cool reader

so i decided to start a blog, and this is my first post. i've never had a blog before, and thinking about it i probably haven't written anything longer than a Mastodon thread since i left high school over 30 years ago, so please bear with me while i find my feet

to be honest i find this whole idea quite intimidating. will my writing be any good? will anyone read this? i figure i should just go for it, and the plan is to at least write something on a regular (weekly?) schedule to begin with, probably at the weekend

i'm going to start by writing about movies. i guess you could say i have unconventional taste in film, my current obsession is old Japanese yakuza movies from the 1960s and 1970s, specifically the films of director Kinji Fukasaku. there are a number of “boutique” blu-ray labels in the UK releasing a near constant supply of interesting films, and all their discs come with comprehensive extras, booklets full of essays, photo galleries. i am very into it

Fukasaku is largely unknown in the west, save from one film: Battle Royale (2000) what's sad about this is he had a 4 decade long directing career, and BR was his final film (he passed away while filming the sequel and it was completed by his son Kenta) for the majority of his career he worked under the Japanese studio system, mainly for TOEI, and to say he was a prolific film maker is a huge understatement, in the 1970s alone he directed twenty-five films

this won't be a chin-stroking blog about the history of cinema or culture, there are way better writers than me out there (some of them have degrees in this stuff!) but i know what i like and i will hopefully be able to at least string some coherent sentences together and maybe even convince you that these films are worth a look, i certainly think so. even if no-one ends up reading this at least i'll have a reason to watch all the films again

I am writing this from a hotel desk, where I am holed up for exactly one full day to try and get a messy first draft of an article pulled together from the transcript of a conversation and my notes about the conversation. The topic is 'validation in narrative therapy practice' and once I get this messy draft and some reflection questions written, I'll send it off to the four other people who were in the conversation, so that they can make changes, additions, etc. We are hoping to publish it either in a book chapter if we can find a narrative therapy book currently accepting chapters, or in maybe the Journal of Systemic Therapies or similar. Seems like good timing to start a little blog that I am not sure how I will use! But I have a ton of writing I need to do over the next while, so maybe a place where I write about what I'm writing would be good.

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