We have a few movies at our place. When your spouse is mobility disabled and can’t stand 2 hours in a theater seat . . . when the best movie value for your dollar is “previously viewed” . . . when you can sit at home and eat your own food during the movie, or <gasp> smoke during the movie, or <GASP> go to the bathroom during the movie without missing anything (we love the pause button) . . . you tend to amass a rather large collection. We have over 600 movies — surely a beginner’s collection by some standards, but enough to make our friends gape. They think we’re nuts. Well, yeah, but in a good way.

I’ve got the complete list of movies currently on our Movie Wall up on the web site; in a way, it’s a good place to get some insight on my household. What are we into? What genres do we hang out in? What don’t we own? (I often head straight to the bookshelves when I enter a house or room for the very first time; what’s there, and what isn’t, gives a good set of clues about the people who live there and how to “speak their language.”)  See if our tastes match with yours. We like to think we have something for everybody — go check out the list and let me know if we’re right!

So why should you read my movie reviews? Good question. Maybe because I’m not going to review your standard just-out extravaganzas; I don’t see them till they hit DVD anyway, so that’ll be behind the times. Maybe because I’m not looking at them from the standard reviewer’s angle. I’m just a shlob like you — no film school education, no journalistic connections, no reason to use Hollywood-speak. Just someone who has watched a lot — and I mean a lot — of movies, who’d like to remind you of some of the older ones that are still cool. Think of them as recommendations for a weekend rental, or something to add to your gifting wish list. Or as an impulse buy. It’s amazing how many of these films are still available, upgraded to DVD; a few I had thought I’d never find again actually turned out to be cheap! I’ll try to point out bargains when I find them.

So I’ll be posting movie reviews on a regular basis, not for any particular Popular Delusion, but because good stories and pretty pictures on film is a Delusion of mine that I like to share. The answer to “Gee, I haven’t seen that” in this house is usually “We can fix that.” We love introducing people to new places in the Multiverse. Let me see if I can introduce you to a few . . .

Technorati Tags: movie list, movie reviews, Movies

In 1841, Charles Mackay published Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds; a three-volume work discussing everything from economic bubbles and alchemy to the influence of politics and religion on whether men wear beards. It’s fascinating reading, and available at Project Gutenberg in HTML or plain text format.

Although the book is now 150 years old, and talks about events that happened a long time before that, it still gives some highly relevant insights into human mobthink and just what people are willing to believe. It’s also a fun read for the historical snapshot. (I once read histories of New Amsterdam and San Francisco, written around the turn of the century; as much fun for the style as for the information. I can’t for the life of my find those books right now, though.)

So when the name Popular Delusions was suggested, and I found and read the book, I knew this was a great framework to hang my web site on. I knew that the people I wanted to attract to my site were the same people I like to hang out with – people with interesting viewpoints, unusual ways of seeing the world. As a Soul Hunter once put it on Babylon 5, “only the special ones, leaders, thinkers, poets, dreamers, blessed lunatics.” Nowadays, from my experience, the fun people are more easily found in “microcommunities;” SF conventions, SCA events, pagan gatherings, and Pride Days of various stripes, as examples.

You might even be able to say that the really nifty people are finding their own ways to Popular Delusions that they enjoyed, and enjoyed sharing with others. Whole subcultures, and web communities, have been built on the strength of a shared popular delusion: TheOneRing.Net, around Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth movies, or Starwars.com, around George Lucas’ corner of the multiverse, or those sites that let you post profiles for your pets. Does your poodle need its own MySpace page?

Of course, one person’s delusion is another’s fact; in fact, I’ve found that I believe in most of the things I’ve labeled delusions in my 2Do lists. And a lot of us seem to enjoy the same delusions; con-goers and pagans, to choose two groups at random, both tend to have cats as pets rather than dogs; lots of groups, for completely different reasons, are into costuming. There’s books, movies, music, and . . . an amazing veriety of topics. We’ll discover them together – and I’d love it if you’d let me know your favorites in the Comments!

Technorati Tags: microcommunities, popular delusions, subcultures