As always, it's feast or famine when it comes to work. Actually, more accurately it's always a feast on the work side and a famine on the bank details, but such is the way of the freelancer and as long as I hit my own personal deadlines and I can afford my outgoings, then all should be adequate with the world.

Over the last few days I've been hard at work on the next DVD sleeve for BritFilms and though they didn't go with the design variation I expected, the finished sleeve should satisfy them nicely. I'll post it when it's due to hit the shelves, which is sometime in May, I believe. I've also slightly tweaked their poster for Crying with Laughter which should be hititng cinemas next month.

Today I headed over to Bradford to interview actor John Hurt - who depending on your age is the guy from Alien, The Elephant Man, Shooting Dogs or Harry Potter. In truth, he's all of the above and an interesting guy to talk to. I also got the chance to do some portrait shots of him and I'm quite happy with the results. The interview with him will be divided between imminent issues The Leeds Guide and Impact.

Feeling kinda 'blah' at the mo, with unusually sore eyes, irregular sleep and still a month to go before Iowa.  A lottery win would not go amiss... but not tonight it seems.

Someone... amuse me.

Yes, proving that I'm at heart an artist, I just had the full ThereGoesTheDay pages sorted and realised they didn't project the right information and look for what was needed. Hence a major overhaul.

With more possible traffic coming to the site from publicity connected with the launch of Millarworld's new look and credits on the CUT DVD, it was important that the site had a more functional look and over the next few days, all the pevious pages will be changed to reflect the new format - it may take a bit longer for all the links to work properly, but fingers crossed.

More to follow...

I 've not been posting as much as I should, but as mentioned before, the start of the year has been a busy one. Thankfully, it also seems to be a rewarding one...

I've been hired by BritFilms to design their new branding and several of their DVD releases. Their new logo will debut soon. The first of the releases is 'CUT' which hits high street movie shelves at the start of March. (Tell 'em I sent you). The designing went really well, wth everyone happy with the finished result. It's been a learning curve with barcodes as those little strips of black and white require more care than the rest of the project put together.

I've also had my design selected as the winning logo in a contest created by award-winning comic-book writer Mark Millar. He's the man behind the original Wanted and Kick-Ass comic books (as well as acclaimed runs on Wolverine, the Fantastic Four, 1985, Civil War etc). With Kick-Ass's movie adaptation hititng cinemas in early April, his site - MillarWorld - will be one of the busiest in the industry, so it's great be associated with it. The new-look also debuts shortly.

The best news of the day, though, comes with the fact that I'm an Uncle. My brother (and prolific crime author) Steve, his wife Lynn and bouncing baby boy  (81b 9oz) are all doing fine and I now have to make plans to be the nefarious bad-influence. Looking forward to spoiling rotten without having to face the nappies!

A s you might be able to tell from the length of time between posts since I got back, it has been a pretty busy time. Hopefully that will translate into profitable, interesting and fun...January was always going to busy and it's lived up to that. Cinema Days was an interesting mix of films - a somewhat lukewarm list at first look, but which proved to at least have some minor gems in there. I was surprised to like The Blind Side so much and surprised to find Invictus (which after all had Mandela, sport and Clint Eastwood going for it) to be depressingly formulaic. MicMacs was endearing, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a great Swedish thriller and one I'd highly recommend(based on the best-selling novel) and though Battle for Terra 3D felt like a kiddies' version of Avatar, it was engaging enough.

The day after Cinema Days I was away to London to see an almost-finished version of Kick-Ass, the cinema adaptation of Mark Milar's comic. Fuller reviews have to wait until closer to release. However...as someone said, it's the sort of film that will have The Daily Mail and Fox News 'shitting kittens...' but when it's actually seen in its entirety it's a wonderfully executed guilty pleasure. Controversy over violence and language aside it's got a great story at its heart (kid tries to be a superhero and as well as inspiring others, pays the consequences).  Think Pulp Fiction meets Clerks meets John Woo. I fully expect it to feature on my Top 5 films of the year.

Right after getting back from LeicesteR and London I was into some new design work for a film DVD/film distributor and which based on my experiences so far  - and their very positive reaction - should prove fun and rewarding over the months to come.   Equally the PEACE Fund auctions go on, so I encourage you to visit (and spread word about) the various items up there which are beiNG sold to raise money to help with coping with the horrendous situation out there. (See previous blog post for more info).

And so, into February... where does the year go?