Fakin' It (Part Three:Film Serials)

Hey kids! It’s time for another short instructive guide towards pretending you know all about movies. This time on Fakin’ It, we’re going to look at the lost are of Film Serials.

What is it?
A series of short films, with chapters shown usually once a week in theaters. Normally they would be shown on a Saturday, and regularly they were for children’s entertainment. In the beginning though, they were considered good fare for adults as well. They only devolved into kid stuff after the initial craze died down and sound films became prevalent. The extra price of sound production meant that only the cheapest things could be serials and for the most part, kids are the most willing to put up with crappy cheap productions.

Movie Review: Kikujiro

Kikujirō no Natsu (1999 Office Kitano Dir. Takeshi Kitano)

Movie Review: Omaha (the movie)

The quality of this disc was pretty bad. As a result the caps aren’t that great. Free disc, no complaints, just explanations.

Omaha (The Movie) (1994 Dan Mirvish)
You haven't heard of this movie? It's LOCAL! (There's the hipster joke out of the way.)

Hard Time in Sweden and Hong Kong

Cinephiles have a thing they do with each other, they size each other up. In a way, its like a friendly version of gang members meeting in the streets and comparing street cred. Only most people who are movie fans have no cred, at all. Anytime someone who spands most of their lives in a dark room watching flickering images tries to pretend they’ve got “cred” to you, you are allowed to punch them in the stomach and take their lunch money. So instead of talking about all the sucka’s they’ve punked (or whatever it is you kids, with your parachute pants and backwards hats, talk about) they talk about the movies they’ve seen.

Top Ten Cheap Cinema Classics

Before we can talk about my top ten, we should perhaps define my terms. Cheap Cinema is a specific kind of movie to me. It’s not one that is just low cost, or independent. No, it’s something that is truly made on the cheap. Something that really deserves the term “cheap” to be applied to it. That’s not to say it’s made without love, or without care. Often, the only way these movies could be made at all was to go the cheapest route. Quite often the filmmakers had to endure many trials just to get their story on the screen without compromising their visions. It’s those films we salute here with a list of the top ten occupying my mind right now.

Movie Review: Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite (2009 Apparition Dir. Scott Sanders)

TV Review: Alice In Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (1985 Irwin Allen Productions Dir. Harry Harris)

Fakin’ It: Samurai Movies!

What is it?
That’s the first thing to address here. There are two kinds of movies that get lumped into the Samurai category in the West. Jidaigeki is a period piece. Normally set between 1600 and 1870 or so. These tend to be a bit slower, a bit more drama than fighting, but because samurai are such a big part of Japan's history, you'll find a lot of them are about those guys. Chambara on the other hand is your actual sword-fighting movie, an action piece that is named after the onomatopoeia of swords clashing. Either way, what you have is stories of men with swords, honor and the conflicts that come with maintaining both of those in a cruel and wicked world. It’s a huge tent, much like the Western is in America and as such, contains numerous sub-genres. Short version, one is fun to watch and the other is fun to talk about. However, just recognizing the difference between these two will put you head and shoulders above fully 50% of the other people you’ll be talking to.