A big sad sigh....

I used to love going to forums where people talk about film. I have stopped doing this and it's been a long time since I have visited one. Why? Well, first of all, I am not a film snob and I do not think I am better than anyone else. Now having said that....

The reason why I have not visited these sites has been because I just got tired of it all. I got tired of the endless Fight Club/Clockwork Orange/Donnie Darko *fill in a well known good film here* threads. It seems that more and more of these "film buffs" are just watching films to scratch off their lists so they can later on pull it out to reference that they know what they are talking about because they have seen ______. There are very few people out there who I truly consider film buffs. By this I mean people who have not only seen some of the well known good films but have also spent time checking out more films by certain directors or some little gems or what I like to call "digging for films"

Once again, by this I mean that it seems that everyone now on these forums say stuff like "Scorsese is a god!" and when asked what films they have seen they answer with "Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver" I'm all for this but whatever happened to After Hours, King of Comedy, Last Temptation of Christ etc... There is no passion to discover films by yourself anymore. Everyone just looks at lists or watch "Lawrence of Arabia" because dear god what will other film buffs think?!!! It just all annoys me.

There also seems little to no true film discussion and instead seems to be a lot of people just circle jerking eachother because they have all seen a good film but when asked whats so good about it resolves to a simple one sentence answer. I'm not saying that this happens all the time but it does seem to happen a lot of the time. The other main thing that bothers me is that very few films are discussed that are pre 70's. So many great classic films out there but no one bothers to watch them unless if they are in AFI top 100 .

Anyways this is the main reason why I have grown tired of these film forums. I was bored tonight and decided to check out one of these forums and this is the first thing I read after the first post. These are someones ratings...

Me and You and Everyone We Know(2005- July) 59
Grindhouse (Rodriguez/Tarantino) 97
300 [2nd] (2007- Snyder) 93

Why does this bother me so much? Where to start.....Me and You and Everyone We Know is the film that Little Miss Sunshine tried to be and it's one of the last true indie films that established an original plot mixed in with original realistic characters and above all it also gave us Miranda July who is in my opinion one of the best bets in new directors. True, you can debate to no end with this but if I were to read that you also gave 300 a 93 and went to go see it twice then I really already think you have no merit to hate Me and You and say that I am wrong.

And then there is Grindhouse......

When I saw this ahead of everyone I knew that it would come back to haunt me. I really liked the film but I couldn't help but think of all the "posers" that would see the film and praise it to no end. I bet you whatever you want that if you were to get 50 people who praise the film so much on these forums that only about 5 or 6 are true grindhouse cinema fans. The others are just people that think grindhouse films are cool and the film was just like it because "they had scratched prints and the trailers!" I'll bet you anything that you want.

This is just meant to be a rant. I once again don't think I am better than everyone else but a lot of these people claiming they are "film buffs" just annoys me and to a certain point offends me. Film lovers? Ok. But film buffs? No. They lack the amount of passion that makes film buffs stand out so much.