Oliver Carter

General musings on Popular Culture 
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My favourite films of 2009

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.

Filed under  //   random  

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Merry Christmas!

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.

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Fishing/spam emails make me laugh...

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...


There is something strangely poetic about this email.  I am sure you will be disappointed to find that I did not take up such an opportunity and respond; it makes one wonder just how many people do respond to such fishing attempts.  With huge desire, I would welcome comments that feature any other similar spam/fishing attempts that may have made you giggle.

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Getting movie posters framed...

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.

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The Man from Hong Kong British Quad Poster

   

I won this on eBay a couple of weeks ago and it arrived from Lebanon this morning. There are a few pinholes but for £8 it is an absolute steal. I am hoping to get this one framed.

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

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Happy Halloween 2009

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)
Unfortunately, there will have to be an intermission to watch Strictly Come Dancing; arguably the most terrifying viewing of the night. 

Happy Halloween everyone.

Filed under  //   cult   film   random  

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Ah, that's what tagging is...

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...

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The Return of Living Dead

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.

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Broken laptop

Okay, so it is not really much of an excuse for why I have not done a blog post since late July but it is making things a little difficult. Yes, my two year old Sony Vaio AR11S laptop is officially dying on me. I have no idea how it happened but the hinge on the laptop broke and will most likely stay that way as it cannot be fixed. Having to rely on one hinge is not ideal so portability has become an issue. For a £1700 laptop I come to expect more than two years usage. It has been an ideal desktop replacement and ideally it would be good to have it fixed but it looks as if I will be purchasing a new machine in the near future. The slightly off centre screen is a tad off putting and the constant worry that the other hinge could perish at any time is not ideal.

Though it pains me to admit it I think I will be purchasing a MacBook Pro when the new versions are released in late October. Being able to have a fast machine that can dual boot Windows and Leopard will be handy and Final Cut Pro should make fan dubbing a less arduous process. That is not to say that I will be getting rid of my AR11S, it will just have to stay in one location for the time being.

So, in summary, despite the dying laptop I am still blogging and building fan DVDs. Hopefully this will be the start of a flood of new posts. I completed several fan DVDs over the summer and intend to post details shortly.

Filed under  //   New Media   random  

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What's going on?

Sorry for the lack of posts but things have been extremely busy at work over the past few weeks. The first wave of student marking came in, which for me meant 100 scripts to mark in less than two weeks. Thankfully that has now all been done and I can get back on track with two projects that I have recently been planning.

Firstly, I intend to resume work on my third fan composite: Crimes of the Black Cat (1972). This one is taking much longer than I had first expected. Producing subtitles from scratch is a time consuming task and with over 600 lines of subtitles I have managed, so far, to produce just 100. I recently received an English audio track taken from the uncut Greek DAV VHS release of the film. As expected it is not in good shape so I have had to try and remaster it using Adobe Audition. The result is not overly impressive but certainly much better than previously. Thanks go to my office-mate Sam for a crash course in Adobe Audition and helping to me with the remaster. I would like to get this one finished this weekend.

Secondly, I have decided to produce an audio commentary for an episode of my favourite television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I listen to audio commentaries while driving to and from work and have been thinking about attempting one for quite a while now. Initially I was going to do one for a film but I thought it might be easier to attempt a short one first and then take it from there. If all goes well I might do some more episode commentaries for Kolchak: The Night Stalker and then one for the original television movie The Night Stalker (1972) but let's see how the first one goes. Currently, I am in the pre-production stages and I will record either this Tuesday or the Tuesday after. I am unsure whether to make a dedicated website for them or to just host them on Switchpod. We shall see.

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