Fist of Doom

^Don't forget Hogan's Heroes!

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

If TV is allowed, that'd be nice since I could pull out the MASH set I bought a few years back.

Trevor

No offense to any of the Challenge thread starters, myself included, but I hope that no one here thinks that they have to completely play by any of our 'rules'. I consider everything regarding a Challenge as more of a guideline than a rule. I speak for none of the other Challenge leads of course, this is just my opinion.

For example, if when I do the Western Challenge I decide that watching TV shows doesn't count, feel free to ignore that and watch only TV and count it triple. Sure, you may get questions, I may ignore your total if I do a results thread, and you may not win any prizes, but who cares? Watch whatever you want! This all about having fun with our hobby, doing something together, and building community.

That was just a random example by the way, TV shows will definitely count for the Western Challenge.

I've been meaning to open up my MASH set and watch it, so I think I'm watching it for the War Challenge whether it 'counts' or not. Along with at least 20 movies of course. Still waiting for my second ever viewing of Saving Private Ryan.

Travis McClain

I never meant to hijack this thread for the War Challenge, but I'd definitely support this.

Wrong! My challenge is a War Challenge! If you don't follow orders...oh. Uh, well....yeah, do whatever the hell you want.

The Monkees

I think it was the 2nd Holiday Challenge was in the Movies section. It was moved there by a mod, but the 1st and all others have been in the DVD section. I think people are used to finding the info in the DVD section.

I don't know about squeezing in challenges in January or November. The Holiday Challenge always begins the Monday before Thanksgiving and the Academy Award Challenge usually begins in January depending on when the Oscars are that year. So you'd have overlapping of Challenges. Those are the only 2 that do that (and the only 2 I run, go figure), I think it would make things a bit complicated to people who would want to do both challenges. And even if you were to only run the challenge for the time between challenges (Like November 1st until November 23rd, or something like that) I think that would get confusing to people as well.

Trevor

I don't think there is any problem with multiple Challenges in a month. By multiple, I mean two of course. I don't think Challenges will ever get popular/diverse enough to have more than 24 of them, and I'm not planning on any more than 12 actually.

Why do you see a problem with Challenges in November and January? Less than .1% of DVDTalk's membership gives two hoots about any particular Challenge, but they may care about a War Challenge. And if as few as two, or as many as two hundred people participate in a November War or Comedy Challenge, how does that hurt the Holiday Challenge?

If fans of foreign films decide to start a Foreign Film Challenge and decide that they want it to be in October, who cares?

Yes, I personally think that we should spread them out to one per month, and I'm sure it will go down that way, but people can do whatever they want here.

Travis McClain

I confess to being disheartened to read the remarks about not having a War Challenge, but hey; this ain't my website. If the challenge is welcome, I'm all about hostin' it. If not, no big deal. I will say that one thing I was looking into, in the case of conflicting scheduling, finding War movies that were set during the holiday season and could therefore qualify for both. I think there's at least one movie about the Christmas truce of World War I, for instance. Y'all let me know if we're doin' this or not.

Trevor

But the thing is, no one here has any more say than you, or somebody who joins the forum tomorrow. Sure, some of us here are more seasoned, and more aggressive, and do more 'work' for the forum, but we're not 'in charge' of Challenges or anything else. Respect is paid to the people who started them years ago, and continuity is expected. And again, I plan on doing my part to try to keep us to no more than 13 Challenges.

But to say that a five month period should be blocked off for just two Challenges seems very wrong imho. I see no problem with overlap.

I easily see at least three more Challenges being welcome here, even if only a few people participate in each.

How about War in November, Comedy in March, and Foreign in January? Those are the only genres I've heard others mention outside of the already set 10 Challenges. There may be more or better options though.

That would leave all 12 months with one Challenge, with Holiday slightly bleeding over into two others, and Academy being floating and overlapping into two of the three months January thru March, depending on the date of the Oscars.

Dimension X

Like it or not, you've become the "guy in charge" for Challenge scheduling.

I don't see any problem with a few days overlap. The Drive-In Challenge is scheduled through May 1st, and Make-Your-Own starts that day (I didn't object because there are only 30 days in April, and I thought caligulathegod deserved 31 days for his challenge).

I plan to mention in the Make-Your-Own-Challenge rules that people can watch stuff that counts for both lists on that day. I don't see why that can't apply to other overlapping challenges too.

I do like having a few "challengeless" weeks in the year to wind down, but if we're going to fill them up, I think you should either put it to a vote to decide the last few or let whoever wants to run them claim the dates and decide the themes.

Looking at the current schedule, there's no reason at all why January shouldn't have its own challenge (there's just one day overlap with the Holiday Challenge). The other two may be more questionable.

Well, I just went back and read this post again:
So it looks like maybe January is questionable too.

Trevor

I don't think we should focus too much on there not being any breaks, or there being overlap. I mean, how many of us are really going to do every Challenge?

I think I might be the only one crazy enough to do that. But even with that, just because I'm in a Challenge it doesn't mean that I'm going to watch anything more or anything different from what I would watch that month even if there was no DVDTalk. I'm just going to list the stuff that qualifies in those Challenge threads and participate in the discussion most likely. A Challenge doesn't need to change anyone's amount of content for a month, just the focus of it. And again, the main focus is building community.

Most people will choose to just do a couple Challenges a year I imagine. But since some people care nothing about Horror, Holiday, Sci-Fi, or Academy Award films, it seems silly to 'lock out' months or limit the number of Challenges to keep those 'pure' or some other silly notion.

Dimension X

That's the way I handled the last Criterion and Academy Awards Challenges. I didn't watch much, but listed what I watched that qualified.

The only two Challenges that actually include a challenge to watch a large number of movies in a month are the Horror and Drive-In Challenges, so there's no reason to go overboard every month (unless you want to).

Even for people who go all out for the Holiday Challenge, do they get heavily into it before December?
As I said, I don't see any problem with a few days overlap.

The Monkees

The Academy Award Challenge fluctuates depending on when the Oscars are. Usually it starts towards the end of January, this year it started in the beginning of February because they pushed the Oscars back to the beginning of March as opposed to the end of February.

I wasn't trying to ban people from putting challenges up during my own challenges, I don't care. I just think that say the Horror Movie Challenge is taking place during October and then IF somebody did a challenge like a Comedy challenge or something that I wanted to partake in it would be hard to do both at the same time. I know the Holiday & Academy Award challenges aren't super popular, but if someone wanted to do both it would be difficult. Looking at the schedule though I do realize now that both of those usually start at the END of their respective months and only last a week and a half of that month at most, so I guess I spoke out of line.

caligulathegod

Personally, I think some genres are more ripe than others for challenges. Horror, Sci-fi, Exploitation, seem to have a more fetishistic bent to them. They tend to be more obsessively collected by their aficionados than others. Holiday challenge and Oscar challenge have a nice obsessional "hook" that welcomes a challenge. I wonder if War and perhaps Western would lend themselves more to 2 week "Mini-challenges". Or, something like an omnibus type challenge where week one is Western, week two is War, week three is Thrillers, week four is Action movies, or something like that. They could be in sequence or interspersed throughout the off months.

Trevor

No, not at all! We're just talking here, trying to figure out what would be best. Maybe I'm wrong and 13 Challenges is a bad idea.
Very good points on how the existing genres are ripe for Challenges.

And perhaps you're right about the mini-challenges. I always thought that a month is just easier, and that we probably don't have need for more than the 13. Drama, Thriller, and Action appear to be the only major choices missing. But Thriller is pretty much included in Horror, people seem to count them at least. Much of drama and action are partially covered by the other Challenges I guess.

I don't know. All it really takes is for someone to step-up and just start one. I'm leaning towards that the current monthly format is easiest, and was really looking forward to a month of War, a month of Western, a month of Foreign, and a month of Comedy at some point.

But then, I really don't want to personally lead any Challenge, and would welcome someone else championing the Criterion and Western Challenges.

Dimension X

13?
Keep in mind that one of the reasons for the Make-Your-Own-Challenge is so people can devote a month to genres that don't already have their own challenges, so we don't really need to fill in every month if no one steps up to claim the last two open.

The Monkees

I just got the feeling you thought I was trying to keep people away from the Challenges I run. People can do what they want I was just suggesting that it might be difficult for people who want to do both. It's all cool though

Trevor

If we add Foreign, War, and Comedy to the existing line-up we'd have one for each month, with Academy as a floater.
True. I guess I'm thinking and hoping that people will be much more creative for this than just picking a genre. There are so many possibilities with this one. I'm hoping it becomes our most popular Challenge.
No, I knew you didn't feel that way. I was just curious as to your reasoning for thinking there shouldn't be overlap. I guess I've already explained my thinking of why overlap is a non-issue a couple times now.

Travis McClain

Well, one thing I thought about when sketching a War Challenge checklist were things like Band of Brothers, which could easily occupy the free time of more casual viewers for the duration of about a week. If we restricted the challenge to two weeks, then participants might be compelled to choose between several movies or that mini-series. I'd hate for someone to feel like they didn't have enough time to participate, so they passed entirely.

I would think that Western and War include enough Action for most; especially with Sci-Fi already having a challenge. Thrillers seem to be likewise represented by the B-Movie and Horror challenges. I wouldn't necessarily endorse Omnibus Challenge, per se, but I'd be very interested in, say, a History Challenge. Each year it could rotate themes. This year, War. Next year, Western.

I'd be very interested in hosting something like that, as it would not only give me an excuse to make myself finally watch the classics of those respective genres, but on a personal note, it would make me feel like I'm doing something with my history degree.

caligulathegod

There's the hook. A History challenge. That would allow War, Western, period films, biographical films, documentaries, TV shows like MASH and Black Adder. Food for thought.

Trevor

I think I really like this.

It can complement/replace the Western Challenge in MayJune. And it would be criminal of me to not let our history major MinLShaw run it, so shucks, I guess I'm off the hook for running that one.

Now who wants Criterion.....?

Travis McClain

- fixed

So...are we talking about replacing June's Western challenge with a catch-all History Challenge? I'm game if that's the direction we wanna go.

Trevor

Yeah, I know a couple of alternatives were mentioned, but I think I favor June being History Challenge each year, with the diverse but related categories caligula mentioned; War, Western, period films, biographical films, documentaries.

Individuals could choose to concentrate on just one of those genres, or mix them all in. For example, I think I'll do all Western this June, since I've been itching for it and accumulating a pile of DVDs in anticipation, and then do all War next year maybe.

Of course, this is just what, three or four of us talking? Maybe let's let this play out for a week or two and see what others may say. And then if it looks viable MinL can start a interest or discussion thread for it.

Cardsfan111

I'll chime in to say I like the idea of a history challenge--I have very few things that would qualify under just a War/Western theme. History opens it up to include much more which is a good thing for me, and I would think others.

Dimension X

I like the idea of the more expansive "history" theme.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

My plan for the make your own was to have a different week long challenges, with checklists of course.

Week 1: Martial Arts(which I've also toyed with doing a month long challenge but wasn't sure if we already had too many. If Trevor thinks we can fit it in somewhere I'd be ok with doing it but wouldn't complain if he didn't. A week might be long enough for that one.)

Week 2: All random and only random picks. No picking and going, "that sucks, I'm picking again", which honestly, is really easy to do.

I'm only going to watch unwatched stuff and will have my wife, kids, and the random button in Movie Collectorz pick stuff for me.

Week 3: TV shows and made for TV movies.

Week 4: Documentaries and Westerns. As good as some docs are, there's a lot of crappy ones and I'd like to be able to break from them when I get tired.