At the gym this morning, I read an interesting piece of writing in my favorite film magazine  Sight and Sound.  In his article "Outside the Bell Jar," Irish director and film critic Mark Cousins laments that fact that despite -- or perhaps due to, depending on how one looks at it -- the availability of resources in the digital age, people are still prone to "live in the bell jar of our own taste, knowledge, and desires." Who's in it? Who is it directed by? are questions we often ask when someone offers a movie recommendation.  

Cultivating a specific and consistent sense of taste is undoubtedly important. Taste is what will distinguish you from others and work as the liaison between you with those who have honed similar appetites. By all means, the bell jar encourages efficiency. But problems surface when we limit ourselves solely to the interiority of our own bell jars, when our hands (or rather our eyes) reach for things we know we are interested in or know something about. Knowledge and familiarity are prone to commit the crime of automatic omission. 

This is not to say that I practice what I (attempt to) preach. Quite the contrary. Take the screen capture above. It is from one of my most petted apps, Discovr Movie. The app maps out for you, movies that are in some way linked to what you type into the search bar (ex: Midnight in Paris). Admittedly, I was rather proud to count how many few films I have not seen from this web. Bell jar alert!