So, has it? Has Cine Outsider finally ground to halt? Have you already seen the last review and news story? For regular visitors, it must seem that way. In the past, we'd rarely go a day without a news story or a review being posted, and we've not posted anything for a whole week now. So, what's going on?

There are a number of reasons for our current lack of activity. The first relates to the slowdown forced by my home situation, which I've already detailed in an earlier blog. This has not yet resolved itself and has worsened somewhat since I wrote that previous piece, which is swallowing up even more of what little free time I have left. Personal issues have also made it difficult for one of our other writers to devote time to the site, while another has had to put reviewing on hold for work that actually pays in money rather than Blu-ray check discs. If I'm really angling for sympathy, I could throw in the fact that I've been ill this week as well, and the opportunity to rest up and recover really just h¨asn't presented itself.

As it happens, a number of reviews are currently incoming. Three have been delayed for reasons covered above, while the one I'm working on has been delayed beyond its release date by a combination of issues. The first is that my mother's health has been particularly poor over the past couple of weeks, and my priorities have thus shifted even further in that direction. The second is that the release I've taken on – Indicator's superb Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent – contains four feature films that I'm new to and an absolute lorry load of special features to watch and write about. And you all know how much we tend to write about such releases. The third, w≠hich really was beyond everyone's control, is that the initial review discs for this release got lost in the post, while the retail discs that were subsequently sent to us appeared to sit on the courier's lorry for days before an attempt was made to deliver them to me when I was not at home, delaying their arrival a couple of days further. But the review is well under way now and I'm aiming to post it this weekend. Camus, meanwhile, is ploughing away on Indicator's disc of Ship of Fools, which we also aim to post in the next few days.

The lack of news stories is more unusual but is also symptomatic of changing times. In years past, stories of interest to us and our readers of DVD and Blu-ray releases were ten a penny. But as disc sales have lost ground to streaming services and smaller distributors have lessened their output or gone out of business, whole days now go by without an interesting press release landing in our inbox, and this week has been a bit of a wasteland in this regard. I could oif course have filled the gap with a blog of a short article – I do have a few on the back burner and shamefully this is the first blog this year – but felt obliged instead to devote any spare time to the special features on the Hammer box set and the four individual film reviews that I'm concurrently writing.

So, fear not, this week-long silence on our part is not a sign of things to come, but a temporary blip created by a combination of circumstances (should I throw the inclement weather in there for good luck?). We'll be back up and running very soon. Right, back to early Hammer.