First update this year, wow!

Happy 2014! Yes, it may be May but this is the first blog entry of 2014 so there you go. The last one you might notice was in June 2013, shortly before I was leaving to go backpacking around New Zealand, and as a result of my travelling it meant Shitcase Cinema has been somewhat dormant. So what can I tell you here on the official blog that you can't find anywhere else? I can tell you one thing – this very exclusive blog is only read by a handful of people so anything I write here really is worth its weight in gold. Let me backtrack firstly, however, just to catch up on Shitcase things that have occurred since the last blog update. The very last review that happened before Shitcase Cinema went into hiatus was Poltergeist 2 and I wanted to somehow give it an ending where Johnny Shitcase could somehow be explained for being absent. I can't quite recall exactly, but I'm sure it went like this – it was a Friday night and Professor Bruce, Maggit Man and my good self had had a few beers and come up with a silly way for Johnny Shitcase to disappear – he apparently was transported 'into the light' by Henry Kane. I love the fact this wasn't even explained at all in the comeback episode, In Hell. I kind of explained it using a butterfly called Susan who returned my character so he could review shitty movies once again. Good stuff, yeah? I remember coming up with that skit while in my hotel room in Las Vegas, I wrote down the idea and lines, and acted it out for the In Hell movie review. It's an amusing skit I think and I also think it kind of puts to bed the whole 'SUSAN!' craze as essentially she is now found, albeit in a random paper butterfly form but she is found and after years since the Grim Weekend review I think I can lay this little joke to rest now.

While I was away on my travels you may or may not have watched the Q&A I did. I filmed this myself while I had some downtime while travelling. The plan was at the time for a review of The Expendables to happen, with Bruce and Maggit Man doing most of the review. I had written out stuff for them to say and talk about and recorded my own audio work. I jokingly said at the time the review probably wouldn't even be uploaded by the time I returned home and sure enough it was never made or uploaded. Bruce did have computer problems for a short while but in all fairness I kind of knew in the back of my mind the review would never happen unless I did it myself, so there you go. I will do a review on The Expendables in the next few months, I promise, but I think I will do it all myself as usual. We'll see. On this note, it brings me to my current frame of mind with Shitcase. A few days ago I uploaded the huge 25 minute retrospective film which took me a long time to put together, it is by far the hardest thing I've had to edit for Shitcase over the last six years. In the film I say that I'm not sure how long Shitcase can carry on for. I must admit to struggling to find enthusiasm to make reviews at the moment. In a way, making the retrospective film is a closing chapter in the history of Shitcase Cinema. It is NOT the end, but I do feel a lack of direction currently and doing all these videos on my own is hard work. I make the videos 100%. I run the Twitter account. I run the Facebook group, although Bruce and Maggit Man are admins on there. I ran the forum but that died off although it is still out there if you want to find it. It's a bit too much and lack of help and / or interest has recently made me feel there's not much in it any more. The Facebook group for example has become largely overrun from what it used to be and frankly I don't read much on there any more. I used to read every single post on there day in day out but it's not what it used to be any more.

On totally different levels of excitement I am thinking about doing another Godfrey Ho ninja movie review called Ninja Avengers but we'll see. I'm not entirely sure what to review next. I would like to make a Shitcase Cinema movie after making a great retrospective documentary film and while on the topic of the retrospective my thanks go out to all the fans who sent in clips for it, whether I used bits, all or nothing at all due to time constraints, I watched everything I got and appreciate it a lot. Shitcase Cinema fans really are the greatest thing since sliced bread....whatever that means. Only Zardoz knows.

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Speaking of Zardoz I picked up a book on John Boorman – the dickhead who made Zardoz. I only wanted it for the chapter on Zardoz and as soon as I saw a picture of Sean Connery in there dressed in his little red nappy I laughed to myself and wondered just what he would say if you asked him about that film now. So that'll do for now Shitcase followers, go practise your bad ninja dubbing skills and we will meet again. John 12^th May 2014.