Thoughts on Film Geek
-Scotty is a (ahem) film geek, with an encyclopedic knowledge on anything of the subject, repelling those around him. Things change when he meets this chick, blah, blah.
-This movie is really cheap looking. I'm just going to get that out of the way.
-Scotty was obnoxious rather than endearing. He rattles off trivia in a robotic voice, walks about stiffly, going about his business with random interjections of him jacking off.
-Love interest, Whasserface, was a snob.
-And yet I loved this, people. I mean, one of the few things I can boast is that I'm not as singularly obsessed with film as this guy, but, like, I got it. Frustration over others' movie knowledge, the compulsory need to spout out all your knowledge of any actor given, being, like, really into film scores. This shit spoke to me. Yo.
-Near the end, the film got ridiculously preposterous, but then director James Westby explains it in a pretty clever way (for all I know about cleverness).
-Is it wrong that I like movies looking professional? I mean, this was very funny in places, but I was so distracted by the cheap lighting and sets and camera. I just...I can't stand it. If it looks like it was shot in a ninth grade film class, I get flashbacks.
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9 comments:
I heard about this and it sounded at first appealing - I mean, what would a film geek/nerd like me love more than a movie titled after my kind? - but then I watched a couple clips on YouTube. Scotty seemed robotic, borderline autistic (which isn't itself a bad thing), and just smugly obnoxious and unwilling to interact with the outside world.
Did I get a false impression of the movie, or would I find it as grating as it looked? My main beef with this movie is that it's suggesting that being a "film geek" is all about mechanically naming years, actors, directors, titles, etc. rather than, you know, genuinely knowing about and loving movies. Reducing cinephilia to just an obsession with trivia is not OK.
But then again, I didn't actually watch the movie. Outside of the technical amateurism, is it tolerable or worth watching?
Okay, as a properly annointed Movie Geek with 130 episodes of "BEAT THE GEEKS" under my belt (no matter how much Fox and Comedy Central want to pretend it never happened), I resent that a film like this is making me look like a socially maladroit outcast. As you said, cinephilia is not just regurgitating trivia, and I dammit I know and love movies. Where's my profile?
This guy is only going to make it even harder for me to get laid. :(
Andreas: Tolerable...none of his film knowledge seems to go past snippets of mechanical praise and saying 'Cronenberg is awesome' a lot. It's pretty funny in places, but most of the time, it's kind of obnoxious.
Marc: What's Beat the Geeks?
And you can surely pride yourself on having more social skills than this guy. I mean, most of us can talk about other things competently, right?
I don't think it's "wrong," per se, to be distracted by the cheapness of a production. But that's all it is, "budget." Still, the good directors, even at the beginning, can take the usual hurdles of time and budget and turn them into assets, if they have a good eye, a sense of purpose and story-telling skills.
As long as it doesn't distract from what's GOOD about a picture (if it has anything), it's fine. But there are a lot of GREAT-looking turds out there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_the_geeks
Yojimbo: It never got too bad, but sometimes, during scenes where the acting got particularly wooden, or the dialogue was really lame, the lack of light or sound sound really stuck out.
Marc: Oh, that's what that was called? I saw it on TV once when I was a kid, they were talking about music. And hey! You have a Wikipedia page!
I still remember his mini-tantrum when he found a DVD placed under the wrong genre. hahaha
Loved this movie, and the director's follow-up The Auteur.
Never even heard of this one. Sounds very interesting. Thanks for the heads up. I will queue it right now...
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