Starting Up the Machine

Greetings, cinema lovers, and welcome to Subtitle Literate, my new (and first) blog! Seeing as how I watch a lot of different kinds of movies, I thought it would be a good exercise both for myself and for fellow film buffs out there in teh internets to regularly share my views on the stuff that I happen to be watching at any given moment.

As mentioned in the little description blurb, one theme I'm going to uphold throughout the review postings is to have no two films in a row that come from the same country. This will hopefully ensure a fairly diverse, across-the-map selection of films, in turn hopefully exposing people to new tastes and viewing experiences. Personally, I'm really looking forward to this. I already have quite diverse tastes in film, but this blog will provide a more regular pattern for expanding my exposure to the many, many great films that are out there while spreading the word to like-minded adventurous viewers. Yay sharing!

One of my favorite metaphors for film is, strangely enough, food. Like film, food can be a great way of experiencing a different culture. By trying a new dish from a different country, you are getting a unique impression of that specific culture first-hand - in this case, through taste. Likewise, a foreign film can provide for viewers a reflection of its given culture through style, story, content and character. There is so much to discover in the world through film, and yet, there are people out there who don't dare venture beyong their regular helpings of Quentin Tarantino (even though Kill Bill might turn people on to Asian cinema, as I can confirm from personal experience) or *shudder* Michael Bay simply because they are taken aback by the presence of subtitles and a language they don't recognize.

More than anything else, I'd like this blog to be a celebration of the different cultural experiences that world cinema can provide. The simple pleasure of discovering something new is the main driving force behind this blog, and besides giving myself a platform to express my opinions on certain films, I hope people read it and are themselves driven to try new things and expand their own cinematic tastes, regardless of so-called language barriers.

So welcome aboard and enjoy! I hope to get the first review up soon - stay tuned.