Awards Season, Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, Livius over at Riding the High Country named me not only for the Versatile Blogger award, but also a "Blog of the Year". That award also requests a hat tip, with the following rules:

1. Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award
2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.
3. Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award – http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-awards/blog-of-the-year-2012-award/ and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them
5. You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
6. As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

Since I mentioned earlier today that having to pass awards on to other people gives me the feeling of responding ot a chain letter -- although at least this time, you only have to mention one post -- is something I find a bit off-putting, if only since I'm generally far enough down the list on these things that I'm liable to pick a blogger who's already been selected. So rather than actually handing out an award, I'll just mention a post that reminded me of something I'd wanted to post.

One of the blogs Livius selected in his 15 for the Versatile Blogger awards is Movie Classics, which is one I hadn't read before. It includes quite a few posts about British movies, with one of the more recent ones being about Scrooge, also known as the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol. It was directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, a name that jumped out at me. Looking at his filmography on IMDb, I don't know that I recognize any of Hurst's other movies. But some time last year when I was going through RTÉ's documentary archives, I noticed one called An Irishman Chained to the Truth, which first aired in August 2011. According to the brief synopsis:

Brian Desmond Hurst was the most prolific Irish film director of the 20th century - Allan Smith delves into his family history to find out more about his great great uncle Brian's adventures in Hollywood.

Most of RTÉ's documentaries are available for download, and this one is here, a 17.5MB download of a radio documentary running about 38 minutes. I'm surprised I didn't blog about it when I first ran across it.