Monthly Director Poll and Discussion Club
Questions for those following this thread:
Do you all prefer monthly or bimonthly selections?
What method do you prefer for selecting directors?
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Second proposal
Ok all, I have heard your feedback and have adjusted accordingly.
New proposal: let's simply pick a director a month, give people time to see the movies and discuss films by this director. Posters would be encouraged to rank their favorite films by this director, but ranking films would not be required for participation.
To pick the directors no restrictions would be applied except one: a vote must be taken to agree on the directors. Obviously, nothing prevents a person from simply picking a director and making their own post on this forum anyway. But, I think at least one or two rules would help matters if we are to assemble a true film club.
If these changes are acceptable let me know. If so, I propose a vote on the directors starting on the 9th of September, and ending 5 days later on the 14th. (I'll start a thread on the 9th.) Then we could start with the first director in October. The vote could allow us to plan for 12 months, but also allow for an exit if matters go poorly anytime you like. However, for the record, I have a limited window of vacation now, so if you want another re-vote in the future, someone else will need to volunteer to count the votes. :) If interest is lukewarm, then someone else can take the lead and provide new ideas.
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Initial Proposal (now discarded):
Hi all, I have an idea I would like to pitch. Twenty years ago, I posted on the Rotten Tomatoes film forum. (The forum now is nonexistent.) We had a movie club that centered around the idea of regular polling. We called the movie club the Ripe and Round; this title was a humorous riff on the Sight and Sound poll using tomato based imagery. Anyway, my recollection is that once a month we chose a director and every participant viewed films by that director. At the end of the month, every participant ranked their top 5 favorites from that director. Then we would discuss the films we saw, explain our favorites and discuss the results.
My proposition is that interested participants in this forum follow a similar model. Every month a director is chosen, and at the end of that month, a conversation regarding that director would take place. We could discuss themes we observed, techniques we noticed and evolving ideas we analyzed. The discussion would be accompanied by a poll of our 5 favorites from that director. It would be fine to simply refer to movies you have watched in the recent past and/or can readily recollect.
Now an important matter must be addressed: what criteria would we use to select a director? I would say we should not simply pick our personal favorite directors. Instead, I propose we should pick only acclaimed directors who have a long history of films, are widely prolific, and whose works are available to everyone.\* Good examples include: Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Fritz Lang, just to name some obvious choices. We could begin with a vote of 12 directors (1 for each month of the year) who we think would be good candidates. (Each person could select 5 directors they think would be good candidates and we could assemble a list of 12 that way.)
If we were to use this idea, it would be great if we had a catchy name, like True Film's Hot Lists, or Monthly Movie Heroes, just to throw out some ideas.
I think it would be nice if we had at least 10 participants. What do you all think? Comment if you want to participate.
*Edit 1: This point, as with all others, is open for discussion. However, the availability point is most important to me. If there is sufficient interest, perhaps we can aim to hold a vote on which directors to select in 4 or 5 days.
Edit 2: If the poll idea is unpopular, let me know in the comments. Or maybe we could encourage people to rank favorites and simply not tabulate the results.