Today I got a notification from WordPress saying that it was the blog anniversary. It’s actually the day I registered to start setting things up when I was transferring over from blogspot after 4.5 years – my first post on here was on 20th August 2015.

I recently came across a stash of film posters in the loft, all ones that I had on my walls in my teens and twenties. I was struck by how much my tastes have changed; although there were films that I still rate highly, there were none that I would put on my walls now (and some where I genuinely can’t understand why I bought the poster). Maybe life experience causes things to read differently, but I’d also say that film is no longer as central to my life as it was back then…and falling in love with a film now usually involves buying the soundtrack rather than the poster. The image above* is part of the repeating pattern in the blog header, updated in 2023 because the 2015 original didn’t reflect my then-current viewing habits or tastes…I’d probably choose different films again now, so that may be something I re-do before the year is over. [* it includes three films that I’ve had posters of (none of which I found in the loft) and two where I bought the soundtrack]

I’m currently in a fallow period with the blog – I’ve decided that I’m only going to post if I have something to say, and at the moment…I don’t have anything to say about films or cinema. I haven’t watched many films so far this year, and likely won’t post anything about specific films unless something really grabs me. Stuff that may or may not make an appearance at some point: I’ve still got a stack of older French films to watch, stemming from Tavernier’s documentaries but also going off on some tangents when I’ve liked an actor or filmmaker; Radiance are releasing Carlos Saura’s first film – Los golfos / The Delinquents (1962) – on Blu-ray, so I may watch that to see if it’s any different to the version I’ve seen previously; and I liked this short video essay about Sophia Loren on the BFI Player, so some Loren films could be in the mix as well (incidentally, if you’re interested in Loren, I recommend Pauline Small’s book about her career, one of the few star studies that considers the commercial and industrial contexts that shaped the development of a star’s image).