Cinemania
I like to often fancy myself a "film buff" or even a "cinephile." Although I am also often weary of approaching the negative, obsessive and anti-social qualities sometimes associated with the more extreme examples of people who embrace being a "buff" in any area. Thus I was interested in seeing a film about the people who share my love of movies but take aspects of their obsession and devotion to the extreme. And of course to view this world through the movie medium adds just another dimension.
My interest in this movie was due to both fear and reassurance. REASSURANCE that my love of film was relatively healthy compared to the obsession of people who have taken it to such detrimental extremes. Or FEAR that I may see myself reflected in some aspects of these people that I find repulsive or pathetic.
Now, I don't see anywhere NEAR as many movies as any of these people. It actually may be the case that I don't even watch as many movies as many people who would never consider themselves a film buff or cinephile. But when I do watch a movie, I think I tend to digest it more than the average person. I'm compulsive about watching all of the special features on a DVD for instance, and reading lots of additional material about the movie. But my most obsessive acts have to do with cataloguing things. And sometimes when I step away from it, I have to wonder if this isn't actually the most obsessive of obsessive aspects. I'm not even watching that many movies, but here I am on Spout and tons of other movie sites logging all of my ratings, tagging movies, updating keywords, creating lists, and databases, and algorithms to quantify and classify my world of movies. However I have gotten away from collecting physical things. I don't really own that many movies, and I certainly don't collect tons of random memorabilia that floods the homes of many of the subjects of this film.
One thing that clearly separates me from most of these people is their insistence on seeing movies at the cinema. For them watching a movie on DVD at home is sacrilege. They schedule their entire days to go from one New York movie theatre to another to see as many movies as possible within a day. And there actually bigger schedules beyond that to make sure they see all movies they want to see during a run at different theatres. There's a whole system of complicated scheduling going on. I guess I'm just from a younger generation that is used to watching movies on TV. I'd prefer to watch something in the best quality and with the correct aspect ratio and without loss of too much other information, but I'll sacrifice the live film experience for the ability to watch a movie as I please and be able to pause or rewind when I feel like it.
Some of the people are pretty intelligent, and have an interesting ability to discuss their obsession with sort of an objective eye. I can't remember the names of all of the people, but some have this ability better than others. Certainly within this world of Cinemania, there are many different personalities.
And although sight and sound are the only senses that a film can really capture, I have a good feeling that I at least smell better than most of these people as well.
Rating: 8/10