Happy Birthday, Stephen King!

Happy belated 67th birthday!

In honour of the great man's birthday yesterday, Rebekah held a trivia quiz.

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And, yes, there was some talk about cats.

Rebekah Herzberg Reveals All

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No, haters, stalkers, and the ever hopeful AJ, sorry to disappoint you, but this is not my return to horror or movie blogging. That's never going to happen. I'm done with that infantilised online community and their worthless psuedo-political causes/agendas/dramas.

I don't even have a horror DVD or VHS collection anymore; I sold most of them in yard sales and threw the others in the trash. That's how little I now care about the genre or movies in general.

Most movies are just time-wasting entertainment which certain members of the "nerd culture" take far too seriously, and lamentably for a while, so did I. It's better to just watch movies once and throw them away. Don't kid yourself that you are going to watch them again one day, because you won't. They are all absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. That's if there even is any meaning to be found in anything, which I doubt.

R.I.P. Donald Sinden, Richard Kiel, Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Richard Attenborough, Harold Ramis, and God knows how many other entertainers we've lost recently. My sympathies go out to anyone else ("celebrity" or otherwise) who has lost loved ones in the last year for whatever reason.

I could write more about Death being "the great leveller" and how it puts things into perspective, but why cast pearls before swine? Most normal people already know it, and the blissfully ignorant will do eventually. Depressing stuff.

Anyway, after a long podcasting hiatus, my online friend Rebekah has some interesting things to say about similar subject matter on her podcast. I was invited to be on it, but I was asleep at the time and missed it. Enjoy!

Dr Blood's End of September Outing

Contrary to what a Kentucky-based, former horror podcast which hardly anyone ever listens to anymore might like you to believe, I'm one Englishman who doesn't live in a dark basement surrounded by horror movies. Occasionally, I even leave my bright three-bedroomed house to work and buy things rather than ponce off my parents or welfare like they do.

If you don't know what any of the above refers to, never mind. I only know what was said through hearsay too. I have no time for the two talentless "Laurel and Hardy" wannabes who thought they'd be the new voice of horror way back in 2007 (although they always add a least one extra year onto the time they've been around), but, having failed miserably, now just take jealous potshots at other horror fans who they don't really know to claw back some credibility as "shock jocks" or something.

Did any of what they said bother me? No. "Dr Blood's Video Vault" has been around over a decade longer than they have and will continue to be long after they have disappeared back under the rock which they were stupid enough to crawl out from. They did give me something amusing to start this post off with though.

Anyway, yesterday, I had another long overdue "Big Day Out". I'm sure my last one wasn't when I went to the County Fair over a month ago, but it certainly felt like it was. The seasons have changed, there's new stuff in the stores, and there were even a few things to buy at my local pawn shop.

Finally, "The New Daughter" and "Orphan" turned up! I'd already hired them from Netflix and reviewed them favourably so I just had to have them. I'd never even seen "The New Daughter" for sale anywhere before but had picked up (and put back) "Orphan" several times in Target. At $2.50 each for immaculate DVDs (apart from slight security tape damage to the "Orphan" artwork), this was a done deal.

Then to complete the "4 for $10" ritual, I saw that "Van Helsing" and "Whiteout" were still on the bottom shelf so I grabbed those too. I know they weren't exactly brilliant movies, but I'm going through a phase of Kate Beckinsale idolatry right now which, hopefully, these will dissuade me from.

That wasn't all there was to my "September Outing" either. Once I discovered that I had more money in the bank account than I realised, I was off to "Dollar Tree" to check out all the Hallowe'en decorations and buy some of the foods I like which even dogs can barely stomach. I love their McRib clones!

I didn't buy any of the neat Hallowe'en stuff since every day is Hallowe'en for me anyway, but I did get three books which I had no idea about. I'm not much of a reader, but I'll give them a go eventually. I've looked them up now and I know I'll be disappointed, but for $3, it doesn't matter.

Here's a kind of collage of most of the things I bought from Dollar Tree:

I also bought more chocolate and a pound cake, but I'm sure none of that interests you.

I've bought enough snacks, drinks and sandwiches to least me for a little while now so my next "Big Day Out" will undoubtedly be just before Hallowe'en when my Aldi's $1.99 pizza supply runs out.

Now it's back to the dark room that I allegedly sit in all day being very English and watching 3D movies. That's much better than wasting a fortune on non-celebrity autographs at horror conventions or trying (and failing) to sell poorly-designed t-shirts and lame movie commentaries to some braindead podcast followers, right guys?

It's Caturday! Willow and Suzi forever!

I think I've been spending too much time online lately. My cats think so too and took the appropriate action to remind me exactly who owns who.

"None Shall Pass!"

This was what greeted me when I went to use my laptop. Not even the tastiest of cat treats could shift the incredible bulk.

Since the internet was out of bounds, Suzi joined in the fun by proving that she is just as entertaining as Maru. If only I had a camera which could record video and take more than three pictures without the focus corrupting or the batteries dying, I could make a fortune.

"Stop watching Maru and pay attention to me!"

Having finally got back online, this is a lazy Saturday post, but the only thing I have to offer is my hatred of eco-cases. Who invented them? Who thought it would be a good idea to create DVD cases which end up damaging the artwork when you press too hard on them? Oh God, I hate eco-cases!

Why do these exist?

In other news, last night, I was part of yet another "Friday Night Geekfight" podcast over at "Better Geek Than Never". I'm sure you'll enjoy it a lot more than "The Bloody Podcast" which has been on hold for nearly two weeks now due to a combination of lack of focus and not being able to think of anything to talk about which would be in any way entertaining apart from bitching about everything.

I do have something funny to tell you all, but I think it'll work better as a podcast once my uber sexy partner in crime gets herself a working microphone. Yes, guys, I actually know a real life girl who I'm still trying to persuade to join "The Bloody Podcast". If you cross my hairy palms with silver, I might even get her to say hello to you on Twitter so you can boast about it to all your other pretend friends. I'll set a reserve on the bidding at $10,000 since we both need new computer equipment and we're too lazy to get real jobs to pay for it. Nor, given our huge talent as entertainers, should we even have to.

But, seriously, as you know, I've been quite negative about a lot things far too much lately even to the point that I'm starting to piss myself off. If you have any suggestions for a subject for me to talk about on "The Bloody Podcast", please leave them as a comment below. Hopefully, I will have a new podcast for you tomorrow.

Ecphrasis, Synopsis or Review?

Yesterday was supposed to be the day of my second podcast entitled "The Bloody Podcast Rises!" I had everything in place, two people were going to join me on it, and I went for a late afternoon nap quite excited about creating another hour of entertainment.

Of course, since you are now reading this rather than listening to that podcast, it never happened. One of my guests dropped out not so much at the last minute but two hours before, and it was impossible to find a replacement in the time left. I would be lying if I was to say that I wasn't very disappointed. I went back to bed early because I simply had nothing left to do at that point and was completely disheartened by the dropout's flakiness. There are cultural reasons for how that person is which I still haven't learnt to anticipate, so it didn't make things any easier.

Suffice it to say that the idea behind the show was to select a few "Horrible Movie Bloggers" and tear their work apart to make points about how not to write or broadcast reviews. While none of us are perfect and most of us recognise our limitations, there are others who blatantly don't care about what they are doing and make things horrible for the rest.

I'm not talking about the haters, trolls, and thread-crappers who get their fun from the comments sections on various websites. Some of them are actually funny. No, what I'm talking about are the people who seemingly have no right to their apparent success.

Take, for example, Harry Knowles. Allegedly, he started posting reviews in 1996 and, thus, has been doing so for a year longer than I've been online. I don't remember him being popular back then, but, given the nature of the internet with most people getting online through AOL/Compuserve and dial-up connections, that's not very surprising. Google didn't exist and most people used Yahoo, Lycos or multi-search tools made up of hundreds of smaller search engines to find anything.

The first incarnation of my own site, "Dr Blood's Video Vault", wasn't online until the middle of 1997 and I had trouble finding even another six horror sites to swap banner links with. Back then even I (with my website created with MS Publisher) was considered a big player and, through affiliates, I made a load of money which I'm not ashamed to boast about. Of course my site was rather sparse, but the rule was to get everything loading in less than 44k or nobody would wait long enough to see it. As bandwidth increased, pages got bigger. I'm still not sure that it was quite such a good thing to abandon the 44k rule either.

The only alternatives to the independent movie review sites in 1997 were Microsoft's "Cinemania", and the IMDb had yet to take up the position of prominence which it has today. As I saw the IMDb get created and grow, I truly thought that it was one of the greatest things which anyone has ever thought of. All that was due to change unfortunately.

Going back to Harry Knowles, he's a reviewer and a critic so he should be used to criticism. I have nothing personal against him, but I can't bear reading his reviews. I had never even heard of him until I came to America, but I made up for my ignorance quite quickly. Most people say that his writing hasn't developed in 16 years, and, as we all joke about but sadly know to be the truth, he loves just about everything as long as there's a free ticket, DVD, or financial kickback involved. Basically, you can't trust his reviews to be objective, but why should you? His written style is little different to that of a 14 year old schoolboy and, from the comments on his site, that is his target audience. He's been successful, put a lot of work into selling things, made a ton of money, but do any of us actually read his reviews? No. He's a sell-out with no credibility left. Even so, I can't help but admire the barefaced cheek of Harry Knowles to play the system at its own game and become a success from it.

There are far more "Horrible Movie Bloggers" around than Harry Knowles though. In the early to mid 2000s, I watched the rise of "Bloody-Disgusting", "Dread Central" and even "ShockTillYouDrop" as they populated their forums with their "friends" from MySpace, built-up their databases full of free reviews from people who only wanted the glory of posting them somewhere, and, after monetising the Hell out of themselves, eventually sold their sites to the highest bidders. None of these sites are what they used to be, strings are being pulled behind the scenes, and you can be sure that if they've been financially rewarded, they'll all play salesman when it comes to promoting any new horror movie rather than being honest about its content. I'm sure that there are thousands of non-horror movie review sites which are just as guilty, but I wouldn't know who they were to list them. That's why I needed a team effort for the podcast.

But that's enough about the big boys. There are "Horrible Movie Bloggers" among the lesser ranks of Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube, and whichever other social networking platform you can think of. Although they probably aren't making any money from their work, they are doing enough to really damage those who should be.

That brings me to the title of this post: "Ecphrasis, Synopsis or Review". Some people don't know the difference and their ignorance is destroying the credibility of all independent movie reviewers. It's certainly destroyed the reviews sections of the IMDb, but that whole site is a cesspit of haters and trolls on all the "Message Boards" anyway.

Are the IMDb movie ratings from millions of unsupervised click-happy 5 year olds reliable? No. The whole site is a parody of what it once was. As for the "actors" with IMDb profiles, I'm surprised that I haven't got my name on there. Like several million others who do indeed have their names on the IMDb, I haven't actually been in a movie either. But I digressed. Bitching about the IMDb would need a podcast all to itself and would be several days long. Yes, it counts as a "Horrible Movie Blog", but it's more of a forum than anything else, the reviews are limited in length, and they all suck (especially the ones with a URL at the end which invite you to go and read more of the same). I can only read a plot synopsis so many times before my brain shuts down.

Ask yourself how many blogs you've been to where the review is little more than a retelling of the entire plot of a movie with maybe one line at the end saying, "I liked it". Are these people serious? Admittedly, in some very rare cases, the "review" is actually a thirty page ecphrasis of every single aspect of the movie designed to convey what was seen in one medium into another for those who have no other way of appreciating it. I'm not talking about movie reviews for the blind or the deaf when I point out these "Horrible Movie Bloggers". The ones I can't stand are the uneducated who think that this is what a movie review really should be like no matter who the intended audience is.

These "synopsis" writers don't even get that simply rewriting the movie's plot in their own words is not a review. I know what happened. Back in the day, when their teachers told them to write essays "as if you are explaining to someone who doesn't know", they did exactly that and carried it with them until the chance to write blogs came along. I have had arguments with so many people who sent me a link to their "New Review" which turned out to be a synopsis of the movie that it's not even funny anymore.

I'm not going to be a hypocrite about it. I've done it too and I've even done it when writing essays during my incarceration at University. Of course, those essays came back with lots of red ink all over them and some quite acidic comments in some cases which made me pull myself together. A movie review or a "critique" is something entirely different to a synopsis.

A movie review should be about how the movie made you feel, what the performances of the actors were like, a scene which really stood out, if the story was interesting, or any of the thousands of other technical aspects of drama or movie production which you recognised when you willingly suspended your disbelief to entertain yourself.

When I read a movie review, I want to know all these things and I like to read how the movie affected the reviewer on a personal level. Whether it made them remember something else, an incident in their lives, or if the whole occasion was something special for them, these are the things which should be included. I don't care if the writer has gone off on a tangent from the movie itself, it's their "review". It's a personal and honest thing. As long as they never write "in and of itself", describe the direction as "helming", the camerawork as "lensing", or commit atrocious uses of adjectives such as "lugubrious set decoration" or "glorious acting ability" then it's all good.

Those people who just list every single plot point in their spoiler laden synopses are truly "Horrible Movie Bloggers", but, you know, there are even worse than them out there.

I may not write the best movie reviews myself, If I've ever said I did, you can be sure that I meant it humourously as I am well aware of my own shortcomings. The two things which I cannot abide more than any others are sycophants and reviews full of multisyllabic hyperbole.

There is one reviewer in particular (who I won't name, but we joke about all the time on Twitter) who writes every review as a sales pitch no matter how bad the movie actually is. There are monetised YouTube partners who do the same thing for financial rewards so you can see why they do it, but this guy claims to be an "aspiring movie reviewer". It's sad really because it's never going to happen for him even if Harry Knowles is so obviously his role model. His sycophancy, his gaggle of equally creepy friends who comment two or three times each on every post he writes to make him look popular, his recent overuse of "ain't" and "Hon" when he isn't even an American, and his tendency towards hyperbole and nonsensical periphrasis make such a "Horrible Movie Blogger" a figure of fun for the rest of us who are trying to improve our own writing.

There is yet another contrarian who I can't even bear to read because he writes like he swallowed a lexicon and seems unable to write the simplest of sentences without at least three four-syllable words in them which he thinks will make him appear more erudite. I could write like that too if I wanted, but I like to think that I understand my target audience and what they like to read. I also know that this "Horrible Movie Blogger" doesn't entirely understand the words he's using in the first place. Plain speech is always better. That's why I have 10 times the amount of subscribers that he does even though I'm far from being one of the most popular bloggers myself. There are fashion bloggers who post nothing but pictures and have over 100,000 GFC followers so I know my place all right.

Anyway, that's probably what "The Bloody Podcast" would have been about if we'd made it. It definitely would have been something a little bit more educational than the average podcast and funny as well, but, alas, now we'll never know. As someone who has only made 37c so far from monetising my own blog to the hilt, there would have been lots of self-deprecating humour which I know everybody loves otherwise iJustine and Shane Dawson wouldn't have become so successful for acting like idiots. Yes, they are acting. You don't honestly believe that they could be like that in real life, do you? Look into their eyes and see how they aren't quite as dumb as they want you to believe they are.

I'm not going to dwell on this podcast failure. Like most things, if you want to do something well, you have to do it yourself, and you should never rely on other people. I'll find another subject to podcast about on my own and it'll be even better.

Death at Deadpit.com

It's been a long time since I had anything to do with the guys who run the Deadpit podcast, as I left their message board amidst a load of stupid arguing and internet drama way back in early 2008. Three years on, we're all a bit older (and some of us are wiser) and, for one of the few times in the five year history of their online "radio" show, I have to agree with a few things that were said by Wes Vance (aka "The Creepy Kentuckian").

On June 3rd, Deadpit created a tribute show to one of their fallen "brothers" named "Don Muggins". I never knew him as he joined their message board about a year after I ceased to post there and, since I'm not overly keen on going to horror conventions anymore, our paths never crossed. Maybe you knew him if you move in those circles but I didn't so it's not really my place to comment on his tragic death other than to say that the death of anyone is obviously pretty devastating for everyone left behind. I can imagine what his family and close friends are going through right now.

What actually stood out for me was one of Wes Vance's introductory comments which I've done my best to transcribe for you below.

"But, uh yeah, I mean it sort of puts in perspective, you know, like a lot of things, I mean we've had feuds with some people online and stuff like that and, you know, a couple of occasions, I still think that we were right on the money but, I mean, you know at the end of the day it's stupid, you should really like... it's people like that you should be... I guess you should really be cordial online and don't try to do the internet drama aspect of the thing."

Okay, so it's not the most eloquent statement when typed out rather than listened to, but on a couple of occasions in the last six months, Wes has let a few rather mature emotional responses out rather than just bullshitting around (as he has done in far too many Deadpit podcasts and YouTube videos).

I'll be blunt about this, I'm not a fan of Deadpit. Some of their shows were really good when they first started and still, whenever they do a celebrity interview, it's always worth a listen, but the community of geeky fans which they have acquired has really left a lot to be desired, and most of them have damaged the integrity of their show, forums and everything else in what they refer to as the "Deadpit Universe". Only 40 or so people still post anything on their message board, and there isn't a single one of them now who I would even have the patience to respond to. All the big names who used to post there have moved on to other more interesting things, and it's completely understandable.

I'm not going to be hypocritical enough to say that I didn't thoroughly enjoy trolling their ProBoards forum from time to time just to stir things up, although I'm far from being the Nemesis that they were hoping for. Most of the time I thought I was just being hilariously funny, but as I've sometimes discovered in real life too, my particular brand of British humour doesn't translate too well overseas. As both Deadpit hosts have learned, their own mouths have been their undoing on several occasions where they've almost been sued, and they've alienated a lot more people over the years than they should have still listening to their show. But, hey, it's their podcast so they can do what they want, and I'm sure somebody will still listen to it.

Some of the changes they've made have improved the show including getting rid of all the self-promoters who abused the call-in portion, and, in this latest show, Wes revealed that they've finally had enough of all the pointless home-made horror movies which far too many people have been attempting to find distribution for.

I haven't listened to Deadpit for ages. In fact, there was one year where the content was so lousy and non-horror movie related that I was just waiting for them to give up entirely. I even awarded them the title of the "Worst Horror Podcast of 2009" as a result.

The addition of Aaron Frye's fiancée, "Jessco", reading the mailbag section is a new mistake due to her inexperience and obvious lack of horror movie knowledge, but at least, they've started to get back into discussing horror again. I think this was the first show that I've listened to this year, and it comes before a rare hiatus for them which is apparently due to the dearth of new movies of any kind worth talking about.

Anyway, since we are all in the same boat with a lack of anything much to talk about until the "Fright Night" remake, I thought Deadpit was something worth mentioning on my blog. I suppose it's only fair since I was once on their "Horror Roundtable" (where, frustratingly, none of the others seemed to know the difference between a cliché and a trope) and I still get the occasional mention on their forum (although never in a good way).

I'm never going to be friends with those guys again because, from my side of all the internet drama and feuding, I felt completely backstabbed by them on far too many occasions to ever want to associate with them in future with anything more than a casual nod to their existence. I don't wish them any ill will either because the bottom line is that we are all human, all horror fans, and all just getting on with what we enjoy most. All the internet dramas and feuds are, as Wes said, really put into perspective when someone dies.

Life is short and for some people, such as Don Muggins (not his real name), it's far too short. We've all been through various tragedies and upheavals in our lives, but I think, because of the nature of the internet, we often forget that there are other people on the other side of the screen. Sometimes it's worth just stopping for a moment to remember that all the horror fans and the celebrities are mortal too.

What happened to The Bloody Podcast?

Most of you don't know this, but a couple of years ago, I used to regularly do a horror movie review podcast. I wasn't famous for it or anything (in fact only about 60 people ever listened to it), it was just something I tried out and enjoyed for a while even though it was really quite annoying to edit it into something that I was actually satisfied with each time.

I think I did the last one early on in 2008 when horror movies were drying up and there wasn't really anything to talk about, or at least nothing that interested me. I also moved house and lost my microphone, so I just saw it as a bit of an omen that I should probably leave the podcasts to the other horror guys out there (especially as there are so many of them).

Recently I had an email from the site which hosted my podcasts telling me that if I didn't upload a new show soon then they would delete my account. Ordinarily I would have just uploaded something somehow simply to keep the account active, but not after they already deleted over a year's worth of podcasts from my account anyway!

Stuff like that is beyond annoying. I have backups of my audio files, but I really can't be bothered to reupload them, and so I now consider my podcasting career to be at an end. Sometimes I call into horror shows on BlogTalkRadio, but I haven't even been listening to that for a while. Things change, and I've become more of a written word kind of guy, so I've decided to stick with blogging instead. Maybe my writing will improve if I do it more.

One thing I've noticed though is how easy it is to get out of writing. I often have to really think about the placement of commas and parentheses, breaking longer sentences into smaller ones, and avoiding ridiculously long words which most people would need to look up in a dictionary. I hate reading blogs like that myself, and I'm not somebody who uses a lot of big words when a lot of smaller ones will do anyway. Gushing flowery prose is so not me.

I'm not the greatest writer in the world nor am I even trying to be. I just give my 100% honest opinion about the films I watch and the things I like and don't like, and if people enjoy reading any of it then good for them. I'm probably not as informative as I could be and keep falling into the trap of negativity, but I suppose that's just what happens when you watch too many films. Can you ever watch too many films though? Now there's a question.

Anyway, "The Bloody Podcast" is no more. One day I might do it again, but I don't really want to right now. Some people enjoyed the shows I did, but I'm the first to admit that it's not really my area of expertise.

I have also never bothered with YouTube either because I don't have the patience to make anything worth watching on there. Really, if you aren't "iJustine" or "VenetianPrincess" then you're wasting your time posting webcam videos. I don't watch any kind of horror on YouTube anymore other than a few trailers and certainly no movie reviews. What's the point of waving a DVD around to show people you've bought it and swearing about how bad it was? I can do that happily enough in my own home and have no desire to broadcast it to the rest of the world.

I'm not sure how long I will even have the patience to keep blogging either. I've been writing my reviews since 1994. Those were the days of papery magazines which nobody bothers with now. In 1997, I moved everything online and sometimes I wonder if that was a mistake too. There's almost too much to keep up with if you are just one person running a horror site. There used to only be a handful of horror sites back then, but now everybody seems to have blogs, message boards, podcasts, FaceySpace and God knows what else. It's information overload. No wonder I took the original "Dr Blood's Video Vault" down for nearly three years.

I don't miss the days of being one of the 'Big 6" horror websites, but I'm uncertain about the future now that everyone has become a critic. Just trying to stay current with new releases and getting a "zero day" review is proving to be more trouble than it's actually worth. Pretty soon I'm just going to start going back over the "classics" though as playing catch-up after 18 months' hiatus is getting boring for me. I obviously can't review every horror film in the world, but I'm going to give it a damn good try.

I don't often write anything personal like this on my blog, so don't expect me to start getting all conversational on here. I used to on MySpace when it still had categories, and every so often I'll dip back into one of the 800 or so posts on there and find something suitable to rewrite and repost again. I think I've become a little bit more self-conscious with Blogger than I was with the closed social networking systems. I have to keep remembering that this goes out to the whole world not just a selected group.

What a ramble! Anyway, I thank you all for reading this and for subscribing to me over the years in one way or another. I'm going to take a couple of days away from this now to watch some DVDs, play with my cats, and give the beginnings of my repetitive strain injury from mousing a chance to subside. I've got a couple of hundred posts on here already, so feel free to read a few of them and leave me some comments.