When I was introduced to some people at a friend’s housewarming party as a ‘film buff’, I couldn’t help feeling a tad sheepish. Of course, my introducer thought this the most apt description of me considering all I ever do is talk about movies, watch movies, major in film studies, intern with film magazines (Filmink and Empire Magazine), write for a DVD and film review website (www.impulsegamer.com) and review films for my university newspaper (Honi Soit), all in the hopes of starting my own film magazine one day and writing/producing/directing for feature films when I grow up. But something about the title ‘film buff’ just didn’t sit right with me.
To me, achieving film buff status takes more than work experience and an awesome collection of DVDs sitting on one’s shelf. Anyone can do that. And a ridiculous number of people have already done it.
To become a film buff you have to be an expert, an enthusiast … a super obsessed cinephile. And while there’s no doubt I love movies and that I’m passionate about giving my two cents on the latest blockbuster or the oldest classic, I know that I have much to learn and hours of movie-watching to catch up on in order to reach that happy place of film buffdom.
This is why I’ve dubbed myself ‘the film kid’. Unlike my earlier written work, this blog has been created as a means of working towards that film buff status – learning things on the way and constantly pushing the originality and individualistic quality of my writing. Kind of like The Karate Kid but … not as physically fit.
So over the course of 2010, I wrote down the title of every film that I watched in the hopes of setting a record that I could beat in 2011. That record is 137 movies. I intend to beat that number and write a review for every. single. one.
