Adventures in Filmographies

I love movies. And I love the process of discovering new movies (and TV shows and books and radio plays and audiobooks and…)

Star Trek 2009 blew my mind and made me want MOAR. Which was totally fine, because there's more Star Trek around than I could ever want. So off I went, watching the Original Series and enjoying the hell out of the awesome life lessons offered (Rule #1: Don't wear red shirts). But at the same time, I was also going through the actors filmography, adventuring into their past in film and TV series appearances, some of which were far more entertaining than others. The unquestioned winner of the Star Trek phase was Incubus: a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto starring William Shatner from the 1960's. 

By including an actor's past work in the excitement of "Yay new movie I love!" I'm introducing a highly random element. Sherlock Holmes (which has the original stories as well as literally hundreds of adaptations to pick through) also started the Robert Downey Jr filmography phase, which led to me discovering one of my favourite movies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and sitting through some of the most bizarre films I've seen (Rented Lips, Hugo Pool.)  I'm pretty confident no actor or actress will be able compete with the sheer bulk of WTF that ye olde Robert Downey Jr films can provide. 

And the tangents that come from these adventures in filmography are unexpected and delightful. I ended up spending a couple weeks appreciating a bunch of "Patrick Dempsey films made before 1997", which I can truthfully say is a line of interest I could not have predicted. It's also cool to see what films keep popping up. Seven separate quests led me to Bent, a film which has somehow become the Kevin Bacon of my movie world.

The best part of questing through past works is, without doubt, finding something AMAZING that otherwise I would never have come in contact with. Cabin Pressure, a BBC radio sitcom that I listened to because Benedict Cumberbatch was in it, is now one of my all time favourite sitcoms. Of course, the danger of such  method is that there are fantastically awful movies and TV shows waiting to be unearthed. But dodging or suffering through movies that define "why was this made?" just add to the experience and to the joy of finding something awesome.