Kreativ Blogger Award!

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I’m extremely flattered that Catherine Grant at Film Studies For Free has thought of me for this award. While I usually share her skepticism of most things resembling a 'chain letter', who can be expected to turn down such an ego boost!?

As such, in accordance with the rules (as laid out on Catherine's blog), here are seven (vaguely film-related) facts about me:

1. I am in the final year of my PhD at the University of Warwick. My thesis is on the Hollywood ‘happy ending’. (Could this blog be a procrastination technique? Surely not...)

2. In 2002 I made a pilgrimage to the bowling alley in Buffalo where a key sequence of Buffalo ’66 was shot. I bowled on the lane Vincent Gallo plays on in the film.

3. I am on the editorial board of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, a new, freely-accessible online incarnation of the journal Movie, which will be going live soon.

4. At age 16 I made a mockumentary called The Blair Witch Project Project. It was about me and a friend going to see The Blair Witch Project at the cinema on Halloween, venturing into a local park in order to scare ourselves, and, in the process, losing our camera. It was hilarious.

5. I currently live in a flat whose previous tenant was Gemma Arterton. I so badly want her to make a film I admire so I can be more proud to be occasionally receiving her mail.

6. In 2003 I travelled to Bruges specifically to see the directorial debut of the lead singer of what was at the time my favourite band (the Belgian group dEUS). The film (Any Way the Wind Blows) was in Flemish, without subtitles, and didn’t appear to be particularly good.

7. I recently covered (and combined) ‘You Give a Little Love’ from Bugsy Malone and the main theme from Jurassic Park for a friend’s wedding.

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And now, the seven blogs I am in turn nominating (none of whom, I’m sure, needs my championing):

1. James Zborowski’s wide-ranging and penetrating Between Sympathy and Detachment.

2. Jeffrey Sconce’s always thoughtful and often hilarious Ludic Despair.

3. The prolific and gorgeously presented Precious Bodily Fluids.

4. David Lowery’s Drifting, in part a companion to his beautiful movies.

5. Dave Kehr, whose comments section hosts some of the most extended and stimulating film discussion on the net.

6. The Enemies of Reason, for its scabrously funny critiques of the British press.

7. Amanda Ann Klein’s Judgmental Observer, which makes me want to be taking her courses.
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