversary’ I’ve often wanted to do something special for it like, I dunno, a competition or something. Instead, I’ve just had the worst 15 months of my life with various tragedies and... well, the next installment seems to be a grim landscape ravaged by the walking dead of the Cora Nora virus (my name for it, I won’t let other names gain a negative power over my thinking, thanks very much).

So, yeah, not much for me to celebrate for sure but at least ten years is something positive done with my time, I guess. Or, you know, you might take the tack that it’s ten years of not having a life... it’s pretty time consuming trying to do something like this while also holding down a full time job I can tell you... but either way I’m happy to have stuck it out for so long. Hopefully I’ll still be in a position where I can continue with it... the way the world's changed in the last few weeks (and is going to change) seems pretty worrying. There’s always a chance I’ll be roaming around in a post-apocalyptic wasteland trying to secure old film prints for trading with the mohawk-headed tribes that wander the decaying environment.

Or... you know... not.

Anyway, purely because I haven’t got a better idea right now and I’m trying to be both self isolating for another few days with a nasty cough while at the same time being the mad food shopper for the family, I thought maybe I’d celebrate this miniversary with some of the articles which keep me doing this from time to time. These are not necessarily my most entertaining blog entries but I think these ones I've picked out here are among my most informative or enlightening. That is to say... these are the ones that I hope I’ve either made some connections nobody else has spotted before or, at the very least, they bring a fair amount to the table. Or not... you decide. Just click the titles to take you to my review.

So first up we have three British spy movie reviews for The IPCRESS File, The Quiller Memorandum and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Next up I offer you my thoughts on three of the classic Universal Monster movies of the 1930s and 1950s... Dracula, Frankenstein and Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Here are some of my Dario Argento reviews for his Animal Trilogy gialli... The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies On Grey Velvet.

Here are a couple of reviews of two very different movies, both of which have central figures who are a huge influence on my 'adult' personality... The Final Programme and Doc Savage.

And finally, my all time favourite movie, Blade Runner.

And that’s my tenth anniversary post I guess. Sorry it’s not a little more spectacular but hopefully I can make that up for you on my 20th anniversary... if I get that far.

Anyway, thanks very much for reading, that’s always appreciated.

Stay safe and survive.

Five years of NUTS4R2

Live And Let Five

Hello there.

Five years ago today I started writing this blog. 

I must have been fairly enthusiastic about it because, looking at it, I posted three articles on the first day. Five years on, it’s safe to say, I don’t post quite as many reviews as I used to but, then again, it’s swings and roundabouts when you compare what I was writing when I first started up to what I am writing now. 

And by that I mean that, in the first year or two, I was writing much shorter reviews by the looks of things. These days, the majority of them are, at the very least, twice as long as what I was writing then... which I think probably means I’m more confident in finding my voice as a writer of reviews now than I ever was before. Or, just possibly, that I’m getting more rambley and irrelevant the older I get. One of those, you decide.

Over the years, one of the things which has helped me develop a, fairly, consistent style is the fact that I seem to have a nice bunch of readers who are generally wonderful people. I’ve had the odd bad comment, to be sure, and sometimes... quite inadvertently... invited the frowning comments of writers who think I have wronged them on here (for some reason it’s usually the writers, rather than the directors, who tend to comment on here, when it comes to opening a dialogue with me). However, for the most part, I’ve generally had some pretty good feedback over the last half a decade... so that really helps me sometimes.

The reason that really helps me is because... well... life seems to get really tough sometimes. I get depressed the older I get and as opportunities diminish (the chance to have kids, raise a family, become a multi-millionaire or live on an island with a harem of appreciative women-folk... for example), I often find that writing about stuff on my blog is the only escape route I have to get away from the curveballs and general insanity that reality sometimes throws my way. I’ve felt like quitting the blog, too, on occasion but... something keeps pulling me back and part of that is because you readers have been so nice and generous with your time for me over the years.

I have to say, the reviews I write here must satisfy some part of my psychological make-up I never realised I had before getting into the whole NUTS4R2 thing. It’s almost like I’ve become addicted to writing over the years but, make no mistake, it’s not always as easy as it sounds to sit down and churn out an article or review. Even after all these years, I will still worry about certain films or books I’ve read and imagine I don’t have anything much to say about them. Luckily, once that pen hits the page... or in my case, once those fingers start pecking at the keys... something inside tends to take over and I find something I can write about. Make no mistake though, certain films cause me a lot of anxiety because, no matter how easy it is to get going, it can sometimes be quite a daunting prospect to start writring about something. 

Take, for instance, my two favourite directors, Akira Kurosawa and Andrei Tarkovsky. It seems to me that I am not worthy to even begin to cast a critical eye over what was in the minds of these two great people. That being said, it strikes me that not an awful lot of people are familiar with directors of this calibre so it’s a pleasure to sometimes be able to highlight the works of classic film directors and hopefully spark some interest in the occasional reader who will then go away and look at an example of their work (as I know has happened every now and then). So that’s all good.

Also, it’s a good way of clarifying my own thoughts and applying my own theories as to why the minds behind the movies have reached their finished product in just the way they have and, I hope, readers feel that I’ve brought a little knowledge into their lives, from time to time. Well, yes, probably not in all the articles on here but, it’s my hope at least, that some of my writing on film has met with the beginnings of enlightenment for some, when it comes to decoding those flickerings of shadow and light that dances across our collective retina and takes so much of our hard earned cash... one way or another. 

I’ve also watched some remarkably odd films which I’ve sometimes only bought with the blog review in mind (see my recent review of The Vixens Of Kung Fu here to find out what happens when this processs backfires). And, quite often, it gives me the opportunity to get away with watching some real trash cinema and some of that stuff churned out to make a quick bundle of cash has some very surprising, “way beyond competent” technical skills thrown into the mix, too.  

I must admit, though, that without you reading this now, this humble blog is nothing. I love the virtual  friends and readers I’ve made through this blog as I have promoted it on Twitter over the years and some of the minds I’ve been privileged to share ideas with. People like Katrin Jenny of Twitterland, for example, who reminded me only yesterday evening, that today is indeed my five year blog anniversary. I’d completely forgotten it this year so... thanks for that lady... I owe you some mind numbing alcohol when you are next in the country! 

So, as you can probably guess, this blog entry was completely unplanned but, hey, at least it gives me the chance to articulate my appreciation of you readers, without whose regular visits, would mean these pages and words would stack up to being considerably less than, to invoke a time honoured, classic movie legend, “a hill of beans”. So thank you readers, old and new, for sticking with me and paying my writing the occasional visit now and again. It means so much to me and helps ease the insanity of my less than tranquil life. 

All the best to you all and... stick around... if you think some of the films I’ve reviewed over the past five years have been either special, moving, thought provoking or downright odd, well... you ain’t seen nothing yet.

All the best,

NUTS4R2

3 Year Anniversary

Beware Of The Blog 

Beware of The Blog, 
It creeps, and leaps and glides and slides
Into your brain,
And then, it starts, to do it all again,
A fog, a dog
Be careful of The Blog.
With apologies to Mack David and Burt Bacharach

That is to say... I can’t believe I’ve managed to find the personal discipline to regularly update this thing for three years now without giving up on it... although I really did come close a couple of times. However, that was because I was having trouble with outside forces and so I didn’t feel I could write anything other than bile and depression at those times. I find it interesting that it’s something I keep coming back to no matter what... and it’s a double edged sword too.

I am seeing far less movies than anyone who loves film as much as I do should have to put up with these days because I end up spending most of the time writing about what I’ve just seen. At the same time, though, if it’s been a few days passed by without me writing anything for it, it becomes my obsession and, also, my curse... as I get withdrawal from this strange behaviour of sitting on my bed, at my laptop, figuring out things to write.

I’ve not done too badly out of that though.

I am now happy to consider myself a writer (of some sort), in that... with almost 600 posts, most of them fairly longish reviews, I have probably written enough wordage to fill at least two goodly sized novels. I often wonder, in fact, why I don’t go ahead and get back to the novel I started writing decades ago... I’m still interested in it and chomping at the bit to get back on it one of these days... I loved the slightly surreal place it was going and still remain interested in knowing what’s really going to happen to the characters in there...

But, of course, if I started back in on my novel, I’d have no time to write movie reviews on this blog and that would just be a bad move for me right now. Maybe if I didn’t have a full-time job which I struggle with to pay some of the bills then I’d probably consider doing both... but as it happens I get barely a couple of hours a night, if that, to work on it right now... so something has to lose out. Right now it’s the novel. And the scripts. And the short stories I started writing about a UFO “Disinformation Man”... it’s all on a back burner.

That’s because I love this blog and it’s taught me that I do have the will power to see it through... not to mention it’s kinda fun to be writing about films... even if some of those reviews aren’t always that favourable.

And I’ve been happy to discover along the way that there’s no such thing as writer’s block... a condition I wrote a short, metaphorical screenplay about once. I’ve often thought about the film I’m supposed to be reviewing later and realised I have absolutely nothing to say about it... but then it gets kinda strange and, maybe, even mystical. I sit there looking at the blank page waiting for me in QuarkXpress and then just start typing. I may not have known what I was going to write before I sat down, sometimes, but as soon as I start typing I suddenly discover the right words finding themselves and, more often than not, they’ve got something at least remotely interesting to say about the subject and this has happened every time, so far, when I’m due to meet a self-imposed deadline that... I just don’t really believe that “blocks” are anything other than a symptom of self-delusion when you want to go and do something else.

And maybe that’s my good fortune. 8 times out of 10 I really don’t want to be doing anything else other than writing about a movie and sometimes... well... sometimes I learn things about my response I didn’t initially realise was there.

A case in point was a film I saw back in 2011 called Attack The Block. When I sat down to write the piece I was convinced I hadn’t had a great time at the cinema and that it was going to get a bad review. But as I started writing about it, I realised I was actually using that writing as part of my thought process... and as I went on and realised that there were little subtleties about the movie I’d not considered when sitting in front of it at the cinema... my appreciation of my initial memories of the film grew as I wrote and analysed it more and more. I ended up giving it a pretty okay write up in actual fact, although it was far from what I’d set out to say. I also bought the DVD and really enjoyed it quite a hell of a lot the second time I watched it... so my writing about my experience at the cinema taught me something and, I guess, properly clarified my thoughts during the short gestation time from watching the movie to getting home, firing up the laptop and writing about it. So that was kinda interesting and something I learned from a little bit, I think.

Now my life is changing ever so slightly again at the minute because, at the time of writing, I seem to be going out one or two nights a week on, well... I guess they’re kind of “dates” with a girl I’ve seen around on my morning bus for a couple of decades but only just started speaking to. So I’m finding my blogging time slightly impaired by all this (that’s okay... I’m pretty sure she’s well worth it) so I have to say that you may find that this blog might be a little less frequent and drop to only two or, maybe, three posts a week instead of me going at the writing like some kind of “get a life” blog machine... so apologies for that but don’t worry, I will still be here and I will still be writing about films regularly on this blog. All kinds of films. Whenever possible. There’s also a project which I need to get started on soon for someone else I’ve known on twitter a while because of this blog.. so that will eat up some time too, of course.

Rest assured though, if you’re a regular reader, I will be doing my best to “watch and review” as much as I can. I may be busy but I haven’t had a complete personality change and, if you haven’t already figured it out by now, this blog/review site really means a lot to me and I’m honoured that so many of you come here month after month to read the odd review (the odder the review the better say I). So thanks to all of you reading this post now... it’s kinda heart warming actually.

And that’s all I’ve got to say today really, as my blog writing is now three years old... except maybe to say one thing which supports one of the observations I made to myself earlier in the post. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write for my blog’s three year anniversary before I sat down a little while ago and started tapping away at the keys. But here we are again and I filled two pages of A4 Quark up with my reaction to that dilemma. So if you’ve made it this far to the end of this post, I want to say a special thank you to you now... because by reading this you’re one of the people that makes me feel that this thing is worth carrying on with.

So thank you kindly.

And please come back and read again sometime.

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!