Peculiar Film Viewing Rituals

[aox]

Personally, everything in German scares me.

[Perkins Cobb]

I like to freeze frame on unrepresentatively creepy looking stills from otherwise innocuous films. I recently scared the crap out of the wife with a well-timed moment from Lubitsch's Ich möchte kein Mann sein. Which is actually kind of a scary sounding title in German. I'll have to see if I can replicate the moment and take a screengrab.

When I worked for a stock footage company, any time I came across something naked or gross, I'd leave it freeze-framed on my screen while I took a long coffee break, in the hopes of offending a passing co-worker.

Wait, that's not immature or anything, is it?

[Mr Sausage]

Personally, everything in German scares me.

Prepare to be terrified.

[domino harvey]

I don't understand, why does that have almost ten million views?

[Saturnome]

Because a lot of people do just what Mr_sausage did. It's also the kind of thing my mom share and forwards to a hundred of people in e-mail form. But hey, look at this, 58 million views!

[Perkins Cobb]

Awwwww, Schnappi is adorable! But somebody should remix him with Interior Crocodile Alligator for the ultimate Youtube experience....

[Mr Sausage]

I don't understand, why does that have almost ten million views?

Even more inexplicably, it reached number 1 on the German pop-charts.

[domino harvey]

Wanna talk inexplicable? This is the seventh-most watched YouTube video of all time

[Mr Sausage]

Wanna talk inexplicable? This is the seventh-most watched YouTube video of all time

I lasted two minutes and forty-three seconds. You?

[domino harvey]

Just shy of four minutes. I can handle unfunny xenophobic racism, but I refuse to sit through unfunny xenophobic racism and fart jokes

[Mr Sausage]

Just shy of four minutes. I can handle unfunny xenophobic racism, but I refuse to sit through unfunny xenophobic racism and fart jokes

It was the pilfered Monty Python jokes that did it for me. If I wanted to hear half-baked recitings of the Black Knight scene from Holy Grail, I'd go bother the nerds in my local Starbucks.

[knives]

The cognitive dissonance at six minutes took it from boring to unwatchable for me. I'm guessing this is one of those games where everyone loses.

[Murdoch]

Not surprised since Miley Cyrus and a baby biting his brother's finger are up there on youtube's most watched, too. Ah well, play him off keyboard cat

[willoneill]

When I was single, if I came home drunk I would always put on either Paris, Texas or Solaris, but without the subtitles. My roomates thought the latter was particularly weird. Also, every Easter I watch The Last Temptation of Christ. At Christmas, my girlfriend, brother, and cousins see a movie after dinner but it has to be movie that came out (in Ottawa) that day.

While my girlfriend was watching Shoot the Piano Player, our house burnt down and we lost everything (including my 2000 or so DVDs) and so I'm superstitiously afraid to watch it now.

[godardslave]

re you tube videos I suspect once you start the video it will count as a view even if you only watch the first second then close it.

[scotty2]

Broadway Danny Rose every Thanksgiving.

[Perkins Cobb]

At Christmas, my girlfriend, brother, and cousins see a movie after dinner but it has to be movie that came out (in Ottawa) that day.

I think that one only counts as peculiar if they all live in, say, Tucson.

[colinr0380]

If this thread is just going to collapse into posting YouTube videos, then I simply must post this proof that, as much as I like the film, the influence of the Scarface remake over all sections of society is really getting out of hand!

You have to admire all the beautifully observed call backs to the film (the tiger and the Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio afro wig especially), though it is frightening to note that even a ten year old girl isn't as skeletally skinny as Michelle Pfeiffer was!

As for my particular viewing rituals, I also like watching the entire film as uninterrupted as possible, end credits included. And I have to go through the extras on a disc at least once.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

While my girlfriend was watching Shoot the Piano Player, our house burnt down and we lost everything (including my 2000 or so DVDs) and so I'm superstitiously afraid to watch it now.

I met someone once who was playing Super Mario Kart when they're mother unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack. They can never play the game again.

I don't have any particularly strange viewing habits other than I need to watch the movie in one sitting no matter how long it is, but occasionally, I'll watch half a film before going to bed and finish the other half as soon as I wake up the next morning. It almost gives me the illusion that there was no break.

When I go to the theater, I purposely try not to eat or drink before a movie as I'm afraid I won't be able to hold it in during the film and I'm going to have to miss a bit of the film because of my bladder. That's about as crazy as my film viewing habits get.

[MichaelB]

And I have to go through the extras on a disc at least once.

I only bother if I'm reviewing the disc for someone, or if I'm genuinely interested - most of the time I've got better things to do. In any case, an increasing number of the discs I watch these days don't have English subtitles on the extras.

I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to a commentary all the way through purely for pleasure.

[Napier]

I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to a commentary all the way through purely for pleasure.

Does that mean if Criterion and MoC dropped the commentary track and lowered the price say.....$5, no one around here would complain? The only commentaries I listen to, are the two versions of This is Spinal Tap.

[colinr0380]

I'd certainly complain. Some commentary tracks can be far, far better than the film they accompany, some are important in themselves for helping explain a film better - both really comments about the quality and coherence of the main feature more than the commentary track itself, I admit - and some tracks are just hilarious in themselves, both intentionally and unintentionally. (For example Uwe Boll's films are hideous, but his commentary on House of the Dead is a deluded laugh riot)

The worst ones are where the cast or crew obviously have no interest in doing a commentary, or have been forced into it as a contractual obligation, or run out of things to say after the opening credits. Then it is often better that they never bothered at all. But for every Tim Burton or Richard Shickel who you're relieved don't do commentaries any more there's a Steven Soderbergh, where you wish he'd do more over films that he did not even participate in!

And then there are commentaries where there is a chance to expand more on the basic material (for example on The Corporation), or the alloted time is used to go off on an extra unrelated tangent.

Not all commentaries involve people listlessly droning on about what is occurring on screen. Though perhaps for the ultimate in that we just have to look to Rob Brydon's lapooning from the Director's Commentary series!

(But I agree that it often helps if you've got nothing better to do. Luckily I don't! *sobs and eats another Easter Egg*)

[Napier]

(But I agree that it often helps if you've got nothing better to do. Luckily I don't! *sobs and eats another Easter Egg*)

I'm a total sucker for films that need no explanation!

[TMDaines]

I go through my unlistened to comms when I'm doing some work. There's some great commentaries that are just as enjoyable as the film: Kalat's Mabuse commentaries for MoC spring to mind. I don't tend to buy DVDs of current films unless I absolutely loved it, and I don't tend to watch many current films anyway, so I'm referring to the comms on my German and Italian films.

[colinr0380]

I'm a total sucker for films that need no explanation!

I'm probably strange in that I need almost everything that happens in life explained to me (even if its just to answer the question "what they hell were they thinking when they did that?", a question that I find arises disturbingly often!)

Though that doesn't mean I actually believe more than 25% of the hyperbole - it is just nice to know what the 'official' line on a film is by the filmmakers or particular critics, even if it is one that I find ridiculous or superficial!

There's also the difference between extras produced for a contemporary film whose success, popularity, or future significance at all may not yet be known, and those for a film that may have been out for decades and either have an inbuilt mass audience, or cult reputation, or be completely obscure. All this affects the approach taken to creation of extra materials. Plus extra features, or the lack of them, can be telling in themselves, even if just of lack of interest in the film by the studio.

It gives you a basis from which to begin a discussion, although I think too many audience members (and even those who create the documentaries or commentary tracks), if they listen to such material at all, approach such extra material as being the 'final word' on a subject rather than seeing it as a chance to open the film up for further discussion. I think that's also part of what forums such as this one do as well, along with the day to day discussion of what's being released and how much of a discount you get buying it from a particular place - it lets interested audiences discuss aspects of the film that interested them in more depth, and look at the same material from different perspectives.