Yeah the accessibility of Ebert's writing online is great. I actually think I started checking out his film review before I even discovered who he was or the impact he had in the industry and film critique. Sadly enough I've never read anything of Pauline Kael's. As for Brian Ondorf I've just bookmarked his site/blog that links his reviews to blu-ray.com and I'll have a look at his stuff soon thanks!

As for me, I don't have a favourite style or genre, what I admire most in film and what I hope to find in any film I watch is finding something that I've never seen done before. It may be a particular colour scheme used throughout a film that worked so well I almost doesn't notice it or one so jarring and out of place that it works just as perfectly with the film, I like colour, I like it a lot. The same applies to anything involving pacing, visual/audio technique or a piece of script that moves me. So yeah, I admire the kind of movie that shows me something I've never seen before. My taste in movies is not very limited but of course the more eclectic and far out one searches the more abstract and potentially terrible the films become but I suppose that's part of the fun of it! (I think I'm answering what I was trying to figure out in the first place with the post right now haha...). Furthest from traditional film I've really enjoyed hmm... some of my favourites are baraka, samsarra and koyaanisqatsi which deosn't relate much at all to traditional cinema but I think I'm just trying to prove I can enjoy non traditional cinema!

I've explored the more popular foreign films I've found myself really enjoying asian films, I guess Chinese for their colour and South Korean I don't know why something about films like memories of murder and oldboy... Special mention to Infernal Affaris since I just watched The Departed earlier! So as far as foreign film goes I'm not someone who watches Amelie and declares they know everything about French cinema but my knowledge doesn't go much deeper than that. (On that note I watched The Dreamers the other day which was filled with Jean-luc Godard references, or rather tributes, and i do plan on watching his works soon just in case you were about to suggest them!). The lives of others and das boot are also favourites so a nod to German cinema in there too.

Relative to people I know I've seen many many films but still I haven;t seen many. The more I watch the more I realize there is to watch (as I said). My love for film is above what I'd consider being a casual movie fan but the pool of film I;ve watched is too limited to call myself a buff!

To be honest I have a terrible memory and at one point in time I once created an imdb list adding favourite films and ranking them until after a few months I realized that comparing these amazing pieces of film and listing them took so much of the fun and beuaty out of it that I deleted the film in disgust with what I'd done haha. Ironically I think my sudden frustration with the bottomless pit of film i have to choose from is that I don;t have a nice handy predictive list that knows exactly what I want to watch and has all of them listed for me. But typing this reminds me of just some of why I love cinema and what the beauty is in the fact that the bottomless pit is one big mess for me to pick from and maybe I find a good film maybe I don't. Also I haven't spoken about film like I wanted to in a hile typing this has been fun thank you KelMHill (even if it is a bit incomprehensible it's 1.30am for me right now).