The site’s back online — think of it as a rough cut. The footage is all there, but the colour grade, sound mix, and final edit are still in progress.
We had to pull a bit of a “director’s emergency cut” this morning (plugins and themes got a little too ambitious for their own good). But the production team is hard at work behind the scenes.
Stay tuned as we tighten up the edit, restore some lost frames, and get everything looking properly cinematic again.
The Reel Bits turns turns 10 years old today, marking its aluminium anniversary in the midst of one of the weirdest times in cinema history.
Anniversaries are a funny thing. They tend to mark how many years we’ve been doing, or in some cases not doing, a thing.
The Reel Bits is a thing I’ve been doing since 2010. For most of that time, it’s a thing I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, even when leaving it in benign neglect to pursue other interests, be they literary or romantic.
Some history
As some of you may know, it started as an offshoot of the now defunct DVD Bits and was aptly called The DVD Bits Blog. At the time, I was asking all the studios who were sending me lots of DVDs and Blu-rays to review if I could possibly attend some of those secret media screenings I’d read about on social media. One distributor promptly told me we weren’t really a film site so much as a home media site. So, I made one.
It was a slow start at first, cracking straight into such contemporary classics as 1922’s Haxan. You see, I’d briefly entertained the idea of doing all 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but ultimately realised that death was not such a great goal. Plus, I never wanted to feel like film was homework, even if my natural instincts are to make every list into a mini project.
Secret worlds, something something
When the media invites came not long afterwards, it was actually kind of weird. They were often in hidden screening rooms around the Sydney CBD – in office towers, underneath iconic theatres, or in bloody hard to get to waterfront locales – and sometimes came with surprise freebies.
One of the earlier screenings I went to was The Tourist, an Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp film I said had “no chemistry between the leads, [and] a core MacGuffin that makes less sense as the film goes on.” The gift we got was a faux airline travel kit full of toiletries. I like to think it was a film so bad they literally gave us a blindfold and earplugs to get through it.
It’s been a wild ride though. There’s been some amazing experiences I wouldn’t trade for all the slippers at Qantas. Seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the Sydney premiere, surrounded by life-size props and an excited crowd, was something money could buy. Getting to see Guardians of the Galaxy weeks early, mouth agape at its wondrousness, would be impossible to recreate – but I tried at least another four times at the cinema.
More than that, I’ve met some amazing people from other sites that I happily call my closest friends, including Alex Doenau (Batrock.net) and David McVay (Geek Actually), both of whom I will have messaged multiple times by the time I finish writing this. When I got super depressed on at least two major occasions and almost chucked it in, they were amongst the people who kept me sane and in touch with the things I loved. (I dare not mention more people for fear of forgetting someone).
A life in film in numbers
2,203. That’s how many movies I’ve watched over the last 10 years. That’s an average of about 220 films a year. It’s less than one a day, slacker that I am, but it does mean that some years were significantly more.
I’ve posted to the site 3,831 times, including about 1,150 reviews (or around 115 a year) for the ‘Bits alone. That’s in addition to the 261 podcast episodes on David McVay’s Geek Actually network, 815 comic book reviews for Behind the Panels and Newsarama, dozens of radio appearances, articles and essay contributions, a masters degree and a book. While working full time as a librarian. (No wonder I had a few burnouts).
Other people have contributed to the site, and I need to thank Bruce Munro, Paul Ryan, Chris Elena, Ben Harlum, Blake Howard, Paul Grose, Jennifer Verzuh, Sean Riley, Alex Doenau and many others for their reviews, articles or interviews delivered in a pinch.
Best Bits
Running this site has been a pain at times, and I’ve quit more than once, but never for long. It’s probably because it’s opened up so many doors for me as well. I’ve had the opportunity to attend the Sydney Film Festival, MIFF, and the Japanese Film Festival as accredited media. I even became a marketing assistant at KOFFIA one year, and was a guest judge on their short film competition too.
I’ve been privileged enough to interview so many people I’ve enjoyed the work of or come to admire. My very first interview was in 2011 with Tom Hiddleston and Jaimie Alexander for Thor, which was the same day I met my friend David. Since then, I’ve had the distinct honour to speak with J.J. Abrams, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Steve Carrell, the lovely Tran Anh Hung, the insanely nice Hugh Jackman, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, Brad Bird, Simon Pegg, Joe Cornish, Hugh Grant, Tony Gilroy, and Edgar Wright.
A highlight must be speaking with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum together in a Sydney hotel room, and I’ll happily admit to getting starstruck there. Similarly, Jason Segal asked me at the start of my interview with him whether I wanted to do it sitting down or hop into the nearby bed with him. It’s to my eternal regret that I choose the former.
What I’ve really loved is chatting with people on the cusp of new projects and seeing them come to fruition years later, like Benh Zeitlin or Colin Trevorrow. There was Australian legend Ivan Sen, for example, who described his then-upcoming “genre film” with “a big shoot-out in the film at the end.” It was Mystery Road, which ultimately spawned the sublime sequel Goldstone and an award-winning TV series.
Is this a humblebrag? Very much so, but it also comes from a place of immense pride and gratitude. I make these lists to remind me of why I do this.
There’s an unpublished Wreck-It Ralph interview on a hard drive somewhere with Sarah Silverman, John C. Reilly and Rich Moore that was one of the most fun things I ever did, but a brief personal folly sent me off the rails immediately after recording it. For six months. One day it will see the light. One day.
Favourites films
So, I couldn’t sign off this celebration of Bits without answering the thing I get asked the most: what are the favourite films you’ve seen?
In the last decade, I’ve given out the coveted 5-stars (which I dub Certified Bitstastic) just over 20 new-release films, which – if you’ve been paying attention – is about 1% of my total viewing. Each year, writing the best of lists gets a little harder.
Instead of trying to find a Top 10 from the whole list, I’ve chosen a favourite film from each year.
2010 – Meek’s Cutoff
It’s unsurprising that my favourite film at the start of the decade was a western, as I spent a fair chunk of 2011 writing about them and still am slightly obsessed. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate Kelly Reichardt’s brand of measured cinema even more, and her celebration of women, gender roles and experiential view of history. Plus, this missed out on being in both my 2010 and 2011 lists due to the timing of its release in Australia, so placing it at the top of the list here feels like justice served.
Runners up: True Grit, Solanin, Biutiful
2011 – The Tree of Life
The night I first saw Terrence Malick’s masterpiece was at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2011. It was my fourth film of the day and not even my last that night. Yet almost a decade later it remains one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen. As I said at the time, “Beautiful and haunting, [it’s] what cinema was created for.”
Runners up: Melancholia, The Muppets, Super 8
2012 – Holy Motors
In a year that I very nearly quit the site for good, partly due to burnout and partly due to other reasons, I loftily proclaimed that is was “one of the most original films of the century” and that it was “equal parts magic and insanity, and a reminder of all the things that cinema has to offer.” The distributor seemed to agree with me because they slapped it along the top of the bloody poster. I’ll admit I’ve not watched it since, so I have no idea if my declaration stands.
Runners up: Wolf Children, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Like Someone in Love
2013 – Frozen
While I don’t have kids, the words to Frozen are still in my head and in my heart. According to my records, I saw this a couple of days after the North America release and a few weeks before the Australian debut. It was a brief period of time between Frozen becoming FROZEN™. Now it’s a Disney film as iconic as any of their classics, but all I know is that I’m currently humming “Let It Go” – and you are too.
Runners up: Jodorowsky’s Dune, Like Father Like Son, Only Lovers Left Alive
2014 – Guardians of the Galaxy
My records are patchy throughout a turbulent 2014, but one thing brought me more joy than anything else: the tenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I remember sitting next to my friend Dave Longo at a media preview and wanting to get up and applaud during the title drop, something we did emphatically by the end. It was with Dave that I saw it back-to-back twice at IMAX a few weekends later – but also with McVay at least one other time in between.
Runners up: Chef, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2015 – Mad Max: Fury Road
The Sydney premiere of George Miller’s long awaited follow-up was an event almost as memorable as the film. The distributor didn’t anticipate how many people would show up, and they were continuing to open up cinemas to make room for all the ticket holders (and a few who didn’t). A good 90 minutes after we were originally supposed to go in, the opening scenes rolled – and it was worth every second of lining up. A true Australian genre masterpiece.
Runners up: The Revenant, The Hateful Eight, The Boy and the Beast
2016 – The Neon Demon
This is a film I travelled to see. Well, sort of. Debuting in Australia at MIFF 2016, I saw this with a willing audience and have no sense of how it translates outside of that rarefied air. At the time, I said that it was “Showgirls if it was conceived by David Lynch” because it sounded good in a tweet. It’s still a good line and I stand by it so much that I’ve used it again here. So there.
Runners up: Lovesong, Moonlight, Nocturnal Animals, Goldstone, American Honey, The Handmaiden (what a year).
2017 – A Ghost Story
Before seeing this film, a fellow blogger vividly described the walkouts on the first session of David Lowry’s film, accompanied by an almost onomatopoeic description of the Pie Scene. It only heightened my anticipation. ‘Slow cinema’ was never so engaging – and that’s saying something in a year when The Florida Project very nearly took this slot.
Runners up: The Florida Project, Mother!, Sweet Country
2018 – Shoplifters
You see that Asia in Focus logo in the top right corner of the site? I take that pretty seriously. So when Kore-eda Hirokazu’s latest film became one of the most highly acclaimed of the year, it was the recognition for something I’d always known: he is one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers since Ozu.
Runners up: We the Animals, BlacKkKlansman, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
2019 – Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The most recent of these was a very close call. In a year when luminaries like Martin Scorsese pondered what ‘real’ cinema was, Céline Sciamma – the first woman to win the Queer Palm at Cannes – delivered a staggeringly powerful and evocative romance. It sent me down a path of discovering more Sciamma this year and that has been a joy as well.
Runners up: Pain & Glory, Avengers: Endgame, Parasite
2020 – TBA!
As we enter the second decade of The Reel Bits, cinema is slowly coming back to life in the middle of a pandemic. Yet it hasn’t stopped some new releases coming out that have blown my little socks off: Da 5 Bloods, The Man Standing Next, Wendy and Hamilton are already contenders for my favourites of 2020.
Here’s hoping the world heals a little more so we all come together again in a cinema and enjoy those collective moments. I’m looking forward to the next decade, the return of cinema in 2020 and whatever treats are waiting between now and 2030.
A final note: The Logo
The Reel Bits has undergone many changes over the years, both stylistically and in its content. One of the more prominent changes was the introduction of the current logo.
Designed by my friend Nima Afshar in 2011, he took at look at what I was trying to do with pictures of popcorn, ticket stubs and film reels and boiled it down to the essentials. It evokes a five sprocket film reel while maintaining a clean Helvetica font. It’s served me well over the years, and it’s appeared on business cards, banners, programs, and even on the cinema screen when I’ve been a media partner at a festival.
For the first time, here’s a look at the original design concepts and colours. I think you’ll agree that the blue was a good choice.
Happy birthday to us! On 4 July 2010, a mere 7 years and several lifetimes ago, we launched what is now The Reel Bits. Isn’t it nice of the US to be celebrating with fireworks in honour of our birthday?
Originally called the DVD Bits Blog, an offshoot of the now defunct DVD and Blu-ray review site, the blog soon took on a life of its own. Over 800 film reviews, dozens of news reviews, and thousands of articles later, THE REEL BITS is the magnificent empire that you see before you today.
With an international focus, but a particular interest in Australian releases and independent cinema, our comprehensive coverage of local cinema and festivals has made us a go-to guide for our legions of fans. Just ask the thousands of daily visitors to our tent-pole page, the Australian Release Dates calendar.
We’ve undergone some massive changes in that time. Our focus has shifted from just reviewing to comprehensive articles, interviews, and multimedia coverage. It’s not all been peaches and cream, with an unfortunate hacking incident in 2013/2014 that harshed our mellow severely. We’ve happily drawn a veil over that an moved on. Cosmetically, we look much prettier than we used to. The same can not be said of the Editor.
Undoubtedly the highlights are the people we’ve met along the way, and interviewing people like Tom Hiddleston and Jaimie Alexander, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Barnaby Southcombe, Joe Cornish, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, Simon Pegg, J.J. Abrams, Rob Sitch, Jason Segel, Ivan Sen, Steve Carell, Jason Bateman, Colin Treverrow, and P.J Hogan have not only allowed us to hopeless name-drop, but filled a series of tick-boxes on our bucket list.
2017 has been a massive revival for us in a number of ways. Last month, we covered 51 films at the Sydney Film Festival, and are on track to our biggest year yet. Later this year, editor Richard Gray will release his first book, Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow through Sequart Publishing.
We’d like to take the opportunity to thank the studios, PR companies, as we literally couldn’t do this without you, especially those of you who gave this online site a shot when nobody else would. You know who you are. Naturally, you Constant Readers need a big thank you, but like Spider-Man, action is your reward.
Here’s to another 7 years of random luck!
You there: what day is this?! Why it’s Christmas Day, guvna! Or in our case, it’s a Bitsmas Day. I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone that is within earshot of this post, and if you could pass it on that’d be great. Thanks, folks.
I hope that that everyone has a great day, whether it is with family, friends, travelling (as I am) or taking refuge in a cinema. If Netflix and chilling is your deal, then even Tiny Tim would bless every single one of you (not that you need it at this point).
I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone that has supported us this year, from the studios and cinemas to the faithful readers and social media followers, all of whom make this nutty project worth continuing after a crazy SEVEN years of Bitsing.
In the meantime, Australians can look forward to a massive slate of Boxing Day releases to go and watch, while everyone else can look ahead to a pretty full 2017 slate. Otherwise, stay safe and watch this message from the Theatre Management.
Effective immediately, The Reel Bits is shutting its doors after just over 2 years in the business, 10 more if you count DVD Bits (nobody really did though).
The strain of running a website takes its toll eventually, and negotiating the landscape of studios, PR and the social media landscape is just too much for one needlessly hairy man. Basically, it’s just not fun any more.
For some other great local sources of news and reviews, check out our friends at Spotlight Report for literally everything in the Australian entertainment industry. Almost every Australian critic worth reading, and a few who aren’t, are aggregated on Choc Bomb. Of course, we can still be heard semi-regularly with our good friends on the Geek Actually podcast network, with some specials coming out between now and next year before rebooting in 2013.
There’s always a chance I’ll change my mind, but it’s not like we’ll be missed in any way.
Farewell to the footnote of the Internet, and thank you to everybody who has supported us over the years.To everybody else, you know what you can do.
It’s been a massive year, and it’s time for a break. We’ve been doing this non-stop for over two years now, and with so many sites out there covering very similar content, we can safely say that we won’t be missed in the interim. For the moment, The Reel Bits is on a vacation until at least the New Year. At that time, we will reassess whether The Reel Bits has a future in its current form.
We love movies. We love comics. We love television. As Fight Club says, “That old saying, how you always hurt the one you love, well, it works both ways”. We use the royal editorial “we”, but this is mostly a one-man show, and currently that one man doesn’t have his head in the game. We need a damn break.
It’s not completely over for the year. There may still be a few key reviews – we probably can’t get away without doing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – and anything else we’ve committed to over the last few months that we just can’t think of an excuse to get out of, including a chat at the MCA and probably a bit more ABC Overnights stuff before the year is done. We also look forward to bringing you our best of 2012 list next month, which will admittedly be less informed than in years gone by.
For some other great local sources of news and reviews, check out our friends at Spotlight Report for literally everything in the Australian entertainment industry. Almost every Australian critic worth reading is aggregated on Choc Bomb. Of course, we can still be heard semi-regularly with our good friends on the Geek Actually podcast network, although these too are under assessment until 2013.
See you all on the other side?
If you have any further questions, please drop us a line by emailing the editor (Richard Gray) with any comments on info@thereelbits.com.
The Reel Bits is one of Australia’s leading independent online sources for cinema, home and comic book releases. Established in 2010 as a branch of the popular DVD Bits (1998 – 2011), The Reel Bits is now dedicated to bringing you the best cinematic offerings from around the world. The Reel Bits also co-hosts the podcasts Behind the Panels, Film Actually and Film Actually News.
It’s the end of the month, so it is time to reflect, relax and rewind our way back through the one-sheets, banners, promotional artwork and posters released in the last calendar month, highlighting some of the ones we though were noteworthy. It’s a little section we like to call Best Posters.
It would have been a big month for posters even if San Diego Comic-Con hadn’t landed, but it was that time of the year so we got a metric bucket-load. From official posters, Mondo variants, a festival poster and a viral campaign, it has been another bumper month for people who like looking at nice things to do with movies.
Click images to enlarge
The film doesn’t come out until next year, and we still know very little about it, but that hasn’t stopped our good friends at Hopko Designs from putting together a design for the next M. Night Shyamalan film After Earth. If the movie is half as good as this poster, we’re in for a nice change of pace from the uneven director.
We permanently have a placeholder for whatever it is that Tom Hodge (aka The Dude Designs) is doing, and this one for A Cadaver Christmas definitely caught our eye. As he says on his blog ” I instantly connected the title with that classic cadaver feet/toe tag image so thought it would be a great way to frame the logo in the montage, it then also enabled me to tell the story of the film from top to bottom…”. This was done for the DVD sleeve, but definitely has an 80s vibe to it. Notice the way the edges are worn, to mirror that little bit of sleeve that used to stick out over the plastic?
The good people at Mondo have teamed up with British artist Jock, best known for his work on 2000 AD, The Losers and Green Arrow: Year One. Jock contributed concept paintings to Batman Begins (2005), and now as the trilogy reaches its end, the artist has rendered this new poster for The Dark Knight Rises, filled with thousands of tiny bits of bat goodness that recalls a classic scene from that first film. This poster was available exclusively to people who visit the Mondo booth at San Diego Comic-Con.
Optical illusions are a sure way to make it into our monthly list, and while this film looks like – what’s a polite word for crap? – the poster for The Dinosaur Project does everything a great sheet should. It teases the exploratory nature of the film, and on first glance it is a dank cave with some people in it. Possibly looking for the one true ring to rule them all. The poster does, of course, form a dinosaur’s head and this might be the coolest poster for a film we have no other interest in.
The electrifying dog is back from beyond the grave! It’s Frankenweenie! Tim Burton’s latest has an appropriately retro poster, especially given he is remaking a short from the start of his career. This Comic-Con exclusive poster was coupled with a homage trailer that came out around the same time, and we particularly like the nod to the “spectacular, spellbinding third dimension”
Another Comic-Con exclusive The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is curiously devoid of Hobbits, or anybody else, other than Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan). The artwork is almost reminiscent of the soft-focused landscapes of artist Alan Lee, who has undoubtedly influenced the series, although this poster design is from oster design by BULLDOG with assistance from mOcean. Now that the series is officially a trilogy, expect more poster goodness over the next two years.
One of our favourite films of the Sydney Film Festival this year, and definitely one of our favourites of the year to date, was Holy Motors. Now Icon Film Distribution has released the Australian one-sheet for the film. Of particular note is that pull quote there at the top of the poster. Go on. Take a closer look. That’s right. It’s from your favourite site on the Interwebs: The Reel Bits. A long quote to be sure, but we’ve never been one for brevity. Check out the original review the quote was taken from.
Mondo, the collectible art boutique arm of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, has unveiled several new posters for classic films this week. Laurent Durieux is behind both posters for King Kong and the one-sheet for The Iron Giant. These beautiful pieces of artwork evoke the wonder these films held when they were first released. They are also really cool. Known for his hatching and cross-hatching approach, the artist provides something distinctive in every print he produces.
The poster for Michele Placido’s Le Guetteur (The Lookout) caught our eye, so to speak, with the simplicity of its design. The French thriller is about a detective who hunts for the marksman who foiled the plan to catch a notorious team of bank robbers, and you kind of get that from the one-sheet. The design comes from Le Circle Noir, who do a mixture of local French one-sheets for US and other foreign films, along with a number for domestic product as well. Their website has a very comprehensive portfolio of their work.
It’s a bit of a Tolkien-fest this month as Mondo has announced that they have a licence for Lord of the Rings posters, starting with Aaron Horkey’s poster (and variant) for The Return of the King. Horkey’s style sits somewhere between artwork and typography, influence by the type of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The woody and organic style was developed over countless concert and art posters, and would have been seen by Mondo fans last year with Jurassic Park prints. This is the first of a series of posters by the artist.
It would be very easy to accuse Lady Gaga of aping Madonna and Grace Jones, because she had, and now she can add acting in B-grade films to her resume as well. In pitch-perfect casting, Robert Rodriguez announced via this cool poster that the songstress/purveyor of meat couture would be in sequel Machete Kills, and she’s brought her own wolf.
Huffington Post revealed the teaser poster for the next Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams. As the source so nicely describes it, the poster is “a glass-half-full affair”. This is exactly what a teaser poster should be, teasing concepts and feelings rather than three big name actors mugging PhotoShop.
Disney has released the first poster for Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, due out on 8 March 2013 in the US. The beautiful painted poster evokes an instant sense of nostalgia and the familiar, with the Yellow Brick Road, rolling green hills and even the twister conjuring up memories of the 1939 classic film. The main character is the smallest element on the poster, rightly labelled a teaser, for it is not yet known what his role in this brave new world will be. This one is by BLT Communications, LLC, who most recently did runs of posters for The Amazing Spider-man and The Avengers.
For the release of ParaNorman, Mondo have assembled some excellent artists and placed five new posters around the US at various locations. This particular one comes from Drew Millward. If you do spot one in the wild, take a picture of it and tag it #WEIRDWINS.
With the tagline “It ain’t Hollywood!”, a white clad animal person emerges from a phone booth, the glasses from his secret identity sitting idly on the footpath. The poster for Possible Worlds, the 7th Canadian Film Festival, was designed by Alexandra De Bonis and photographed by Matthew Lahoud. The site also reliably informs us that the model is the festival’s marketing and sponsorship manager Nick Jarvis. So his secret is actually out, exposing him to all manner of attacks from his enemies and ill-wishers. Stay the course, you shiny white knight of quality cinema!
Olly Moss also did a poster for The Dark Knight Rises, and apart from being one of Mondo’s widest releases, it is also joined by the far superior and beautiful sheet for Studio Ghibli’s magnificent Princess Mononoke, which celebrates its fifteenth anniversary this year. Yes, we feel old.
Everybody wants to be wanted. Some of us just want to be useful. Now you can be both.
The Reel Bits has been getting bigger and better lately, perhaps too big for its own britches, and we frankly can’t be everywhere at once. If you’ve ever wanted to see your name in the byline of a prominent website, now is your chance. We are keen to expand, and we can only do that with more people!
In particular, we are looking for the following types of people:
If any of this interests you, please drop us a line by emailing Richard with an idea or a writing sample at info@thereelbits.com.
We want to be upfront and say that this would be a voluntary gig, with no payment for contributions. We can, however, say that your work will be seen by a wide audience and it is a good chance for you to expand your portfolio. Trust us: a little exposure can go a long way.
The Reel Bits is one of Australia’s leading independent online sources for cinema, home and comic book releases. Established in 2010 as a branch of the popular DVD Bits (1998 – 2011), The Reel Bits is now dedicated to bringing you the best cinematic offerings from around the world. The Reel Bits also co-hosts the podcasts Behind the Panels, Film Actually and Film Actually News.
One of our favourite films of the Sydney Film Festival this year, and definitely one of our favourites of the year to date, was Holy Motors. Now Icon Film Distribution has released the Australian one-sheet for the film. From cult French filmmaker Leos Carax, comes the groundbreaking Holy Motors starring Kylie Minogue and Eva Mendes. From dawn to dusk, a few hours in the life of Monsieur Oscar, a shadowy character who journeys from one life to the next. He is, in turn, captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man, and more…
Of particular note is that pull quote there at the top of the poster. Go on. Take a closer look. That’s right. It’s from your favourite site on the Interwebs: The Reel Bits. A long quote to be sure, but we’ve never been one for brevity. Check out the original review the quote was taken from.
Holy Motors is released in Australia on 23 August from Icon Film Distribution.
Click image to enlarge
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since we last sat down to write one of these nostalgia pieces, but it’s our birthday again and we feel like celebrating.
On 4 July 2010, what we now know today as The Reel Bits launched as a simple blog, somewhere to write all the things that wouldn’t fit in the old DVD Bits site. Today, we enter our terrible twos – and we look a little bit different than we did back then!
It has been an amazing couple of years, and we’ve achieved things we never thought possible in that time. Our small team has posted almost 2000 articles, including 457 film reviews, 172 pages worth of festival coverage, and given out 698 prizes. We’ve almost tripled our daily and monthly averages, and we do love our stats.
Undoubtedly the highlights are the people we’ve met along the way, and interviewing people like Tom Hiddleston and Jaimie Alexander, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Barnaby Southcombe, Joe Cornish, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, Simon Pegg, J.J. Abrams, Rob Sitch, Jason Segel, Ivan Sen, Steve Carell and Jason Bateman have not only allowed us to hopeless name-drop, but filled a series of tick-boxes on our bucket list.
More importantly are the good friends and colleagues we’ve made along the way. Undoubtedly the partnership we’ve forged with David McVay and Josh Philpott at Geek Actually – on podcasts Behind the Panels, Film Actually and Film Actually News – has been a successful one, and its always nice to find kindred spirits. There are a stack of contributors to our site and podcasts, all of whom we value highly, but if we start listing them we’ll end up insulting someone!
All of the studios and PR companies we’ve worked with need a big THANK YOU, as we literally couldn’t do this without you, especially those of you who gave this online site a shot when nobody else would. You know who you are.
Party on dudes, and here’s to at least two more years on this crazy self-induced roller coaster.
The Reel Bits – Circa July 2010