I like a debate as much as the next guy but what I dislike about debating movies with people is, you know how some people will sit and have a civil debate about whether a certain movie is good or bad, a civil conversation where one may agree or disagree with the other person's opinion on what they see or find in a movie that makes them enjoy it, yeah the complete opposite of that, the conversation where someone's political leanings or favourite sports team is dragged through the mud.
You liked Avenging Angelo? You must be a leftist or Scunthorp United suck the gooses honker!, those type of imbecilic, inane and troll-y people who get a rise out of angering normal people because they liked a low-budget mafia comedy starring Sylvester Stallone. It's one of the reasons the IMDB boards closed, trolling and lets be completely honest, it was full of racism.
Film is a subjective format, you'll either like something or you wont. its simple, not everything is going to be for everyone. Given the option of watching one of two films, lets say someone presented me with film #1 The Monster Squad and film #2 Panic In Needle Park. Which film am I going to choose? The film about heroin addiction or the Al Pacino movie?... ha ha I kid (Panic in Needle Park is the both the heroin movie and Al Pacino movie) but seriously, Which am I going to chose? Obviously I'm going to chose The Monster Squad, the reason being is that that film appeals to me more than the junkie Al Pacino movie, that's not to say Needle Park is a bad film, it's not, it's a very good film, it's just not a film I have a particular desire to ever really watch again. The Monster Squad on the other hand entertains me more. People who call themselves "Cinephiles" really aren't cinephiles if they dismiss films that don't fit their criteria of what films a cinephile should watch, a cinephile is someone who embraces all films, be it A Trip To The Moon (1902) to Singing in The Rain, Robot Monster (1953) The Godfather, Star Wars, Xanadu, Problem Child, Show Girls to Battle Royale and Visitor Q all the way to The Whale and Accident Man 2: Hitman's Holiday. These are just a few examples of films from over the last 120 years that "cinephiles" should be embracing, not just the arthouse cinema of 1970s Europe, which for some reason seems to be what makes a cinephile a cinephile according to Youtube these days.
Youtube for example is the biggest cesspool of pretentious, snobby, elitist film collectors, not critics, collectors. There are some wonderful film based channels to broaden your cinema viewing scope, AccentedCinema for one is one of the best film based channels, Elvis The Alien is another, although he actual does really in depth pisstake reviews of shitty movies and The brilliance of FilmJoy and Movies With Mikey. These are channels dedicated to investigating or breaking down certain films. On the end of this you have the Physical media community, now I don't know about the rest of the you outside of the UK but we have what I like to call the "I buy any Old shit" group, a group i'm proud to say I once belonged too. I have a pretty vast and expansive film collection of possibly, i say possibly because it's been 10 years since I last counted, over 8,000 dvds and blu-rays. How many of those 8000 have i actually watched? probably about 3 to 4000. so there's another 4000 titles that are just gathering dust because I'm never going to watch them. So why do I have so many? Cheap dvds in charity shops and from my previous job at Blockbuster Video, they should never have given me 20% discount. The reason I have so many is not due to wanting so watch them is due to amassing a collection of quantity over Quality, there's some absolute dogshit in my collection. I have a film called The Death Merchant from 1991 on DVD starring Lawrence Tierny, absolute garbage but the film was called THE DEATH MERCHANT for christ sake, I had to own it. Is it still in my collection? yes, yes it is, have I ever re-watched it? No, no I haven't, the same goes for Death Ring starring Patrick Swayze's brother Don "the dragon" Swayze and the creepiest looking man to ever appear in a Takeshi Miike film or more precisely, an episode of Masters Of Horror directed by Takeshi Miike, Billy "the Dragon" Drago. I also think Chuck Norris' brother Mike "The Dragon" Norris is in it too. Its crap but I have to Keep it. So the point I'm getting at is not only do I have these gobshite movies in my collection, I also have films like Seijin Sezuki's Tokyo Drifter, Thom Twyker's Run Lola Run, Citizen Kane, A load of Alfred Hitchcock movies, Classic Westerns, Film noir, french new wave, italian exploitation, American exploitation, Ozsploitation, Roger Corman flicks, Charles Band flicks, every Clint Eastwood movie (As actor), I also have Disney animation, rarer non disney animated films from the 80s like Rock N Rule and Starchaser: The Legend Of Orin, I have Anime like Katsuhiro Otomo's spectacular Akira, Tekkonkinkreet, Paprika etc... A broad spectrum of classics, not so classic, so bad they're good to so bad they're just bloody awful and just straight up trash movies but as a self proclaimed film nerd,i feel its my duty to have the knowledge of not just european wankfests but also the dregs of the hollywood independent studio trash. Now however, after years of following trends and labels, I had an almost full collection of Shameless Screen Entertainment releases, I've found that spending money on anything and everything isn't worth the hassel of trying to find space for them, unlike a lot of UK DVD and blu-ray collectors who do Blu-Ray hunting videos where they just buy any old shit in poundland because it's cheap and buffs out the collection, I realised that mistake along time ago and now have 8000 discs with very little space to display them and no intention of actually watching 60% of them because that would require a device that stopped time and allowed me the precious hours to view all these films. I'm not having a pop at any of these collectors, i'm just pointing out the mistake I made years ago which caused me not only a lot of debt but also no space to display every single title, unless of course you are Boutique Blu-rays with Elliot on youtube, you seem like a nice chap but mate, speak up a bit and stop acting snobby. Do you know where these "boutique" blu-ray labels started? by releasing shitty exploitation movies for horror movies nerds to eat up. They ain't that special.
This is a bit of a rant on the state of film conversation, elitism and snobbery around films, collecting films and the art of a civil debate or conversation. I'm well aware that this is a very snobby and almost elitist rant ranting about people being Elitist and snobby but as film nerd who backs his shit up with knowledge and facts and expresses his opinion in a creative and civilized manner, you could cut me some slack, if not and you think i'm wrong, well thats you're opinion man!!!
Cheers
Pete
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