Author: Cory Hamblin

Publisher: Rosedog Books

ISBN: 978-1-4349-9605-3

Click Here To Purchase Serket's Movies: Commentary and Trivia on 444 Movies

 

This directory of films (as such it is, though Hamblin makes no such claim) contains a mass of information on a wide array of films, much of which you will most likely not find in a conventional movie guide. But then you also will not find the usual extremely helpful indexes to actors and directors that you tend to get in the latter either. Also no cast listings. However, the movies are alphabetically arranged for easy access.

That said, if you consider to what extraordinary lengths Hamblin has gone to compile this collection that gives, for each of the 444 movies that it does cover, a verbal rating, a brief description of the plot and two to three paragraphs of what Hamblin refers to as ‘trivia’ about the movie, you cannot but admire the zest and zeal of this young man. To gather this much knowledge you indubitably have to work very hard indeed, which augurs well for Hamblin’s future as a researcher (though he modestly claims at the moment to have a mere data-entry job). Given the amount of editing of academic scripts that I have done over the last five years (hundreds) of varying quality and merit, I would definitely say that Hamblin should consider applying for a job as a research assistant at any one of the multiplicity of higher education institutions in the good old US of A.

Admittedly, Hamblin’s work does have a few failings, in that I would have liked to have seen a more fluid approach to his writing (doffing my academic hat, and assuming that of a writer/reviewer once more). The facts that he shares with us about each movie, despite being extremely interesting, are not so evenly arranged that reading through such a commentary does not jar. You need to read a sentence, stop and consider, and then read the next, otherwise you might get lost somewhere along the way and start wondering where each commentary is heading. If he had clearly indicated his transition from one idea to the next by inserting a symbol between the relevant sentences, the text would read more fluidly. That way, he would also not have wasted much space, which is clearly at a priority in a work of this nature.

At the moment, this work is a handy 367 pages in length (excluding the three-page long Foreword, in which Hamblin reveals how he came to write the guide [interesting reading, so don’t miss]). He ends by listing the ten top-grossing movies since 1977, adjusted for ticket-price inflation, and the ten all-time top-selling DVDs. In short, provided that you regard this work as one to be kept alongside your conventional movie guide, you cannot lose and should really consider buying yourself a copy. (It makes for a worthwhile read by itself at some stage, too, which can’t really be said for such guides on the whole.)

Click Here To Purchase Serket's Movies: Commentary and Trivia on 444 Movies