A game for 2019?

[Lencho of the Apes]

If we want to institute a Cup or a new edition of Movie Club or any other year-long endeavor, we should be planning that thing. T minus ten and counting...

[---]

Some possible Cups:

- Cast Member Cup
- short film Directors Cup

I'd be more active in a Movie Club this time around

[josiahmorgan11]

cast member would be good, lots of room for variation and strategic 'team management'

-

[sally]

oooh, can we get some more ideas? i like the games, if mainly because it's a rare opportunity to watch a film at the same time as another living human. anything other than a directors cup. mainly because that limits you to directors that have been lucky enough to secure funding for a certain minimum number of films...same with actors or any individual involved in production.

that leaves world cups, but they've been done to death? or not? how about a year cup? (yes i love the year polls) what's the best year in cinema history? (1920-something)

[mesnalty]

I'll always advocate for a genre cup, but year cup is an intriguing idea! On the other hand, I'll probably have less time to watch films next year so a shorts cup would be pretty convenient for me personally.

[sally]

shorts could be interesting!

[Lencho of the Apes]

I'm not sure it's an idea I like, but for the sake of suggesting something new and different, what about focusing exclusively on films of the current year (or current decade, "last five years" or something) , and finding some format within which to work through them as a game? Countries in competition within the year of release, or continents in comp... Alternatively, we could do a world cup focusing on a different year for each round... Other variations on a year-based premise will probably suggest themselves if anyone warms to the idea...

[kanafani]

Whatever it is, I am in.

[...]

Yeah, anything but a directors cup, the funding is one thing, but worse for me is in trying to bring myself to watch more movies by directors I already know I don't like much. It gets to feel depressing and repetitive. At least cast members can end up in a variety of different kinds of movies, even if there is the obvious tendency towards type casting them in similarish roles.

[wba2]

whatever it is, I am out. But I hope you all find something enjoyable!

[sally]

could we really do a 'recent films' thing that was remotely legal? that would be my only concern there.

[Lencho of the Apes]

That's a good question, actually; I didn't think about it in those terms.

I was thinking about the plethora of recent releases available on a certain page that somehow manages to stay a half-step ahead of the law, and imagining that we could use that without implicating ourselves in illegalities (like those blogs that post a disclaimer saying "these things are available, and our only function here is to tell our readers that they're available -- we're not directly implicated in the file-sharing being done.") … especially if we covered our tracks with any diligence... but it may be that it is indeed too shady and 'gray' for us to dabble in it. Bure would know better than I.

Whether it's worth our while to watch current releases together is another thing I have doubts about.

[---]

I don't think that sharing new releases is necessarily more illegal/risky than sharing older films, especially the arthouse stuff we watch... but am I out of the loop on something, where are you guys getting new releases?

[Wulff]

Triple threat:

Peter Hutton v James Benning v Frederick Wiseman.

[karl]

Triple threat:

Peter Hutton v James Benning v Frederick Wiseman.

Sounds like a good cure for insomnia.

Well, I dunno, I don't mind me a good dull ole director's showdown, cos I think that everyone has a few pet figures they think are underappreciated (springing immediately to mind: Masashiro Shinoda, Kaneto Shindo, Keisuke Kinoshita, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Kazimierz Kutz, István Szabó, Zoltán Fábri) or who have been so long canonized that everyone snobbishly declares "Yeah, watched all his/her movies back in film school and I'm so sophisticated now I've long since moved past that kind of stuff." I think: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Chaplin, Ozu, De Sica. Directors most folk reckon they "know," but whose films they haven't seen since they were acned 22 year-olds. Sometimes it's pretty terrific to see Sunrise or Shoeshine or Seventh Seal or Seven Samurai for the first time in a couple decades, remember just how damned good those movies are.

Other than that, nations is good. I'd go with Poland perhaps. Were I to run a horse in such thing.

[---]

Any other thoughts?

Discussion has died off.

There was a bit of support for a shorts Cup. What do people think of that? What would be the parametres? Would we all pick one director of shorts, or would it be by nation or what. Lots of options.

If it's a shorts Cup, I don't mind helping organize, since it won't take but a few months. But if it's gonna be something that stretches over the summer I can't help...although I think in this day and age of SCFZ the Resources are a simpler way to do this than someone managing a blog... so all anyone needs to do is make pairings and update a table of results.

[---]

There was also some level of support for something year-focused. What do people think of that?

Could that be combined with shorts? Everyone takes shorts from a specific year?

[---]

Everyone takes shorts from a specific year?

This is what my vote would go to. Either that or a Shorts Directors Cup, but some people really don't want to do Directors, I know.

[kanafani]

I like the year theme. I don't watch shorts much, so my first reaction is that I am not so crazy about the shorts aspect, but I guess I can get used to the idea.

[---]

Okay, let's say there are four main possibilities.

Director
Year
Shorts by director
Shorts by year

Everyone please say which of those you'd enter and if possible your order of preference

I'll do it no matter what, whether one of those four or something else. Order: year shorts, director shorts, year, director

[DT.]

Year
Director
Shorts by year
Shorts by director

[kanafani]

Year
Director
Shorts by director
Shorts by year

[sally]

My brain is not up to any actual criteria but my ideal game would be something that's endlessly diverse, or where I don't get locked into something I don't like, like plodding through a director I'm not thrilled by, or trying to watch horror films through finger-slits. Even locking into a year might get a bit sparse on surprises. But I'm not sure I can think of a format that avoids that. Countries mitigated it a little, but excluded the smaller film industries that don't boast enough for a cup. So.... My choices:

Shorts (by some as yet unmentioned criteria - I'd really like to expand my knowledge of esp. narrative shorts)
Shorts by year
Year
Shorts by director

[mesnalty]

Shorts by year
Shorts
Director
Shorts by director

[augusto]

not sure how much time i'll have to participate, but how about a more free-wheeling shorts by theme idea, that can be interpreted in any way -- to cite one example off the top of my head, shorts produced by films division of india (so neither all from one year nor from one director).

edit: ok, think sally said more or less the same thing in her first option above...

[---]

are there really only 5 people interested in entering years/directors/whatever this ends up being a cup of? hrm. even 8 could have some sort of interesting competition... 5 is... not really enough. folks?

[flip]

oh sorry i wasn't involved in the planning discussion, but there's a good chance i'd participate, especially if we do shorts, since that makes it less of a time commitment. maybe if there are other people like me, it would make sense to decide a format, then see who might want to manage.

[---]

Looks like we've got:
bure420
DT.
kanafani
twodeadmagpies
mesnalty
flip

who will or will most likely participate in a Cup of some sort. Can we get two more? Lencho? rischka?

[Lencho of the Apes]

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[---]

Might not be worth organizing a Cup if only 6 people are interested in managing... might as well all just post some shorts in Resources.

Lencho, think you'll be organizing a Movie Club this year? Personally I'd watch more of people's picks this time around.