Todd’s Serial Blog

Well, I’ve made a tentative start in my effort to get people interested in a commemorative stamp for serials. After posting my last blog I went to the Cliffhanger message board on Yahoo and suggested it to the members there. Response has been good so far but nobody seems to be picking up the ball and running with it at the moment. Of course I’m not sure how to go about getting something like this done so I’ll be posting the idea on other message boards and doing some research into the process.  In the meantime if you are interested in visiting the Yahoo group their address is:

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/Cliffhangerserials/

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The other day at work, a friend showed me the commemorative stamps he just bought from the post office featuring Yoda from the Star Wars films.  This got me thinking, Marvel and DC comic book heroes have stamps, Universal horror characters have stamps, but serials do not.  That’s not fair, the serial fan community is just as important as the comic book, horror, and Star Wars fandom is.  So why isn’t there a stamp of Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon or Ralph Byrd as Dick Tracy?  On line sites like The Serial Squadron, In the Balcony, and the Cliffhanger Serials yahoo group need to look into this.  If Boris Karloff can be honored, so should Tom Steele.

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I was watching the Star Wars prequels last weekend and noticed that I was having trouble folowing all of the light saber duels, especially the ones involving Yoda.  I began to wonder about that and got out Zorro’s Fighting Legion (1939), I could follow the sword fights there no problem.  Intrigued I then went and rented Batman Begins (2005), same thing, I couldn’t follow the fights.  Dug out Batman (1943) and voila, instant followability, though the fights there are a bit clumsy.  One more test, Transformers (2007) had fight scenes that were a mess, Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940), a perfect example of how to make exciting and inventive fight scenes that you can follow from start to finish.  I don’t know how it happened but film makers today seem to have no idea how to do actions scenes.  Before Christopher Nolan finishes the new Batman movie for this coming summer, someone really needs to come up to him and hand him a copy Captain America (1944) and tell him to study it.

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