Chad

Fire away.

LickTheABCs

Had a blast. Didn't have to spin-kick any relatives. All I needed was FOUR more. Lookin' back on it, that's the only thing that sucked about it.

Well, other than the Funny Games remake. Oh, and Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Cardsfan111

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Trevor

I'm thinking that perhaps we won't need the 31 films subset next year. I obviously liked the idea, but very few people participated. It looks like maybe only a dozen or so of us watched more than a handful of the list, and only about 6 people actively participated in the thread.

I feel that if done, it needs to be in a separate thread, for spoiler reasons, but if only a few people are going to participate maybe it isn't worth the trouble.

Maybe I'm wrong and there are a dozen or more lurkers who liked the discussion, but I doubt that.

Numes

I liked the 31 films subset, but I was restricted by how many of the 31 films I actually had in my collection.

I thought the discussion was great, and definitely was a lot more in-depth than could be had by talking about "random" movies in the other thread.

Perhaps more of the subset could be chosen by the DVDTalk members next year. That would, in theory, spawn more discussion. However, it was disappointing that some of the people who picked the movies didn't post anything about the movie they chose.

I'd say it's definitely worth trying again next year.

edwardnortonfan

I personally liked the 31 movies idea. I even went out and bought the movies I didn't have so I could watch them (I even bought "The Shining" which is amazing considering how much I LOVE that movie). The only reason I didn't post in the discussion more was that I got so sick that eventually when it became clear I wasn't going to be watching many movies at all, I restricted my viewing to movies that happened to come on the movie channels while I was flipping around on the few days I was up to watching movies at all (that's why my list was so weird this year with so many off the wall titles like the abysmal "Monster Arc" and "Rottweiler"). I still tried to participate in the thread when we were discussing movies I'd seen (and of course when it came time to discuss te movie I chose). Like Numes, I think the discussion was good and I think it would be worth trying again this year.

cinemaphile

I think the problem with the 31 subset is if you're going to specify which movies to watch on a certain day, you're assuming everyone has the film (or has it readily available on that day). But if they don't, they just have to hope it's available to rent on that specific day. And if they're like me, many people don't want to (or can't afford to) make blind buys just to participate.
Not a criticism, just an explanation of why some (myself included) may not have participated.

RobCA

No offense, but I hope next year, more people use spoiler tags for their checklist. Maybe it's just because I don't use the checklist, but it got to be a pain having to scroll through them. At one point, I had to hit 'Page Down' four times to scroll through someone's list... and they'd only watched one movie.

Rob

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

What if it was limited to movies that could be seen on youtube/google videos or, assuming there's a netflix free trial around that time, include those that can be streamed from the site?

Trevor

Agreed. Whoever came up with that idea deserves a , was it Dick L? Way too many people included the checklist but then didn't even use it. Chad, on that cool separate box thing that you do with some of your posts, can you include the forum code to make it all spoiler? I'm lazy and haven't figured out that formatting thing you guys do...
Good points. We tried to pick films that many people would already have in their collection, or were easily attainable. One thing I did, perhaps not entirely kosher, was to rent all the ones that I didn't own as soon as we set the lineup, and create my own Divx versions of them, tossing after viewing.
Yep, but remember that part of the point is to get us to try new things.
Agreed. More early participation and choosing may get more participation.

Another idea would be to have genre nights instead of specific film nights. Each of the following could be a night: a vampire film, zombie, Frankenstein, Giallo, silent, holiday, outer space, Stephen King, Bava, Fulci, werewolf, aliens, killer animals, serial killer, etc.

It should encourage more discussion. For example, on the Frankenstein night we had, it was limited to the classic original. Many people may not have it, may not like older movies, dislike that particular film (blasphemy), or had seen it recently and not want to watch it again. But they may have other Frankenstein-ish films that they want to watch, like the Re-animator films for example. More people would watch a film, so more would post, and therefore more conversations, which was/is the ultimate goal.

Giles

that'd be very helpful for the next challenge since I was really trying to go through my (ever growing) 'to watch' pile, of which a few of those titles could have easily fallen into one of those subgenres.

cinemaphile

A STELLAR idea!! This might encourage more discussion than a single film (though people could still discuss particular films). Plus, the added benefit is the discussion might give us ideas for additional films to view for the overall challenge.

...or perhaps a "featured" film pick, but then the alternative would be the related genre.
For example, Day 1 could be "Nosferatu"/Vampire films, Day 5: "Night of the Living Dead"/zombie films, etc.
(*genres could always repeat, like if you have both Nosferatu and Dracula on the list)

Trevor

Thanks. I think I mentioned it a couple months back, but it didn't fly.

And yes, I was already working on that "featured"/alternate formatting in my mind. Perhaps we could even have a list of off-the-wall alternates, titles that you may not think of as a "whatever" film, but do meet the criteria. Had a couple specific examples in mind, but they slipped it.

cinemaphile

Sorry, I wasn't around

Joined in summer as a Bargain forum watcher, and only recently started joining in the rest of the forums.

Another opportunity to promote discussion. Once the 31 days list is posted, people could make recommendations and suggestions.

Trevor

Belated welcome, and congratulations. I think you took a much speedier climb into the rest of the forum than most people. A lot of people come here for bargains only, never post or only post ?s about deals, and don't even know we have other discussion forums here. Not that there is anything wrong with all of that, but I think that many people don't know what they're missing from the rest of the forums.

I was a bargain forum only user for most of my first 5 or so years here.

Darth Maher

I'll second this opinion. Aside from wanting to include TV shows/specials etc (and I'm in the minority anyway so it's a "moo" point), I like the challenge just the way it is.

As for the 31 Films Subset, I would have participated more had I actually been less busy and able to watch more movies (I counted a whopping 13, including the 6 Wild Cards). I was actually one of the first to suggest the 31 Films Subset so I'd hate to see it go away.

Maybe we could take a poll next year (closer to the start of the challenge) to see how many people plan on participating and whether or not it should have it's own thread. I agree with Trevor that if next year's will have the same amount of participation as this year's, then it should just be included in the regular discussion thread.

As for the availability of the films for the subset, there were only about 3 that I was not able to find and had I looked harder, I probably would have. I got most of the one's that I didn't own from the library. Many had to be "inter-libraried" from other Illinois libraries, but the list was posted early enough that I was able to get most of them. Of course, as you can see from my list... I didn't watch many of them. But I had all intentions of doing so. I still plan to watch the ones I have never seen eventually. Maybe I'll even dig up the old thread and post my thoughts.

Finally, I'm all for the "genre" days as well. This will allow some flexibility and probably expand the discussion a bit.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

macnorton

I came in late to the other thread, but it seems like the rules are solid. I wanted to participate, but that is another issue.

I think the 31 days subset was a good idea. Trevor hit it when he said picking films that most people "should" have. I also love the genre idea...I have a ton of stuff like that and I could easily get those as well. I am all for it.

Lastly a question. I read through the rules and something came up...what if you do have a horror movie that got the MST3K treatment and is only available that way, does it count? Or does it fall into the TV realm?

smashthesymbols

I like the idea of the 31 days subset. I just didn't have access to a lot of the movies. I was also afraid to go in the thread for the days I had the movie out of fear of seeing spoilers for movies from previous days where discussion was still ongoing.

Numes

I think almost everyone did a good job putting the name of the movie they were discussing in the "title" field of their post. All I did was scan that title and if it was a movie I had not seen, I skipped it.

Like you, I only saw a handful of them, but was easily able to differentiate the posts without having to worry about spoilers.

LickTheABCs

My problem with the 31 film subset, and I know I'm probably alone with this, but most of the movies I DID end up watching, but spread throughout the month no where near the day it was scheduled.

Like I watched the Exorcist at 10:00 on Halloween night, like usual, instead of earlier in the month.. and I always intended too. Most of the films I watched were pretty much off the cuff. I took 4 DVD's, all of different types, and would pick based on which I haven't seen in a while, which seemed more fun, etc.

On top of that, I didn't feel like going on and on about let's say "The Shining" when everyone else watched it, and wrote their reviews, what would be at that time 4 pages earlier..

Don't know if that made sense, or not.

Numes

See, I did the exact opposite. I looked at when they were scheduled and saved them for that day (or close to that day.) That was kind of the point of the subset challenge.

It made sense, but I wouldn't worry about posting something about a movie just because it was discussed previously. It's not like you're bumping a thread from 2 years ago.

Darth Maher

I think the point of the "subset" was to discuss the movies on a certain day whether you watched that movie on that day or not. So if you watched "The Shining" on 10/1, but we weren't discussing it until 10/15 (just making up dates here), you didn't have to re-watch it. The dates were just to give people time to watch the movies. Like "Shadow of the Vampire" was for 10/2, but I didn't watch it until over a week later. I then chimed in with my opinion at that time. Of course, nobody had any reply so maybe you have a valid point here

Trevor

I'm actually still meditating on your words and formulating my reply.

But yeah, the whole point was to try to watch it on that day, or to at least discuss it on that day. More to encourage discussion, but also a sort of shared movie-night experience was the goal.

By the way, anyone else do all 31? I went early on 1 of them (for my checklist race), but otherwise did all 31 on the right days.

clckworang

I believe it was determined that MST3K films counted and did not have to be included as wildcards.

OK, the problems I have with some of the suggestions for changing the 31 Films subset.

The genre idea is too similar to the other checklist that many people are already doing. Plus, I don't think it would inspire more discussion. It might even cause less. And I don't think the discussion would be as in depth. With multiple people watching the same movie, there is more room for discussion/debate/interpretation. Otherwise, it would just be people saying, "I watched this and it was good." Or spoiler tags all over the place.

And I guess that dovetails pretty well into my issue with putting 31 days discussion into the general thread. It would discourage some of the in depth discussion we had for fear of spoilers. For the most part, the general thread stuck with very general discussion about some films, some recommendations and talk specifically about the contest.

edwardnortonfan

Agreed on both counts.

Personally, I would have liked more discussion on the 31 films, and I'll try to get my cancer in line so I can participate more next year, but I really liked the detailed (albeit limited) discussions we had this year. I think it was worth having the subset for the few really good conversations I had and the cool comments and reviews I got to read from others, and I wouldn't want to muck that up too much next year and miss out on the cool, in-depth discussions we had this year. If we do the 31 days again I think it's wroth trying things the way we had them this year (even though I crapped out on the challenge and won't get to pick a movie next year). The thing is, it takes every new idea some time to take off; even the whole Halloween challenge itself probably took time to evolve and get the kind of participation it has now, so maybe with time the 31 films subset will grow into something that has a lot of participation, but even if it doesn't, I still think the caliber of discussion we had this year was worth the effort. Just in my opinion of course.