paulofilmo wrote:sebby wrote:paulofilmo wrote:There was a time when I looked up to admirers of classics. Then a time when I was a confidant admirer myself, free from aspiration. Then an especially arrogant time when I felt above even connoisseurs for their poor taste in certain acclaimed films. But before all of that, a time when I just enjoyed film, unsullied by anything.
When I first got into film (in my teens), I ignored the classics, knowing that for whatever reason I would find them boring, predictable, melodramatic, etc. I could appreciate unseen cult films like Roger Dodger or Kicking and Screaming, but watching something like Casablanca bored me to tears. I, too, felt I had the greatest taste in the world and couldn't be bothered with the crap other people foolishly thought was part of the cinematic pantheon. It's taken me more than 10 years of intense film-viewing to reach the point where I can gleefully seek out, unabashedly enjoy, and critically admire films like Treasure of the Sierra Madre or North by Northwest. It's sort of exhilarating, if somewhat predictable and boring as well.
I remember when I first found MetaFilter, I jumped to the most popular posts ever and soaked up the most favorited of favorited FFPs and AskMes. I then went to the real-time popular posts but was disappointed by the volume, noise of nerdery, posturing, quasi-oration. But there was enough there to entertain, and after a while I could understand the in-jokes and generally grokked the culture of the place. So then I had cliquey inclusion, entertainment, and habit. And now I'm a bit bored of it and I'm not sure if I ever found anything that bested that original wisdom. I guess that's a stretchy analogy to my film-viewing. I want the secret and I think I've been looking in the wrong place.TheDenizen wrote:paulofilmo wrote:Is there a blog that posts yt vids where I can sample the smorgasbord of crap? the veritable whores doovries of the weird and the awful?
I wish. There are, however, several excellent websites which specialize in bad/cult/underground movie reviews.
Here's a handful if you're interested.
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/
http://www.monstersatplay.com/index.php
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com/
http://tarstarkas.net/
http://www.wtfcinema.com/
I'm sorry. That's not. Monster Costumes and violence aren't my cup. Sorry and thank you. I'm trying to figure out what the hell I was asking for. Moving poetry that I'm not ashamed to watch on my laptop. Frenetic surrealism. Short films by undiscovered genii. A beautiful girl in deck shoes running away from something unknown. Stealing flowers at night. Smoking in the shower. A forty-eight second psychosexual nightmare. Ephemera about coal miner shovel instruction.
Leos Carax is doing it for me. These nocturnal films about obsession set somewhere between dreams and nightmares.
The cinema is an anti-universe where reality is born out of a sum of unrealities.
— Jean Epstein
I've seen three films in three months. Feels unsullied again. no arbitrary comparisons, numbers. just pleasure and flow.