Oliver Carter

Christmas has all but come and gone.  I have been feeling under the weather for the most part but have had chance to kick back, relax and catch up on some films and television shows that were put aside over the past few months.  I have been watching episodes of Thriller, an acclaimed 1970s British anthology television series; the Blu-Ray release of the cult British series The Prisoner which is becoming very addictive; the Blu-Ray releases of Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009), Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) amongst many others.  I am currently watching the Blu-Ray disc of Crank 2 (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2009), a definite guilty pleasure from this year.

At this time of year it is customary for bloggers to produce lists of their favourite films, albums, books etc and I am afraid that I will be no exception.  Over the next few days I will be listing my ten favourite films of the year and also my favourite films, albums and television shows of the past decade.  Let's start with my favourite films of the year, in no particular order of course:

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007)
500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)
Harry Brown (Daniel Barber, 2009)

As I mentioned above, Crank 2 was without doubt my favorite guilty pleasure of the year; it is absolutely insane and a must-see for lovers of action films. Still on my to watch list are Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009), Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009), The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009) and Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi, 2009). 

I'll be continuing the listing fun later today.  Now back to Crank 2.

Could Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1986) and Die Hard 2 (Renny Harlin, 1990) be the best alternative Christmas movies?  I try to watch both every Christmas Eve, closely followed by Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1974) and then National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (Jeremiah S. Chechik,1989) on Christmas Day. 

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.

Thanks to Google Mail's spam filter I rarely get any spam in my inbox.  However, I recently the received the email below.  It made me laugh, a lot.

I search for the man for serious relations. I want visit your country.

Hello there!
Is anything the metter?
I am Margie
I find my prince...
I young and pretty.
With huge desire, would hear about you.
I wait from you for the answer.
ALL THE BEST...

I took some movie posters to be framed to The Framers at the Custard Factory in Birmingham.  Anyone who collects movie posters will know how difficult it is find adequate ready made frames and how expensive it can be to pay for custom framing.  However, The Framers only charge £35 for a British Quad poster to be framed.  This is quite a bargain compared to some of the over quotes I have had, £115 was one of the cheaper quotes I received in the past.  Looking at some of their handiwork in their gallery I was quite impressed.  As you can see in the picture, I was rather surprised to find an original Italian poster for Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1974) staring me in the face as I walked in the shop.  Apparently, the person who had this framed never returned to collect the poster.  That was three years ago.  The asking price is £400; a little too steep for me, unfortunately.  I'll post my thoughts on the quality of the framing when I collect them in the next few weeks.

   

I'll post my thoughts on this great piece of Ozploitation shortly.

Here is my intended viewing for my annual Halloween horror movie marathon:

1. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968) Blu-Ray
   
2. The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (Jorge Grau, 1974) Blu-Ray
   
3. Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007)
4. Giallo (Dario Argento, 2009)

Happy Halloween everyone.

I am rather ashamed to admit that when I first started blogging in 2006 I did not have a clue what 'tags' were and what use they would be to me as a blogger.  It took almost a year for me to see the relevance of tags in enabling users to locate similar posts.  By this time I had generated around 70 tags; most of these were unnecessary.  So, since this Posterous site is a new start for me as a blogger I decided to go through all of my past posts and edit these tags.  It did not take as long as I had anticipated and I now have a more conservative 37 tags.

EDIT: Ironically, I forgot to tag this post. Duh...

So after a year away from blogging I have returned. The reason for
this return can partly be blamed on my PhD supervisor Paul Long who
has been trying to get to blog more and talk about some of the
research I have recently been doing. You will also notice that I have
moved my blog from Blogger to Posterous. After my new colleague JJ
showed me the delights of this intuitive blogging platform I have been
converted; I have even purchased my own domain name. Blogging really
doesn't get any simpler and there is certainly no excuse for me not to
post any updates. Expect the usual; updates on fan DVDs I have
produced, film reviews, television shows and the general worship of
technology. I will also be talking more about my research into
Euro-Cult cinema fandom and will be posting extracts from my
continuing doctoral research. Let's see if I can maintain this blog
by posting at least once a week.