I think I'm over Hollywood. Okay not really, since I just saw The Social Network the other day and loved it. But in my defense, I loved movies based on true stories and this one happened to be a Hollywood production, so I didn't watch it because it was an American production but because I was interested in the storyline.
You'll never believe me so what's the point. Besides I'm not making a strong case for myself, am I?
I admit that for the longest time, I thought Hollywood was the only place decent movies could come from. I mean, back when I was young, my cinematic experiences were restricted to Disney cartoons, Jalan Ampas movies and Hollywood blockbusters. So how would I have known that somewhere, people who didn't speak English were also making excellent films only with inferior budget and even smaller exposure?
Fortunately in my town, there's this one cinema called Le Melville which mainly (but not exclusively) shows films from around the world in their original language (I hate voice-overs). I've been there a couple of times, most recently to watch Uncle Boonmee, the Thai movie that won top honor at Cannes 2010.
(I also watched the infamous Deep Throat there for their Pornography History week and I have to admit, watching the first pornographic movie in the world on the big screen with other people clapping and nervously laughing was awesome and awkward at the same time. Everybody was trying to look like they were just healthily curious and they weren't the least bit turned on, but to me it felt bizarre that suddenly the human perversion was a cause for celebration. It was like a collective effort to prove that we're all the same anyway. Except for that weird looking dude who chose an isolated seat at the back and noisily fapped to Linda Lovelace. Then again, the ushers did distribute condoms and tissues to everybody for good measure. And Linda Lovelace was being rammed by some random dude(s), so I guess fapping was in order. As a friend once said, appropriateness is just a state of mind.)
Anyway....
I have this list of films I have to watch before I die. And the list keeps getting longer and longer each day while the number of films being crossed out has not incremented since I don't know when. The thing is, while a lot of them are Hollywood films, the majority were renowned foreign movies. Of course, if you separate them by countries and languages, Hollywood still comes out on top. So I decided to put Hollywood on the opponent's court and all the other films on my court, resulting in Hollywood getting its ass kicked big time! Granted, my players wouldn't know how to talk to each other because there's no subtitles at sports' arena (it would be hard to provide subtitles for ALL of them anyway) but you get the idea.
So now I'm picking up where I left off, so the next film I'm going to watch from the list is Nosferatu. I downloaded it last week but only get to actually watch it this week. People told me that once I've watched German expressionist movies, it'll change my views on cinema altogether. While that might be an exaggeration, I kinda had the same 'awakening' with art when I discovered Edvard Munch's The Scream. So I'm actually kinda pumped up to watch Nosferatu.
