Welcome

Welcome to Filmiliarity. The purpose of this oddly-titled blog is to discuss films that interest me, regardless of their genre or, for that matter, their quality. I've been wanting to start this blog for a while; in a way, it's meant to be a rebirth of another, less-focused blog I have over at LiveJournal. I never liked the cumbersome URL of the other blog, and I prefer the layout options over here, so I decided to make a fresh start. One of my major stumbling blocks, however, has been coming up with a suitable title. Practically everything I thought of had already been taken, and I was beginning to think I'd never be able to create something both unique and clever. My epiphany came today, and here I am.

As you can see from the blog description, the title is a mash-up of the words film and familiarity. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, I know (say it with me - "film-ill-ee-air-it-ee"), but the more I think about it, the more I like it. The film part, well, that's obvious. The word familiarity, though, has multiple definitions, and most of them seem to coincide with my general feelings about movies. Let's take a look at how Dictionary.com defines familiarity:

1. thorough knowledge or mastery of a thing, subject, etc.
2. the state of being familiar; friendly relationship; close acquaintance; intimacy.
3. an absence of ceremony and formality; informality.
4. freedom of behavior justified only by the closest relationship; undue intimacy.

While I would never in a million years claim to have mastery of the subject, I do possess a relatively thorough knowledge of film, although said knowledge is abnormally slanted toward horror films. I'd like to think I have a friendly relationship with the cinema, but like all relationships, it can become strained at times. I do tend to prefer a certain informality to the movies I watch; if a film lapses into pretentiousness, it usually gets shut off. (Notice I didn't say "walked out on" - despite my avowed love of the cinema as an art form, my love of the cinema as a building has waned as of late, and my excursions to an actual movie theater have subsequently dwindled to a few per year at best.) And the part about undue intimacy, well, let's just say that many of the films I watch tend to take certain liberties with one's sensibilities that the average viewer might not appreciate. But I'm not the average viewer, as you will discover if you stick around.