A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Ben Abbott is a two-time Forged in Fire champion who began making blades after seeing arms and armour in museums and castles around England when he was 13. Not being able to buy a sword at the time, he decided to make one for himself. After several spectacularly failed attempts, he decided to scale back his aspirations, and start smaller. He began making knives when he was about 17, and has been working on his understanding of their nuances ever since. He spent many years making knives, tools, ornamental ironwork, jewelry, furniture, and anything else that needed making, but still never made himself a sword. The first sword that Ben finally made was the winning khanda sword for Forged in Fire. Ben has firsthand experience with the pressure and challenges Forged in Fire contestants face, and knows the dedication it takes to walk away a champion.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.