About Pick 'n' Mix

Posted on May 24th, 2010

Phosphorescent and Colin Harris A reader stumbling on to this website will read reviews that say a movie is ‘great’, ‘highly recommended’, or ‘a total waste of time’, and all points in between. But what does that mean? If, for example, you are the type of viewer that loves, for example, Rambo-style action movies, 200-million dollar sci-fi extravaganzas or formulaic rom-coms, then my tiddly little recommendations will be lost on you. That is not to say that I am right and you are wrong; far from it. It just means that our tastes in movies differ completely. In order to attempt to rectify this, I think I should write a little about myself and the movies I love. I solemnly promise that this will not turn into a blog.

My name is Colin Harris and at time of writing, May 2010, I’m 43 years old. I am married with a 4-year old daughter – which makes me pretty much an expert in Disney princess movies, by the way – and the first movie I can remember seeing was Watch Out, We’re Mad, a dubbed Spaghetti slapstick comedy with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, at my local fleapit cinema now long since closed, back in 1974 or 1975. I believe that it was the B-film to one of the stop-motion Sinbad movies, but I may be mistaken – the smoke drifting up to the balcony from the smokers below may have hazed my memory as well as my eyesight. No matter. I saw at least two Bond movies at this fleapit, as well as the original Star Wars movie.

Flash forward to now, and I’m lucky enough to have enough spare time to watch an average of five movies a week. I love the flow of movies; they can take their time to tell their tale, not having to fit a mini-climax in every fifteen minutes and a cliff-hanger every forty-five as in a television series. They can also, if done well, allow characters to breathe and have unique voices. They allow cinematographers, directors and actors the space to be the best that they can be. I cannot bear to watch television series, and very seldom do. I also cannot bear to watch production-line movies that spend more on their advertising campaigns than they do on the story. I’m afraid to say that an awful lot of modern-day cinema just washes through me quickly just like the product-placement cola front and centre of every scene.

I first wrote reviews on a Myspace page about three years ago, and I've included them here, too. Each review was written by myself, solely.

So, that’s that for now. I could go on, but that would only serve to spoil future articles I plan to write on those slow summer months when CGI and 3D will rule the multiplexes, and I long for the days of the smoky fleapit.

Oh, and that picture? That is a recent one of me (in the garish New York Dolls t-shirt) thrilled at meeting singer Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, at one of his shows.

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