rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro) (12/21/89)
As a movie lover who's found it necessary to unsubscribe to rec.arts.movies, I'd like to gauge Net opinion about spinning off one (or more) subgroups. The problem with rec.arts.movies is well known, I think: a *very* high count of articles, the great majority of which are about a handful of movies which happen to be popular that week or month. Using Kill files or typing N isn't even remotely a practical solution -- other kinds of articles are thoroughly buried in the avalanche of stuff about Batman or Back to the Future or whatever. Most of the rest of the articles fall in the "list all the movies with X" category. What this means is that those of us with a broader and perhaps slightly more serious interest in the whole history of cinema are unable to use this group AT ALL, and there's really no hope of that situation ever changing. It seems clear to me that, if there is interest in a different kind of forum for movie talk, we'll need a new group to conduct it in. This pre-call-for-votes is an attempt to find out if there is any such interest. As one concrete proposal (but only one), let me suggest r.a.m.classic which would be exclusively for the (serious) discussion of older Hollywood movies (not necessarily "great" movies). This group would have to be moderated, I think. Is there any interest in such a group? How about a different subgroup? I just want to have a usable forum for talking about cinema in a more serious and more historical way than is possible on r.a.m. Any such forum is better than none at all. Opinions?