Kreativ Bloggers

Many thanks to Hans at Quiet Cool for passing on the Kreativ Blogger award to me. It's now my happy duty, adhering the rules set out below, to nominate some of my fellow bloggers.

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.

5. Nominate 7 Kreative Bloggers.

6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated.

So, without further ado, and allowing for the fact that Hans has already nominated Aaron at The Death Rattle, the Kreative Blogger award goes to:

1. Francisco at The Film Connoisseur

2. Bill at The Kind of Face You Hate

3. Evil Dead Junkie at Things That Don't Suck

4. Kate at Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire

5. Kimberley at Cinebeats

6. and 7. Brothers Troy and Kevin Olson at, respectively, Elusive as Robert Denby and Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies

All of these bloggers write insightful and perceptive film criticism and all of them have an immediately recognisable style tinged with wry humour.

Now: a few random facts about yours truly:

1. I've met Quentin Tarantino. In 1994, he was guest of honour at the Broadway Cinema's Shots in the Dark Festival in Nottingham. 'Pulp Fiction' had just won the Palme d'Or. I was in town early for a screening of Terence Malick's 'Badlands' and decided to kill some time browsing in the Virgin megastore. Tarantino was looking round the video section (that shows my age: I remember when video was the prevalent medium!). No entourage or security people. I went over and congratulated him on the Palme d'Or. "Hey, thanks man," he said, enthusiastically shaking my hand, and for the next few minutes we talked cinema. Or rather he talked cinema and I listened and learned.

2. Outside of film, one of my great loves is literature. I'm a big fan of Iain Banks, and have bought each of his books in hardback, first edition, on the day of publication since 'Dead Air'. I've got almost the whole collection signed. When he published 'The Steep Approach to Garbadale', his signing tour didn't bring him anywhere near Nottingham. He was, however, appearing at a branch of Waterstones in Plymouth. Which is about 300 miles from Nottingham. Two minor problems: my car was off the road and I was out of annual leave. Solution: hire car, hotel, 600 mile round-trip and a two-day sickie from work.

3. As a result of my book on the films of Sam Peckinpah, the publishers asked me to write an overview on violence in cinema. They already had the title: '100 Violent Films That Changed Cinema'. It wasn't my best piece of writing and it didn't set the publishing world on fire. It did, however, lead to ...

4. ... an American production company asking me to appear in a documentary about 'A Clockwork Orange' that Warner Bros had commissioned them to make as a special feature for the Director's Series Stanley Kubrick box set. The documentary's called 'Great Bolshy Yarblockos' and I get about twenty seconds of screen time spread across four clips. I had a stinking cold the day they filmed it and was convinced they'd leave me on the cutting room floor.

5. To the best of my recollection, I've only ever walked out of two films. The first was Peter Greenaway's 'Prospero's Books' where the image of a child standing on a swing and urinating made me ask serious questions about why Greenaway is allowed access to camera equipment. The second was Gus van Zandt's 'Last Days'. I was on a date with the girl who would become my wife. We sat through about forty minutes, then she excused herself to the ladies. She was gone a good 15 minutes. When she came back, she whispered "Have I missed anything?" I replied that she hadn't. We looked at each other and simultaneously said "Wanna go for a pizza?" It was good pizza.

6. Seven films I wish I'd walked out of: 'The Baby of Macon' (it's that Greenaway fella again!), 'Titanic', 'Pearl Harbour', 'Into the Wild', 'Ultraviolet', 'Next', the remake of 'The Wicker Man'.

7. Seven unmade films I wish had gone before the cameras: Sam Peckinpah's 'Deliverance', Alejandro Jodorowsky's 'Dune', Andrei Tarkovsky's Dostoyevsky biopic, Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon biopic, Nicolas Roeg's 'High Rise' (from J.G. Ballard's novel), David Lean's 'The Lawbreakers' and 'The Long Arm' (a projected two-film epic dealing with the mutiny on the Bounty and the settlement on Pitcairn Island).