It's my brother's fault. I remember when he bought his first multi-region DVD player. At the time, I wasn't fully aware of its capabilities, but then he started spending vast sums of money purchasing items in little brown packages from overseas websites that sounded only ever so slightly dodgy. I'd hear his television set in the room next to mine, and I'd try to fathom out what the hell was going on. In the end, I closed my eyes, opened his bedroom door, and prayed it wasn't porn.
I found it harder to make the switch than he did. He would offer me countless films, but it was all too much. Unlike him, every now and again, I liked to venture outside. To be fair, I introduced him to cheap vino, established from my University days, so this could've been some kind of retribution. He still has a fifty page list of films I need to see, but even though we both have day jobs, he seems to have a lot more time on his hands. Either that or he manages it better. So, now I'm hooked. Considering my father raised me on Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Seagal, it's some improvement.
Hollywood movies, for the most part, are dumb. So what's the alternative, and why do people still refuse to change? Allow me to explain...
(To read the full article click on either image)
Films from all countries are, for the most part, dumb. Anyone saying otherwise have only skimmed the glorious surface of non-Hollywood film. I say non-Hollywood because I'd never want to be caught using the term "world cinema". It suggests the entire rest of the world have somehow united its cinematic efforts independently or even against Hollywood, that it's in some way a genre in itself. The truth is that an Indonesian film has no more in common with a French film that it has with a Hollywood film, and two Nigerian films are sure as hell no better than two Hollywood films. Ignoring Hollywood and embracing "world cinema" is utter nonsense. The real trick is not to judge any film by its origin and watch it with an open mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the World Cinema comment. It wasn't my decision to title the feature that. And if you did read the entire article then you would understand that I share very similar feelings. I don't judge a film by its origin, and I don't try and pigeon-hole films because I hate the term genre. But the majority of the movie-going public are blinded by genres and Hollywood. What we're trying to do is convince people to venture away from the tosh served up by the local cinema and taste something a little bit different every once in a while. These are the people that refuse to watch a film with an open mind.
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