Thinking ahead to the New Year

I mentioned the other week about features at my that are staying or coming on board. I was thinking more about the writing itself so my goals in my writing here in 2014 are as follows…

-To continue to slaughter the English language.

-To throw in as many odd ball references as possible.

-To be objective and to to look for the good as well as the bad in any and all movies.

-To stick to the topic of the post and to really.. hey look a birdie!

-To force myself to tackle more films that I never seen before ( I have gotten away from this some when I am short on time).

-To try and actually reviews when I say I will (yeah don’t count on that one 100% but I will aim to improve at it).

That’s about it. Also when I first started doing reviews on this blog I included a short list of items I counted in a movie like number of times some one looks at the camera or number of times you can see a wire on a monster. I’m nit sure why I got away from including that likely the above mentioned laziness I enjoy so much but anyways I want to get back into including those counts in my reviews in 2014 which gives me a few more days and a few more reviews to be a slacker for. Feel free to add any suggestions you have for me.

 

I was a teenage movie maker

 

Don Glut might be most known for having written the novelization of The empire strikes back. However years before that actually from 1953 to 1969 he made a lot of home movies. Most were horror and science fiction films and all were fairly short. So this two disc collection includes a documentary about his films plus it includes all 41 movies. The documentary is quite good as it explores what motivated Glut to make these films, hos he did his special effects and other behind the scenes information. You can tell how he had a real love for film and the characters and themes he focused on. He obviously was a big fan of dinosaurs, super heroes and classic monsters so those were normally the main characters he focused on.  You can see his knowledge skill put to use in the films themselves and you can see his confidence and technique grow over the years. His early films were frequently short and he was just a kid. Most of these were very short and the early monster films frequently involved Halloween make-up and costumes and were filmed in someone’s else. The later films saw handmade costumes with more details, outside filming locations and sometimes even miniatures showed up too. Glut even had the chance to pull in known people into his film like super collector and gorilla suit wearer Bob Burns played Superman and Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein monster for Glut although in a mask rather than the make-up he wore when he did the character for Universal. As a kid it was great to see Dracula, Captain America and dinosaurs in films, but years ago if you wanted to see more of these you had to use your own imagination or create your own drawings, stories or whatever. Don Glut had a camera and stuck with creating these films, pulling his friends in to play roles and trying to get better at it which he did. Any fans of sci-fi, fantasy  and or horror films or just film makers in general will finally to enjoy in this set. I bought it the week it came some years ago and watch it frequently.