Groovymarlin.com

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love and adore Wikipedia. To my mind, it is the Internet evolution of the classic encyclopedia, and a good place to start researching all manner of subjects. Sometimes you’ll find the answers you need right within its articles; other times you might follow the reference links provided to find even more in-depth information and original research. An informed and thoughtful user can easily separate the true scholarly content from the fluff (not that fluff doesn’t have it’s place).

Lately I’ve been using Wikipedia to learn more about movies that I’m interested in. IMDB is great for technical details, but I find that most entries on Wikipedia contain fairly good plot summaries and discussions of character, criticism, and controversy. Sometimes I see a film on cable and, for whatever reason, don’t give it my full attention and end up missing some details. That’s what happened when I watched Brokeback Mountain, and I found the Wikipedia entry on it extremely helpful. Or sometimes I just don’t understand the details, like when I recently saw Immortal. (In the latter case, even reading the Wikipedia entry wasn’t a whole lot of help, as Immortal is just kind of incoherent.)

So I’m going to post regularly about film articles that I like on Wikipedia. Today I read the article about Audition, a 1999 horror-suspense film from Japan. File that under the category of films I want to see but just haven’t gotten around to, for one reason or another. The Wikipedia entry contains a well-written summary of the plot as well as trivia, information on critical responses, and links to further analysis. Audition is a pretty graphic film, but its themes of power, control, and gender roles in Japanese society are interesting.

At one point, a character says of Asami, the mysterious main female character, “She is beautiful, classy and obedient.” Wow…let’s just say he got that…wrong.