Varied Celluloid

This sudden update to the website must come as a shock to those of you who have kept up with Varied Celluloid over the years. Indeed, it has been two years since the website has been updated. Quite the period of inactivity. For those who know me personally, you know that during that time I finished with my first degree, began a new career, got engaged, and have had life change drastically. However, I’ve continued to pay the bill for Varied Celluloid, and never once thought about deactivating it despite not knowing when I would be free to write for it again. Varied Celluloid is a project that I began in my teenage years. The habit of writing, due to this website, has helped me so much in my personal life. However, it seems that film blogs and writing… well, it’s becoming more and more a lost art. While I do not intend to ever give it up, I would like to discuss film in as many different avenues as I can. Weird Cinema is something I dream about doing more and more often. However, the amount of time that I commit to each project is insane.

When it comes to writing, I like to get out a quick and easy opinion on a single film. While I do try and include a bit of investigative journalism when writing about films, for instance many of my last old-school kung fu film reviews have seen me discussing the actual history surrounding the onscreen situations, when it comes to releasing a video via YouTube – I feel there’s much more that needs to go into such projects. I like to include a bit of humor when possible, but I realize that my voice is a bit monotone, so what can be done to spruce things up? The content. For these videos, I like to ensure that the content is concise, clear, and features information that has to be gathered via hours of dedicated reading and research. I would also like for each project to have some “pizazz” to it. I want the project to look as close to a moderately funded documentary as I can possibly make it, without, of course, any kind of funding and without any sort of crew or help. Everything you see in these videos has been done by me, and I’m sure that is obvious due to its quality. In this particular episode, unfortunately I did not have a windscreen over my new microphone and I had no idea how much that would factor into the sound quality. I intend to rectify this with the next episode, whatever that may be.

For what purpose is all of this? Is it in the hopes to make money? No. It is in the hopes of becoming internet famous? No. I simply want to share these movies with other people. I would love it if these videos were shared with others and managed to reach new audiences with film fans around the world. However, if that is not in the cards, then at least my passion and creativity can be seen by the very few who stumble upon these.

So, with all of that out of the way, I hope some manage to enjoy this second episode. It covers Frederic Hobbs, director of Godmonster of Indian Flats, a movie that in the past I have referred to as “one of the worst movies of all time.” A title that, these days, I do not feel it deserves, but a title that I can’t blame people for bestowing upon it. It is a very strange piece of film from a very strange filmmaker, and hopefully this video can help answer some questions about it. If you’d like, you can also check out my review for it that I wrote nearly ten years ago, but I must say, it’s not nearly as informative as the video!

	Seven Warriors (1989)

Director:	Sammo Hung and Terry Tong
Writers:	Tsang Kan-Cheung
Starring:	Adam Cheng, Tony Leung, Max Mok, Jackie Cheung, Shing Fui-On, Wu Ma, and Phillip Kwok.

The Plot: Our story takes place during the Warlord period in China where bandits are numerous and safety is far from guaranteed. Guanxi is a small village that is being pressured by one particular group of bandits who continually rob them and know that they are too weak to defend themselves. These farmers of Guanxi, with no ability to defend themselves, come to the realization that they must hire an army to protect them. This leads them to hiring seven warriors, skilled in martial arts, who will protect them and help scare away this group of bandits in the hopes that their village can once again flourish. The warriors are: Adam Cheng, Max Mok, Jacky Cheung, Lam Kwok-Bun, Wu Ma, Shing Fui-On, and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, and Lo Lieh is the leader of the bandits… who was once a brother to this group of seven.

Continue reading “Seven Warriors” »