The September 2016 30-Day Movie Challenge

The Saloon
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Okay, so this is something I’m doing on another forum but I figured that with a minor alteration here and there I could do it here too, see if any of you gentlemen wanted to play along. Essentially: I’m going to (try to) watch a movie per day, every day in the month of September. Which movie I’m going to watch will be dictated by a different criteria for each day. Regarder:

Day 1. Best of 2016 So Far
Day 2. Favourite Action
Day 3. Childhood Favourite
Day 4. Favourite Spaghetti Western
Day 5. Used to Love it, Now I Hate It
Day 6. Favourite Actor
Day 7. Favourite Actress
Day 8. Guilty Secret Pleasure
Day 9. Favourite Reboot/Remake
Day 10. So Bad, it’s Good
Day 11. I Could Quote Every Line
Day 12. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to HATE it…
Day 13. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to LOVE it…
Day 14. Favourite Documentary
Day 15. Favourite Sequel/Prequel
Day 16. Favourite Director
Day 17. Favourite Comedy
Day 18. Favourite War
Day 19. All-Time Most Hated
Day 20. WTF?! - Challenging Cinema
Day 21. Favourite Sci-Fi
Day 22. Favourite Drama
Day 23. Scariest Movie
Day 24. Favourite Animated
Day 25. Favourite Western (NON-Spag)
Day 26. Biggest Disappointment
Day 27. Most Pleasant Surprise
Day 28. Really Should Have Seen This By Now
Day 29. Movie Which Best Describes ME
Day 30. All-Time Favourite

(Day 4 - Favourite Spaghetti Western Day - is the minor adjustment I’ve made to tailor the challenge to this forum. On another forum, Day 4 is Favourite Sports Movie Day and Day 25 - Favourite Western (Non Spag) Day - is simply Favourite Western Day. Means I’ll have to watch a sports film AND a spag on that Sunday but, well, I’ll manage)

The only real rule to the challenge is that I can’t select the same movie twice. For instance, my all-time favourite movie (Day 30) is also considered by many to be a classic of the horror (Day 23) and sci-fi (Day 21) genres. But I can’t have it in all three slots so I’ll have to decide where best to put it, and then nominate different films for the other two days. Simple, eh?

So, will anyone else be playing along? I personally find it’s most fun when I commit to trying as far as possible to actually seeing the films; last time I attempted this challenge I even took a film and a portable DVD player to a friend’s house where we were visiting that evening. But I also found that many people who simply couldn’t commit the time to thirty movies in thirty days - some of you do have real lives, after all - enjoyed participating as and when they could, and then merely having a think about it and nominating a film that they would’ve watched on each specific day, on those days they couldn’t manage.

The main thing is that it’s supposed to be fun anyway, so feel free to involve yourselves as much or as little as you want to. I’ve posted this with a little under two weeks to go to give everyone time to have a think about what films you’re going to watch, when you’re going to watch them, and to give you time to acquire any movies you might need to (as you’ll note, some days you’ll be watching movies you’ve never seen before, and some days you’ll be subjecting yourself to movies you don’t even like; but hey - that’s the challenge!). If you’ve any questions about the categories feel free to ask, and I hope a few of you will join in.

Be aware though that entering the September 30-Day Movie Challenge doesn’t exempt you from SpagvemberFest 2016. You’re all obligated to play along with that this November, it’s in your SWDB Terms and Conditions (Note to Seb: Stick SpagvemberFest in the T&Cs quick, I’ve just issued a legally shaky ultimatum!). :slight_smile:

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Don’t think I’ll join you, I don’t watch movies on a daily basis, but this would be my list.
Couldn’t think of a movie that describes ME

Day 1. Best of 2016 So Far - Café Society (Woody Allen)
Day 2. Favourite Action - Fist of Fury (Lo Wei/Bruce Lee)
Day 3. Childhood Favourite - Le Gendarme se marie (Oury/De Funès)
Day 4. Favourite Spaghetti Western - The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Day 5. Used to Love it, Now I Hate It - 2001 a Space Odyssey
Day 6. Favourite Actor - Henry Fonda
Day 7. Favourite Actress - Jessica Lange
Day 8. Guilty Secret Pleasure - Urlaubsgrüsse aus dem Unterhöschen
Day 9. Favourite Reboot/Remake - True Grit
Day 10. So Bad, it’s Good - MacKenna’s Gold
Day 11. I Could Quote Every Line - Silent Movie
Day 12. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to HATE it… - American Hustle
Day 13. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to LOVE it… - The Shallows
Day 14. Favourite Documentary - Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
Day 15. Favourite Sequel/Prequel - The Road Warrior
Day 16. Favourite Director - Federico Fellini
Day 17. Favourite Comedy - It’s a Gift (McLeod/WC Fields)
Day 18. Favourite War - The Guns of Navarone
Day 19. All-Time Most Hated - The Birth of a Nation (interminable)
Day 20. WTF?! - Challenging Cinema - Martyrs
Day 21. Favourite Sci-Fi - Blade Runner
Day 22. Favourite Drama - La Notte di San Lorenzo (Taviani Bross.)
Day 23. Scariest Movie - Taxi Driver
Day 24. Favourite Animated - Watership Down
Day 25. Favourite Western (NON-Spag) - Rio Bravo
Day 26. Biggest Disappointment - The Tree of Life
Day 27. Most Pleasant Surprise - Basic Instinct
Day 28. Really Should Have Seen This By Now - Repulsion
Day 29. Movie Which Best Describes ME - -
Day 30. All-Time Favourite - Once upon a Time in the West

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dayum, so there’s no legal loopholes? :wink:

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My wife and my son both want in on the action. There’s no way we’ll be able to watch up to three films a day for a whole month though, so we’re going to decide our daily nomination by dice: 1 or 2, we’ll be watching my pick; 3 or 4, my wife’s: 5 or 6, my boy’s. So I guess I’d better get myself over to YouTube sharpish to start looking up “How to Cheat With Dice” or similar.

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caress, admit it, you watch movie per day every month anyway, right? :wink:

same as scherp, I won’t participate but it is fun to make a list:

Day 1. Best of 2016 So Far - Slow West (not from 2016, but best of 2015 I’ve seen in 2016)
Day 2. Favourite Action - Predator
Day 3. Childhood Favourite - A Little Romance
Day 4. Favourite Spaghetti Western - OUATITW
Day 5. Used to Love it, Now I Hate It - Tombstone
Day 6. Favourite Actor - Taxi Driver
Day 7. Favourite Actress - I’m Not There
Day 8. Guilty Secret Pleasure - all the bad Arnie’s movies from late 80s/early 90s
Day 9. Favourite Reboot/Remake - Fury Road
Day 10. So Bad, it’s Good - Flash Gordon
Day 11. I Could Quote Every Line - same as scherp :slight_smile:
Day 12. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to HATE it… - list is basically endless…
Day 13. Haven’t Seen it Yet, think I’m Going to LOVE it… - Green Room
Day 14. Favourite Documentary - Man on Wire
Day 15. Favourite Sequel/Prequel - The Road Warrior
Day 16. Favourite Director - Boxcar Bertha
Day 17. Favourite Comedy - The Commitments
Day 18. Favourite War - Paths of Glory
Day 19. All-Time Most Hated - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Day 20. WTF?! - Challenging Cinema - The Duke of Burgundy
Day 21. Favourite Sci-Fi- Blade Runner
Day 22. Favourite Drama - Paris, Texas
Day 23. Scariest Movie - Ringu
Day 24. Favourite Animated - Up
Day 25. Favourite Western (NON-Spag) - Unforgiven
Day 26. Biggest Disappointment - Her
Day 27. Most Pleasant Surprise - Fury Road
Day 28. Really Should Have Seen This By Now - Lawrence of Arabia
Day 29. Movie Which Best Describes ME - Montenegro
Day 30. All-Time Favourite - Goodfellas

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I remember that bizarre movie. If that’s you, I wonder who and what you are :wink:

Almost mentioned that movie as well but then I remembered that horrible experience of trying to watch The Birth of a Nation. I even succeeded, because I thought it was part of a filmgoers education to watch that movie, but what an endure test that was. Film is racist as hell to boot

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STEWARD’S ENQUIRY! FLAG ON THE PLAY! HANDBALL! VALAR MORGULIS!

Can’t nominate the same film in two categories, my Adriatic brethren. Swap one.

I admit nothing, sir! (we’re not counting porn, are we?) :blush:

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It’s a joke. ME is Internet country code abbreviation of Montenegro (which is off course also the name of Dušan Makavejev’s movie you remembered).

And Birth of a Nation is on my watchlist. I know all about it (and Tarantino’s derision of John Ford role in Djangu Unchained), but I have to see it for myself :slight_smile:

Dammit, nothing goes past your eye, er?

Well, in that case…does Fistful of Dollars count as remake? What about Batman as reboot? Burton’s one off course.
Let’s make it simple, don’t want to get caught in another legal loophole:

Favourite Reboot/Remake - Ocean’s 11

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Actually I have no idea why one should hate The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

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I see no reason why not. I agree that there are movies that are (far) worse, but if you look at all the talent involved, this si one of the biggest dissapointments in recent memory.

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Hehe! I can do that too.

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Haven’t seen it but won’t miss the opportunity to do so in October at Vienna’s Filmmuseum. I am terribly ashamed to admit that this will be my first Bruce Lee film ever.

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Cause there’s nothing in it worth hating. It was not a great film, but good though. I hadn’t much expectations, so it was impossible to disappoint me. It was better than Panic Room, which is the one by Fincher which is disappointing compared to its infinite possibilities

And besides it wasn’t much of a Fincher movie,

And I still don’t understand why one hates films anyway. I love some films, but I don’t hate bad ones.

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When the Bruce Lee craze broke out, I was still very young and this movie was the first martial arts movie I ever saw. The martial arts were still relatively unknown in Holland, except for Judo (we had a couple of great Judo champions in the Sixties, notably Anton Geesink and Willem Ruska and they had made the sport popular). The distribution company had never heard of Kung Fu, I suppose, because the film was shown in theatres as ‘Een Vuistvol Karate’, A Fistful of Karate.

Like most people of my age I was crazy about Bruce Lee and his movies, this one in particular. When I rewatched it a couple of years ago, i noticed that it was still very enjoyable. It’s low budget, but well-made, and with a fighting star who was the epitome of charisma.

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Now I’m really eager to see it on the big screen.

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Oh Stanton. Lovely Stanton. My happy, brooding bruder. I’m sorry I used the word “hate” but please relax, we won’t need to get bogged down in a quasi-philosophical debate about the nature of hatred in the makeup of human psychology and its application to celluloid-based artistry. For clarity and for the purposes of this thread, the word “hate” was simply a shorthand for “dislike considerably more than other cinematic works I had encountered previously, or indeed have encountered since”, I promise*. :grin:

Love you! xxx

*Unless we’re applying it to Michael Bay. I f#cking hate him. :wink:

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Then write this instead, if it is what you really want to express. I like it, a bit circuitous maybe.

People hate too much anyway, especially in the net. “I hate this, I hate that, and anything else too”, it’s kinda tiresome to read.

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As Mudhoney’s Mark Arm put it succinctly: “Oh God, how I love to hate!”

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No. “Hate” means “Dislike”, Stanton. It can be and often is used when conveying a more intense or extreme dislike than simply “dislike”, certainly, but there are degrees of hatred, just as there are degrees of love. Your problem with the use of it here is that you erroneously seem to feel the term has to be reserved only for the most intense degree of dislike imaginable (a hatred of racism maybe, or war or murder for example), and so therefore cannot be applied appropriately within the context of movie criticism. But you’re happy to apply the term “love” to a movie. Now, surely you’re not suggesting when you say you love a movie that you feel the same way about it as you may feel about, say, another human being? A wife, a husband? A parent? A child? Of course not! But there are degrees of love, and everyone - even you - immediately and intuitively understands the degree implied by the context. I can say “I love my son” and “I love For a Few Dollars More” and you’re fine with both statements, but you don’t need it spelled out to you that I only love FaFDM as much as one can “love” a film, and that is obviously nowhere near as much as I love my child. The word “Hate” works the same way; it means “intense dislike”, but the degree is implied by the context. “I hate Mamma Mia!” is as valid linguistically as “I hate racists”, with the degree of hatred implied perfectly clearly by the context.

But you’re a highly intelligent person Stanton who I can only assume understands all of this as intuitively as anyone else and who therefore only diverts discussions and takes them down semantic dead-ends to be difficult, and I kind-of “hate” that, to be honest. I hope that’s not the case, of course.

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“Slidin’ in ‘n’ out of Grace…” I LOVE* that tune!

*By which I mean I like it intensely, not as much as I love my wife or my kitty-kat or world peace or Stanton, but as intensely as one might be able to appreciate five-and-a-half minutes of grunge, for sure.

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