Criterion Film Club: Suggestions and General Discussion

[Drucker]

Jeez I want to discuss all of those films!

[movielocke]

Since domino's been posting the results.

#-o
hard to miss, considering that the post was right above mine own, but somehow I managed, truly exceptional, even for one as prone to error as myself!

[Mr Sausage]

It'll be Halloween soon enough. Time for some scary movies!

[warren oates]

This one was easy for me. Much as I love Eraserhead and The Night of the Hunter, Dreyer's Vampyr is the one I'd want to revisit and discuss. It's such an odd idiosyncratic film. And not just in relation to the rest of Dreyer's output or to the horror genre. The film's images still feel so fresh and new to me, even today. If I catch a few minutes of it randomly, I find myself thinking I can easily imagine it as some lost Sokurov film I'd not yet seen.

[Cold Bishop]

Plus, NotH isn't really a horror film… and Eraserhead is a comedy!

[Mr Sausage]

This one was easy for me. Much as I love Eraserhead and The Night of the Hunter, Dreyer's Vampyr is the one I'd want to revisit and discuss. It's such an odd idiosyncratic film. And not just in relation to the rest of Dreyer's output or to the horror genre. The film's images still feel so fresh and new to me, even today. If I catch a few minutes of it randomly, I find myself thinking I can easily imagine it as some lost Sokurov film I'd not yet seen.

I wavered between Vampyr and Eraserhead, but the latter won out because I feel like it's easier to discuss. It's not hard to take a stab at deciphering the symbols in Eraserhead. Dreyer's film, on the other hand, seems like it mainly demands a rigorous formal analysis.

That and I don't know where my copy of Vampyr is, while I just bought the Eraserhead blu in the flash sale.

[Drucker]

I'm always game for a discussion of Dreyer, but I've never watched Eraserhead, so I need to give Lynch a fair shot.

[Mr Sausage]

Our Halloween discussion is Vampyr!

[domino harvey]

[warren oates]

Maybe I missed it before but has anyone ever suggested an all Hulu poll, since there are so many Criterion titles exclusive to the service? Or would that just be too unpalatably exclusionary for our non-U.S. members?

[swo17]

We discussed whether Hulu exclusives should be run through the random title generator along with films that have been released on disc, and decided against it. Perhaps a one-off round would work (though it might be a logistical nightmare to summarize all of the eligible titles--are they summarized conveniently anywhere?) but that's ultimately Sausage's call.

[Mr Sausage]

I think I was against it because:

A. It's exclusionary (and as a non-US resident, this reason has a personal impact).
B. Logistical nightmare.

Also, is there any guarantee that a film on Hulu will remain there during the whole Film Club process? I'm not familiar enough with the service to know how permanent the titles are.

I'm open to arguments in its favour, tho'.

[warren oates]

The only argument I have in favor is that there are a ton of titles exclusive to Hulu that who knows if we'll ever see on any kind of physical media. And, for me, at least, a lot of the more obscure films (Rossellini's The Machine That Kills Bad People is one of my more recent Hulu discoveries) are ones I'm curious about but that are relatively low priorities in my ever expanding kevyip -- a situation that I imagine is not uncommon. Given the choice of a particular film it also wouldn't always automatically exclude everyone who isn't on Hulu. There may be other editions, DVDs, files or prints to be seen elsewhere in the world.

I don't know about expiry dates, but if I recall correctly, Hulu seems to be better at signaling these (at least if an item is in your queue) than Netflix (which sometimes only offers a week's notice if any at all).

The logistics could be difficult, but given that this is a thing that will either happen only once (or,if it goes over well at all, say, once a year thereafter), it doesn't seem out-of-the-question level tedious or impossible.

[Drucker]

Since this topic is active I'll chime in with a thought.

Maybe it's the authoritarian in me, but I would be very happy foregoing voting (at least a few times, not every discussion) in favor of a curated film. In other words, let one member just choose any film they want. The benefit could be that someone would be hopefully choosing a film which they'd be responsible to do a little bit of homework on. If someone came to the table with discussion questions and thoughts about the film already in hand, that could help. Just to use myself as an example, I would love to talk about something like Mr. Arkadin and go over all the versions and talk about it in terms of Welles' career. There are also some huge Wes Anderson fans on this board...I would love for someone to talk in depth about what they love about the director.

Going by popular vote hasn't necessarily meant every discussion is lively. But perhaps if we went into a discussion with a Crit Forum certified expert on a film, that could help.

There's only a dozen or so people who seem to really actively participate in the discussions. I don't want to be exclusionary, but maybe putting the onus on one person per discussion to make it lively could help. Just a thought.

[warren oates]

It's true that passionate curation is the only thing that's really worked as a sustainable organizing principle for any real life film clubs I've been in that have lasted more than a few meetings. Everyone takes a turn presenting. It's not a dictatorship because the goal is to show something necessary that's either underseen or underappreciated, to take into account what others are interested in too. There is often some discussion considering several potential choices, but, all things being equal, we generally tend to defer to whoever's turn it is to pick.

On the other hand, on this board we've already had plenty of curated votes, where all of the choices were prepared by members who would have been happy to lead discussions on any one of them. I'd definitely be interested to see more of those too.

[colinr0380]

I'd generally second the curation idea (or perhaps calling it a 'key note speech' to guide a topic would be better?), and on the Hulu selection I think that sounds good too, as I'm sure that even if those of us outside the US couldn't participate it would certainly be interesting to hear the thoughts of others on the films discussed.

However I also think that if you have a passion for a film then don't worry about waiting for the title to get the focus swung onto it for the film club (though the fim club can be extremely valuable for shifting the group's focus directly onto a particular title too, raising the chance of discussions higher through preparation for that topic coming up). I'm sure that everyone would be interested to hear in depth thoughts on titles created by passionate, interesting voices wherever they crop up on the forum, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one who would love the idea of a thread for discussion of the rarer Hulu titles, and not just their availability but the response to the content of the films as well. I might not be able to contribute anything myself to such discussions, but they would be fascinating to read and would expand the diversity and inclusiveness of the forum.

[domino harvey]

I like the idea of just having a general discussion thread for Hulu titles. If and when they get announced for a physical release, one of the mods can just move those posts to make a new dedicated thread

[movielocke]

I'm not sure we need more curation, participation in this current format is already triple or better anything I've seen on other forums. It's also the most long lived I've seen. So if it ain't broke...

[Mr Sausage]

Swo17 has randomly generated five films from a pool of those that came in second place in all our votes for the past six months. Vote away!

[Mr Sausage]

I love Straw Dogs, but I feel Stephen Prince has said pretty much everything I'd have to say on it.

I voted for Kanal.

[Drucker]

Shaping up to be a tight race. I'm for Ivan. Have only seen Battleship Potemkin, and from what I've read about the Eisenstein sound films I'm very intrigued.

[Mr Sausage]

The Ivan films are garish and brilliant.

[Mr Sausage]

Just to go over the procedure in the case of a tie:

1. In a case where I have voted for one of the tied films, I will change my vote at the last minute, giving the film I wasn't backing the win.

2. In a case where I have not voted for one of the competing films, I will change my vote at the last minute to one of the competing films based on my preference.

[Mr Sausage]

And in a sudden surge, it's Ivan the Terrible!

[domino harvey]