Meme Clearinghouse Part One: These Things I Believe

Just today, my close personal buddy Greg wrote a post called Why Being a Cinephile Matters (enough with the links already!). In it, he talked about things he's learned about movies and cinephilia since becoming a reader, and writer, of blogs, and then asked that pretty much everybody he's ever met do the same. Since I am one of those people, I've been included.

Greg, as he tends to, kept the rules of this already pretty loose meme very open. You can write about whatever the fuck you want to (and I think you can even swear!). You can go on at length, or you can just write a sentence or two. I'm pretty sure the only rule is that you should probably make your observations movie-related. Other than that, you are as free as the hawk in the breeze.

Ho-kay then:

* When I started reading movie blogs a few years ago, I didn't even know what I didn't know. Now I do. This is progress.

* I learned that discussions about Lars von Trier can get pretty heated. Go figure.

* I learned that, in the world of film, there are some things called "mumblecores" and "joe swanbergs". The world, she is mysterious.

* I learned that pretty much every cinephile worth their salt, no matter how long he or she can go on about Rivette or Tarr or Ozu or Brakhage or Roehmer is, at heart, a genre hound. Which makes me happy.

* I learned that nobody doesn't like Werner Herzog. This is as it should be.

* I learned that with film -- and all art, really -- it really is often better to look back, rather than forward, and to wallow in the past.

* I learned that some people will exalt just about anything. I probably already knew this, but the Film Wing of the Internet Institute of Studies has really driven it home. It's okay to love movies, but can we stop pretending that Lucio Fulci was something he wasn't?

* On a more positive note, I've learned that the received wisdom about certain older directors, the kind of wisdom you find in actual, physical magazines, like the idea that Scorsese has lost it, The Departed was his first good movie in more than a decade, and so on, has not been as readily and blindly received by film bloggers.

* I've learned that it's okay if you think that David Lynch's films don't make sense. Seriously, I didn't know that before.

* I've also learned that a lot of people claim to have, say, Inland Empire figured cold, and if the film didn't play to you as clearly as Yankee Doodle Dandy, then you simply weren't paying attention. Those people are fools, by the way.

* Related to my earlier "genre hound" observation, the number of serious film critics or bloggers who are also full-blown horror geeks is off the charts.

* I've learned that film bloggers are like honeyed-sunshine dappling the seas of my...or no, the waters of my...ah, what I like about film bloggers, is that their discourse is of the rarest spun heaven metal...oh fuck it. I think I probably have enough.

Now you go!