Let’s go over some ground rules before we start, so we don’t descend into chaos in the middle of what will hopefully be a glorious run of being awake in the dark, watching great movies. And then talking about them. Let’s talk about movies.
How to play:
I picked out a list of people who replied to the original Movie Club thread within 24 hours of the opening post. This group of 30 are the “Ground Floor” group.
The names of the Ground Floor group were picked out in a draw that tells us the sequence of picks.
Each person will pick a movie for the rest of us to watch when it is his/her turn to choose a film for the group.
Once that person picks the movie, he/she will start a new thread immediately titled “Sight Club #X: Movie Name” or “Movie Club #X: Movie Name”.
We have 2 weeks from the date of the thread’s creation before we move on to another movie. During those 2 weeks, the thread will feature a discussion of the movie. The discussion can start a few hours after the start of the thread theoretically, if you immediately start watching the movie after the pick has been announced.
After the 2 weeks are over the thread can go on if the discussion is lively, but a new thread will start anyway to discuss the next movie pick.
Please watch the film first before commenting in the thread. If Pulp Fiction or The Godfather for instance are assigned for a particular week, you should watch them again and then comment. “I watched it in college” won’t cut it.
There’s no guilt for skipping a movie because you couldn’t find it or whatever, we’re doing this to have fun and to have an intelligent discussion on movies.
Please don’t whine about some picks. Skip that week’s movie if you aren’t up for it.
Anyone who isn’t part of the ground floor guys can obviously participate. I’ll draw up the first floor lists soon.
The picks in the original movie club thread are not binding. You can change them as your turn comes up.
I hope I didn’t miss anything, hit me on the head if I have!
It was decided to do a draw each week out of the list of ground floor people, so the old list is gone now. Here is the list as someone new is chosen each couple of weeks.
TomChick
Tom came first, so he’ll pick his movie and start a new thread about it.
I’ll be sending out a PM reminder a couple of days before the next person’s pick is due.
I think it would be better to ignore the imdb list, although of course some people’s choices will coincide with that list. But there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of equally great movies that are not in the Top 250. When I was coming up with a mental list of movies for Sight Club, about two-thirds of them weren’t in the Top 250 - stuff like Fellini’s Amarcord, or Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog, or the insanely brilliant Branded To Kill by Suzuki, any one of which I think would be awesome choices for the Club.
Oh man, I’m gonna feel like such a tool when I don’t have some awesome pick. I feel like my taste in movies is embarrassingly mainstream; anything I pick that you guys will like will be so obvious you’ll all have watched it to death already. Yikes!
Don’t worry about it, Wholly. The cool thing about this idea, as far as I’m concerned, is giving people excuses to rewatch stuff that they maybe haven’t seen in a while as well as get exposed to films they haven’t seen yet or haven’t heard of. Besides, all the big film nuts here on Qt3 (as far as I can tell) like it all: highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow. Hell, I voluntarily watched Showgirls* again last week, so believe me I’m in no position to pooh-pooh anybody else’s taste in movies.
w00t! I’ll post my pick tomorrow. And no offense to Keil or Kareem, but I’m most certainly not going to call it Sight Club. I’ve had my fill of Fight Club puns. :)
I’m sorry I didn’t come up with something more inclusive for the guys who missed the cut-off. Honestly I don’t think I could have come up with something terribly satisfying anyway since a lot of folks were interested (which is fantastic).
As always I’m open to suggestions to improve the arrangement as it proceeds, so post here any suggestions you have (esp. related to being more inclusive) and if any of them gain traction we can implement them. I hope this won’t feel too rigid.
I was kidding when I suggested it, but if Kareem likes it that much I’ll go with it. Somebody whip up a logo with a burly man holding a Netflix envelope carved out of soap.
Heh, I’m fine with it really. You can call it “The Movie Club …” if you want to, it’s not school (I’ll add that choice to the thread title guideline). I’m just a sucker for all kinds of puns.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but I’m glad we’re not going to use Sight Club. Something about that pun makes me cringe.
As long as we’re in the mood to discuss the “rules,” I’d suggest two changes: we ought to do weekly picks, and we should merely encourage people to see the movie, rather than make it a hard fast rule. If you’ve seen Godfather and want to comment, why not? You can say, “I haven’t watched this since college” and the rest of us will know how to weight your opinion. I’d hate to discourage anyone to offer an opinion, especially if the only reason they’re not offering an opinon is because they haven’t seen the movie in question within the last two weeks. Most of us are going to watch the movie before we discuss and we can certainly mock the people who rely on memory, but we shouldn’t make it a rule.
As for bi-weekly, it just takes too long. If a movie comes up that you don’t care for, you’re sitting out for a long time and more likely to complain or have negative feelings about the club. Whereas if we do it weekly, it means you’re going into the club knowing that you’re probably going to miss a few, there is less likelihood that anyone will feel compelled to see and comment on every movie, and it can just be something that moves forward and people can join or drop out as they feel so inclined.
We should find a way to build more randomness into who is going to pick. I’m number 7 on the list and if we go with bi-weekly that’s 3 months from now. If you haven’t gotten in on the ground floor, there is a huge wait to get to pick (over a year!). I’m not sure how to solve this. Perhaps we let people trade their “spot” in the line. I’m looking over the current list and some of favorite posters for movies aren’t on it (Desslock, Rywill).
I disagree with weekly picks. I think that would move too fast for people with busy schedules. Two weeks is a decent amount of time for folks to Netflix a title, or get it from Blockbuster, and then have a few days for watching time to sort of, you know, happen. If there’s a movie you want to talk about, there’s nothing preventing you from posting about it. The rest of the movies subforum will not be shut down while Qt3 Movie Club is in effect. :)
And if I have any say, I’d absolutely insist that you watch the movie if you want to participate in the thread. There’s a big difference between a having a conversation with people who just saw a movie and people who saw a movie last month, let alone sometime in the last several years. That’s the point of book clubs, for instance: people are bringing a recently shared experience to the club. IMO, the “recently” part of the equation is crucial.
I do think Tim has a point about randomness. It might be cool to not know so far in advance whose picks are coming up. I’d love to be surprised by, say, a Desslock, Equis, or Cathcart recommendation when I’m not expecting it. I’ll be sad if it’s going to be over a year before any of those guys gets his say.
You have a good point about the logistics involved with getting to the store/netflix mailer. I was thinking the shorter time span might make it easier to jump in and out of a discussion, but perhaps instead it’ll do more to inhibit getting a good discussion off the ground.
You may also have a good point about insisting on watching to participate, too. I wanted people to feel welcome to comment, but we’re having the disucssion on the Internet, so maybe we ought to put up at least one “barrier” to entry.
I’d encourage people to think up other stategies for adding some randomness to picking the movies. What we have is fine to start out, but maybe we could refine it with a better process. Perhaps we should elect an illumnati or a Movie Club Board to do all the picking. We could use wacky polls or sacrifice virgin chickens to try to influence their decision.
Because you won’t be up on the topic’s material. I mean, why have anyone watch the movies, then? Why don’t we just have Tom start a thread about a movie he’s seen or likes and then we can all talk about? We could that weekly, since nobody will have to rent or watch the film if they don’t, y’know, feel like it. You really need to realize how much that defeats the purpose of this entire venture.
Why do we have to cater to people to lazy to properly participate? Don’t we have an entire for that?
Tim, maybe you should start your own film club, because those rules pretty much utterly break the spirit of what this is trying to accomplish. I mean, no offense dude, but here’s a summary of your rules:
Nobody actually has to watch the films. But if they don’t and you did, well you can totally flame them, w00t problem solved sick burn high-fives.
The films that nobody actually has to watch will be recommended weekly, so you’ll easily end up missing out on the schedule frequently and the related threads are going to lap over into each other heavily as time goes on.
But who cares anyway since commitment of any kind is not remotely a priority.
Seriously dude, you really really missed the point of this.
