On the counting angst: [Charlie Brown]Good grief![/Charlie Brown]. This is why I've gone to the 1=1 rule.

As for our content, I haven't completely decided what to do this month. I bridged this and the History Challenge with a couple episodes of Ancient Aliens. . Oh vey, what a bunch of kooks! Think I'll check out my TV shelves and pick a series likely for the trade/sell pile.

You're agonizing over this *way* too much. I'd say just leave it alone. After all, these all started as "movie" watching challenges. Taking into account the running time only came up when people started clamoring to allow TV programs and other short material. At the end of the day the number of films watched is truly only a matter of "bragging rights".

I've watched a handful of movies these past two days. A couple were first watches: Journey to the Center of the Earth (tv movie) and Galaxy Quest. Both were worth the watch, though I was expecting to like Galaxy Quest more than I did. I thought it picked up toward the end and liked the ending, but it was a bit of a let down. I've had a lot of people tell me they enjoyed it so thought it would be better.

Journey starred Ricky Schroder. I was prepared not to like it from the bad reviews and ended up enjoying it. Not the best movie and it didn't follow the book very well, but it got the basics right. A team goes under the earth looking for someone who had gone there before them and didn't come back. Basic storyline. Worth watching if you ever catch it in the cheap bin where I found my copy.

I'll probably not be watching for the next day or so as my surgery is tomorrow afternoon. It's outpatient, so I'll be able to come home and rest but don't think I will be up for continuing the challenge for the next while. I do expect that once I recover somewhat, I'll be eager to take my mind off the pain! Was hoping I could get one more movie in tonight, but think I'll end up sleeping instead...

I also started to get a little too caught up in tracking down sci-fi and fantasy films that I didn't own that were in some of the icheckmovie lists. I've long since completed their big sci-fi list but some of the others have a few movies as well. Most of the stuff I don't own and haven't seen mostly looks like crap, I just miss getting as many checks as I could.

I figured I'll work on season 2 of Ancient Aliens at work and go with my mood at home. Just finished the director's cut of Alien. I might get a little bit of the director's cut of Aliens before going off to bed and then starting Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Once I get through the Alien movies, I think I'll go through the Star Wars original trilogy on blu-ray. I started IV but never finished it. My kids liked the first 3 but 4 put them to sleep. I don't really blame them because I couldn't finish it as a kid either.

I hear the bastard that's running the animation challenge is going to start it July 31st, so there's a one day overlap for animated sci-fi and fantasy.

I almost watched one of my few anime discs last night, glad I changed my mind. Cyber City Something or Other is now queued for the 31st.

I ended up finally watching the pilot episode of The 4400. I enjoyed the premise and most of the cinematography, but found the acting and some of the dialogue to me quite mediocre. I'll finish this short first season, but almost hope it stays sort of meh so that I don't feel compelled to buy anymore seasons.

How rude ! I wanted to watch Transformers: the Movie for this challenge, guess I'll make it my last viewing on the 31st. I just started the sci-fi challenge, now I gotta start thinking about animation challenge. These are good problems to have.

Looks like I'll be watching some Robotech or Star Blazers on the 31st. Watched Incredible Petrified World last night, rather dull movie that came across more as an adventure movie than actual sci fi, but IMDB listed it as sci fi, so it still counted.

Oddly enough, not all movies in the 50 movie Sci Fi Classics set by MC are even classified as sci fi by imdb. The Incredible Petrified World was the only movie on Side A of Disc 1 that even had a sci fi tag under imdb's classification, the others were horror or adventure.

I've got enough anime sci-fi to last me the rest of the year, at least. So I'll probably focus on live-action Japanese sci-fi this month: Godzilla/Gamera/Kaiju movies and tokusatsu TV shows: Ultraman, Space Sheriff Gavan, Super Robot Red Baron, Iron King, and a couple dozen sentai shows, including the most recent one I have: "Celestial Clothing Squadron Goseiger," which I watched four episodes from last night and this morning, before getting ready for work:

Just finished another movie in the 50 movie Sci Fi Classics set, The Amazing Transparent Man. Interestng to see a take where the scientist wasn't actually a Mad Scientist.

I went through that and the Horror Classics set a long time ago and enjoyed both. I also recall hitting those odd movies that didn't seem to fit in the set. I want to say there was some film in the horror set about some guy that worked for a newspaper. Had nothing to do with horror but it was a decent enough drama. It's been about 10 years, so my memory is a bit hazy.

Super sad to hear that Andy Griffith passed away this morning. His sitcom is perhaps my favorite show of all time. Tempted to veg in front of the TV watching episodes of it today, but the Challenge addict in me wonders if he has anything that would qualify as fantasy or sci-fi. I guess the animated Christmas specials he lent his voice to would count, right?

I also was saddened to hear of Andy Griffith's passing. As for any SF credits, there was his short-lived TV series Salvage 1.

I'm on a 1970's / made for TV / post-apocalyptic roll! All the movies I've seen thus far have fit this mold, I didn't plan it, it just happened. 15 episodes of Ark II and the made for TV movies Genesis II, Planet Earth, Strange New World and Where Have All the People Gone?
Trouble is I've only been able to check "post-apocalyptic" and "film from the 1970's" off the checklist.

i rewatched a childhood favorite of mine Predators I didnt watch alot of action/sci fi movies growing up but this movie I remember watching fairly often. havent seen it since and was curious if it held up and was pleasantly surprised how much i still enjoy this movie.

I also pushed my way thru she wolves of the wasteland that was not nearly as enjoyable especially trying to finish it at 4am

I have been on a buying spree for my 1st animated challenge this August, so this is good news.

+1, there goes all my (albiet unrealistic) hopes of a Matlock reunion movie... RIP Andy Griffith aka Matlock. Very uncool.

I ran into that same issue a few times on the 2 horror 50 packs I purchased for last year's Horror Challenge. I got to where I'd check each disk just before I put it in and skip the non-qualifiers. I distinctly recall a couple of disks where only 1 title out of 4 had horror as a genre on either IMDB or AllMovie.com.

I've yet to open the 2 50 film sets I picked up for the challenge this year - "Sci-Fi Invasion" and "Sci-Fi Classics". I'd really like to think they have a better handle on this but the "Sci-Fi Classics" set *does* have a few peplum films that I wouldn't consider to be SF so I look them up to find at least 5 of them have both Fantasy and Sci-Fi as genres. Giants of Rome is the only peplum I found that doesn't qualify and has the expected "Action/Adventure/Drama/History/War" genres. In a quick look at the set contents it appears that there are about 8 or 9 films that do not have Sci-Fi as a genre. It appears that even the non-qualifiers are of the type films that would regularly show up on the various "creature feature" programs.

I'm curious as to the opinion of our illustrious moderator. Would *all* of the films on such sets count simply because of their inclusion in a set with a Sci-Fi label or does IMDB need to be the final arbiter?

This is also a big problem with Netflix. If you pick out a movie based on their genre classification of Sci-Fi/Fantasy there are many that do not qualify according to IMDB. After I watched a few that didn't qualify I had to start checking with IMDB first, which was very annoying.

Unless it's something completely out of place, like Roots being in a sci-fi box set, I don't mind it counting. It's the equivalent of things that wouldn't really count that air on SyFy but do because it's SyFy.

If you find stuff at Amazon or Netflix that are categorized as sci-fi and/or fantasy, that's good enough. Imdb and allmovie are just decent places to start.

Thanks! Found the pilot TV film on YouTube and am watching it now.
Will likely watch the Andy Griffith Show reunion film tonight. And shed a few more tears. He really was my favorite TV star.

List of Sci-Fi movies that won Oscars?

Avatar
Independence Day
The Wizard of Oz
ET
Disney's Beauty and the Beast
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
Return of the King
War of the Worlds
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Hth

I should change that to nominated.