edwardnortonfan

Oh, ok, sorry.

NoirFan

But Nosferatu and Les Vampires aren't examples of films that are less than sixty minutes. You simply have incomplete versions. Now that you are aware of this fact, we can move on.

Pizza

I obviously don't know how to use the "search this thread" properly as I keep getting:
"Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."
Would someone explain what the "with or without" rule is?

edwardnortonfan

Hence why I said "TRYING" to include examples. I now realize that my versions are incomplete and no one bothered to say this last year, I apologize for deigning to make a mistake like this, but there's no need to take the tone you've taken with me since your first post addressing my response about "Les Vampires." It's possible to inform people that their versions of films are incomplete without being nasty or condescending or rude, but apparently, these three traits are your trademark, since you use them in every reply you make in this thread.

edwardnortonfan

People are debating whether we should be allowed to watch horror films with commentary and have it count. The rule is that you are allowed to include a film once on the list, and you can choose to watch this film with the commentary or without, but you can't watch the film with the commentary and without the commentary and count the film twice as though it is a separate film.

NoirFan

As a fan of cinema, I find edited, mangled or incomplete versions of films to be utterly offensive to my sensibilities. The public domain editions of films floating around on those budget sets are often barely legal bootlegs which are in no way accurate representations of the films as they were originally intended to be seen. My issue is with the DVDs themselves, not the owners. If you feel my dismissal of your edition of Nosferatu was a slam at you as a person as well, which was truly not my intent, then I apologize. My comment about Les Vampires was just a lame joke, not a putdown of you. Moving on - neither wlverinefactor and viewaskewbian have posted on this forum in over a month - has anyone sent either one of them a PM on the 31 film discussion thread?

Chad

Please allow me clear up a few things before chaos ensues:


The 40-minute rule is still intact. The whole 55-minute thing was simply a suggestion by caligulathegod because I mentioned a movie with a 57-minute running time. And the sole reason that was brought up in the first place was to prove that a 60-minute rule would exclude such films. Nothing has changed. Got it?

Not to worry - The slight editing of the documentary rule was simply to give more clarification in regards to what I meant by a "legitimate documentary". Stand-alone doesn't necessarily only refer to docs that have had seperate releases. And you're right, it would be unfair to exclude them. Sometimes there are exceptions and they stand out on their own despite only being released with a particular film. And that's when personal judgment comes into play - I'm fully confident that you are all perfectly capable of deciphering the difference between legit docs and marshmallowly fluff and that good ole' common sense will prevail.

caligulathegod

Do you work for John McCain and Sarah Palin ? I apologize if we offended. It wasn't meant to be patronizing. We were just trying to figure out what you were talking about. Les Vampires is a 7 hour long serial from 1915 and you said it was under an hour, so it's not unreasonable for us to assume you were referring to another film. Old Horror films are notorious for having alternate titles. We gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were just mistaken about the title rather than make assumptions about your later admitted "lack of research". I honestly had no idea they were truncating it for public domain collections. I've only ever seen the $125 laserdisc and $70 DVD. Also, to mention the all-time classic Nosferatu as a title of 45 minutes is going to get a comment, I'm sorry. It's not an obscure title. An error like that is going to get corrected but it's not meant to offend. Oh yeah, and it's also the very first title on the new list of group films. If were were going to be snarky, we would have brought that up.


I looked most of those up, and even IMDB calls most of them "shorts". The Norliss Tapes is 72 minutes. It would be allowed under the rules. "TV movies" are allowed (whatever their origin), but "TV Shows" are not. A lot of those listed as under an hour were just 1 hour TV shows (40+ minutes minus commercials) repackaged as videos and not movies. They also included straight to video shorts. Direct to Video movies are allowed, but they should have to reach a certain threshold. Just because it was released on video doesn't mean anything. I have tons of short 5-8 minute DVDs (Hardware Wars, for instance), but that doesn't mean they should be treated as features. You have to draw a line somewhere. At an hour or thereabouts, the rule takes care of itself. You get actual features, as is generally and realistically defined, and not a bunch of shorts. There are enough real Horror movies out there that fit in the definition of "feature" that we don't have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for 35 minute atrocities like Freddy vs Ghostbusters.



The Wild Card system started as a way to allow in things that just didn't quite make the rules. You can watch a two hour documentary on the making of Jaws that was included on the DVD using a wild card. It's also meant for something like Call of Cthulu, or others of its ilk. It's not meant to be solely for Charlie Brown and Roseanne.


The reason we're having this discussion is to hammer out the rules. We're allowed to change them. It's counterproductive to insist that the first draft rendition of the rules from 4 years ago should be absolute law when in practice it's been shown that it will be exploited. It was intended that shorter films were to fill in gaps, but instead we got people listing 18-20 titles a day so they could inflate their numbers. The rules even mentioned not doing that. That was the biggest cause of the friction we had last year and if we can't address it honestly and objectively, we are doomed to repeat it. If you did that last year, no need to defend it. It was perfectly legal. It's just this year we wanted to level the playing field, lower the pitcher's mound, shrink the strike zone, etc. so to speak. It's not unreasonable nor a hardship on anyone to insist that a Horror Movie watching challenge be about watching actual Horror Movies and not just any 40 minute Horror related vignette packaged up and sold on DVD.

Pizza

I get it now. Thank you for clearing it up for me.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

Except Chad said the rule is 40 minutes.

I have a 2 hour movie that IMDB calls a short for some reason. They aren't really the perfect place for info all the time

In your examples you listed movies or shorts, which aren't movies and wouldn't count anyway, that were all below 40 minutes or above 60. What is the problem with the movies that fit between those times?

I was just going off a list I had that was obviously inaccurate, but if you really want I can go through my collection and find actual movies with running times between 40 and 60 minutes.

From there you can go through the list of "horror movies" and explain for each one why they aren't really a horror movie or why they wouldn't count as a horror movie to watch during a horror movie challenge.

That's the part I'm hung up on but if you think you could break it down for me so I can see what I'm missing, I'm all for it. I refuse to accept a reason of not being theatrically shown as being valid for me. Just clearing that up front.

caligulathegod

The reason we have these discussions is to figure out what worked, what didn't, what can be improved, what can be added. Last year, we had the equivalent of Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa in the race. Were the balls juiced or were the players? While the time spent was indeed prodigious, the sheer numbers were inflated a bit thanks to A&E Biographies, DVD extras, made-for-video vignettes, and anything else that barely qualified that had some blood in it. It was legal last year, but why not (if I may stretch my baseball metaphor) lower the pitcher's mound, shrink the strike zone, etc.? Was there anything wrong with people hitting 300+? No, not really, but don't think of it as punishing those that hit 300, but instead making it more of a challenge. A challenge, indeed than can be met by everybody no matter what their participation. Want to watch 5 movies? You can meet this challenge. Want to watch over 100? You can still meet this challenge. We're just purifying the challenge. Distilling it, if you will.

I admit to being somewhat snarky in describing some of the shorter films. But this is a Horror Movie challenge. Generally, most folks know what a movie is and what most folks would call an actual movie is at least 80 minutes long, children's movies (and lame spoof movies) a bit less. We are watching movies from the entire history of film and in earlier times when they showed cartoons, newsreels, comedy live-action shorts, and double features, films were a bit shorter. Even at their shortest, they were rarely much under an hour. A few extremely low budget films made outside of the studio system (poverty row quickies, like Ed Wood used to make) managed to survive as slightly less than an hour. A handful were actually that short, or just had footage lost to time and neglect or censorship. Those are forgivable. When someone makes a modern day plotless snuff film, as entertaining as it might be, it really should meet some criteria that makes it somewhat equivalent to a feature. I draw no value judgments on the film itself. Hell, if everything works out, I'm going to be able to put this* on my list October 4. All I ask is a reasonable time cutoff so we can have a fair definition of feature and have it be fair for everyone. We can't disallow Universal classics so just under an hour seems reasonable. If you want to watch a shorter film, that's what the Wild Cards are for.

* Not safe for work:

http://blackdevildoll.com for the unrated version.

The Monkees

Thank you! I figured as much, but I wanted to make clear of the rules for this.

edwardnortonfan

If I worked for Sarah Palin I'd try to shut this whole challenge down and ban all the movies.

What bothered me was not that you mentioned that I had a bad version of "Nosferatu," it was the tone of your comments and the "Lez Vampires" comment, which I took wrong, and that misunderstanding has already been worked out.

What you don't seem to be getting is that I admitted, whoops, my bad, I must have a truncated version of the movie two pages ago, but I really don't see why I'd need to perform RESEARCH about a movie I bought and watched. I don't use IMDB much because it's not the best source of information and I've noticed numerous errors in the past when I've browsed the website. I bought "Nosferatu" and watched it last year back in the middle of a ton of infighting in the challenge and listed its running time in the discussion thread (because people were arguing that others were lying and thus it was requested that we post the schedule of our movie watching so we could prove we watched all the movies we said that we watched). You'd think with all that fighting SOMEONE would have butted in and said something about my 45 minute version of Nosferatu, but no one did, so I didn't bother to RESEARCH it because I had no inkling that my version was INCORRECT until I innocently mentioned it this time and got rude, snarky comments. I don't bother to RESEARCH every movie I buy, so I don't know why you're pointing out my "lack of research" as though it's common to research every movie you buy to make sure there aren't longer versions out there. I was wrong, I admitted that two pages ago, but I'm not somehow less of a film fan because I didn't bother to RESEARCH a movie I'd bought when I had no indication that I had the wrong version. Yes, it's listed at the top of the 31 movies to watch for this year, what's your point? That still doesn't mean I'd bother to do research on it and find out that the actual version is longer if I thought I had the real version and none of the nitpicky board members bothered to call me out last year when I listed the running time of the movie as 45 minutes. You keep saying "we're going to CATCH that" and "an error like that is going to be noticed, I'm sorry" like I'm trying to scam people or intentionally lie. It's not really an error on my part if I had a version that was 45 minutes and to my knowledge that was how long the movie was, no one had ever said anything about it before, and yes, in all my internet perusing I never noticed that the film's running time was different, my bad. I don't obsessively check the running times of films when I read about them, but from now on I will, I promise. The moment someone said "Hey, the movie is longer than that" I admitted I must have been wrong, and I'm going to pick up a better version of the movie ASAP. I really don't know why we're still talking about this.

Numes

Sorry, being a huge baseball fan, I can't let this one go. It's Mark McGwire.

edwardnortonfan

Hey, for caligulathegod and Noir Fan, I've been searching Amazon, and the running times of their "Nosferatu" editions range from 64 minutes to 94 minutes...is there really that large a disparity between the transfers? This version (available to watch free online) is 94 minutes long, and you'd think if someone were going to put a version online it would be the lowest public domain trash available, but this seems to be a solid version.

http://cinema.lycos.com/movies/nosferatu

There seems to be a lot of fighting about whether the Image version or the Kino version is the best version, any thoughts?

Pizza

I'm an outsider when it comes to these movie challenges so take my opinion with a grain of salt. (And please don't beat me up in Oct. if I make any mistakes in what I select to watch because I'm doing this for fun, not competition, and as an excuse to watch a chunk of my ever-growing unwatched DVD pile.) I look at this event as sort of going to one of those 24 hour movie marathons at a theater. I've been to a few, and the one that impressed me the most had a program built on movies, trailers, TV shows (The Twilight Zone to be specific) and special guests that talked and took part in Q&As (which one could consider to be like watching a documentary.) I had a grand time. Now, I certainly understand why trailers wouldn't count for anything but atmosphere, yet, the other stuff isn't "fluff." For the hardcore participant, maybe a solution is a point system such as movies, 4 points; documentaries, 2 points; hour TV shows, 2 points; half hour, 1 point. If people thing someone watched a truncated version of film, knock a point off (although I don't think it's a big deal either way). For simplicity sake, the other solution is to strickly make it just "movies" and then it's just a count of the total viewed. Again, I"m not trying to step on any toes and I'll gladly live by whatever the rules are, I'm just trying to help. I'm certainly not planning on winning this thing and fully expect to be on the bottom. But, I also plan on having a grand time in Oct. watching the cool, the bad and the beautifully awful horror films in my collection and maybe discuss some of them with other horror fans on these boards.

caligulathegod

I stand corrected. Hope that doesn't ruin my metaphor

Please allow me to apologize, as it is obvious I am coming across wrong. I assure you it wasn't intended that way. In a spirited discussion sometimes the niceties of discourse are set aside and also tone is hard to convey in print. Our responses weren't meant to be snarky as much as funny. Had I made the error and had it pointed out, my response would have been a nice Homer Simpson "D'OH!" and then laughed at my own mistake (I mean, someone comments that a film that should be watched would be disqualified because it is too short then the film turns out to be really seven hours? Who isn't going to make a joke about that? It's not to be mean, it's just funny.). We were just hoping you would take it in the same spirit. I think that's why Noir made the Lez Vampire joke. Also, I certainly wasn't implying that you were cheating by saying we caught you. I meant we caught the error.

I hope we can put this behind us and be friends.

Anyway, as to your other question, I think there's not really that much difference. Here I will admit to being hasty. I completely forgot about one important issue. The difference between the 64 minute ones and the 94 minutes ones is very slight. A few shots here and there, but it's mostly projection speed. The 94 minute ones run at 18 frames per second while the 64 minute ones are 24-25 frames per second.

You can't go wrong with either the Image or the Kino. Both have nice sharp pictures. Image is less pricey. Image has a great informative commentary by a renown German cinema scholar, and the new Kino Ultimate has a nice new restored image and has a nice documentary and even has two copies (one with the original German intertitles and one with new English translations-the German one also has subtitles for translation). That linked one is pretty crappy. For instance, the scene where Knock is looking at the paper with all the arcane symbols, in the Image and Kino ones, you can see them in perfect details. The public domain ones are fuzzy and blurry. If I can dig up my public domain copy, I'll post screen shots. I've got a couple public domain copies, including the one packaged with Edison's Frankenstein, and also that crappy Heavy Metal one Noir was joking about.

JerryKILL

My suggestion is the same as last year: no rules, no prizes. It's going to be a long month, I hope the thread survives.

riotinmyskull

i don't know about the rest of you but i'm just going to watch a shit ton of horror movies...i'm aiming for the 100 mark this year but we'll see. i really couldn't care less in regards to all the complaining about commentaries and documentaries and runtimes (though i don't see why anyone wouldn't want MOH to count). i'm really getting anxious and i haven't watched a horror movie in about 2 weeks now and i'm freaking out and can't wait for october 1st, i plan to watch all 5 of romero's dead series that day (i have the day off from work).

Darth Maher

I've been trying to do this for 2 years now (of course it was only 4 movies then...) I finally got to my Romero Dead-A-Thon in July when I was compiling scenes for a Romero "Dead" tribute video I was working on.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

We already have a fair definition of what a feature is. Chad set the time limit based off of what the Academy people have already debated about.

edit: You keep saying there's confusion about what a feature is when there really isn't. The point being that you just don't like the run time. You say there aren't a lot of movies that fall within the 40-60 minute run time so there shouldn't be a problem with anyone watching what few movies there are that fall into that section. If someone doesn't want to watch it, then they don't need to and they don't need to worry about someone else watching them. Not everyone likes or wants to watch the same thing.

We already have a definition of a feature so we really don't need to be cutting out some movies simply because some people don't like the low running time. They're still movies by definition, just not necessarily your definition.

The Beast of Yucca Flats
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054673/

Running time is 54 minutes. It's listed as horror and described by everyone on the page as being a movie.

In your opinion, why should this horror movie not count in a horror movie challenge?

caligulathegod

I'm just saying, watch whatever you want, just make sure it is feature length. 55 minutes is just a line and it's a line that is close enough to what constitutes what is generally perceived as a legitimate feature film (that is, one that could be released in theaters) in the most objective way possible (or at least did in its era. No way even a 55 minute films gets to be called a feature today). I've said two or three times that it doesn't need to be strict. 53, 54 minutes is close enough. Use your own judgment. They don't have to be theatrically released, but a theatrical release is a de facto template. If we had a 55 minute (or so) rule, we wouldn't even have to define the documentaries. It would cut out the DVD fluff while still allowing stuff like the Exorcist doc on the 25th Anniversary DVD or the Jaws doc.

I've made my points, and either you are going to agree, or you are not going to. I can't force the issue and don't want to. I'm just trying to persuade. I figured if we had a nice objective and reasonable definition, all the other things would take care of themselves. It would reduce arguments and give us a worthy challenge. If getting higher numbers of titles is that important, then go ahead and keep it at 40 minutes. I just want to watch a bunch of Horror movies and have fun.

nemein

Mod note: Two quick things... LEAVE THE POLITICAL COMMENTS/BANTERING out of here. If you want to talk politics go to the political forum. Taking pot shots/posting politically based snipes at each other is only going to bring things further off track.


For those of you who didn't know there is a "not safe for work" tag available now. Use [ nsfw ] and [ /nsfw ] without the spaces

NSFW:

It works just like the spoiler tag

Before posting anything though please read/be familiar w/ the "not safe for work" rules found here http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=530709 Since this was mostly an Other forum issue it was only really discussed/posted here, but it applies to the entire site.

thanks

NoirFan

The best edition is the R2 MoC release, but if you don't have a region-free player than the Kino is the way to go. Here is a comparison.

Giles

from what I can tell the review for the MoC version of Nosferatu is region 0 PAL, which surprisingly can play on some of players that are not region free - my Philips and portable Zenith player.