Cheesiness

[I also released an update today. You can find it here.]

An intentionally cheesy movie.

Considering the sheer, massive number of films that have been made, and the resultant difficulty in being noticed and appreciated for your hard work, my father is exactly the kind of audience an aspiring, small scale filmmaker wants because he will bravely wade step by step through the mire, looking for the gems.

Dynamite Warrior

In the comments section of the article before last I got my first request and I have followed through as I said I would. I have watched, and now I am writing about, Dynamite Warrior.

Hand over the buffalo!

"Based On"

It is one thing to be inspired by one work of art and so make another. This inspiration will involve the use of at least a few elements of the story doing the inspiring, and that is fine. An idea worth expressing and exploring can probably stand to be approached a few different times and from a few different angles. This is part of the ongoing conversation between artist and audience. The audience consists of human beings (all of whom are artists to one degree or another) and some of them will make artifacts in response to artifacts.

Although at times they simply say “inspired by”, this is one use of the term “based on” as seen in the credits of many a movie. This is a strange term; a metaphor that never seems apt. In this first case – stories inspired by other stories (like The Terminator, Total Recall, or The Omega Man) – the works are more “based off” their inspirations (as some with a scattershot approach to prepositions would say). They sort of take a running leap off whatever they started with and end up somewhere else.

A man in a costume inspired by Gandalf the Grey.

But, there is another use of the term

The Terminator (part 1 of 2)

The Terminator is one of the action movies, helping to define the genre, as well as the style people call “80’s”. But it is by no means a stupid movie, or a shallow movie – it’s really very serious.

What Is There to Talk About?

The Paragon of Animals is pouring this coffee.

In “The Good, the True, and The Beautiful”, I mentioned that the line between artist and audience isn’t that dark when they both strive towards the titular ideals. That’s a nice sounding, vague sort of thing to say, but it bears a lot more thought. If pop-culture is a big conversation about goodness, truth, and beauty (or, at least, if it is forced to be by me) what is there really to say?

The Karate Kid (1 of 2)

The Karate Kid is a great place to begin commenting on pop-cultural artifacts in particular. Not only is it a pop-cultural thing itself, it contains many other pop-cultural things: an underdog, Eastern influences, a montage, the eighties.

You have much to learn, Daniel-san!

The Karate Kid is also a movie I doubt Hollywood would make now (although they tried to remake it). This is not only because Hollywood is too hyper self-conscious and serious (i.e.