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I'm also open to it being a 50/100 list too given the much shorter source material, if there's enough interest/belief that members could easily populate a top 50. I think 25 is a better target, though, since it would be less intimidating and require more selection precision

Sounds great to me!

I love this idea and would definitely participate.

I won't participate in it because I'll still be exclusively focusing on the 40s LP, but I have no problem with it! Sounds fun.

Interesting idea! I would gladly participate although I haven't a compiled record of my favourite music videos... so I won't have a comprehensive list, only MVs from memory. And since it's a new List Project there is no previous list to pick from or refresh memory. Will it be a secret ballot? Because it would be easier to feed from others's recommendations. I don't know, maybe it's just me feeling dwarfed by the endless array of MVs since Roger Glover...

Like all lists, the ballots will be submitted secretly via PM. But I can’t imagine everyone not giving some indication of which videos they think merit inclusion, since posting a YT link to a few minutes of video ensures most of us will be able to see it and consider it before voting

I think there’s clearly some interest here, so I’m gonna go ahead and say this is happening, FYI

A thread of recommendations would be needed. Off the top of my head I can't think of that many I would rank in any list.

I'm already planning to go over the Grammy and MTV VMA nominees one by one, if nobody else wanted to.

denti alligator wrote: ↑

Thu May 30, 2019 4:54 pm

A thread of recommendations would be needed. Off the top of my head I can't think of that many I would rank in any list.

If you can pick up that old DVD of Michel Gondry videos, it's a good place to start. 'Sugar Water', 'Let Forever Be' and 'Come Into My World' are brilliantly executed high-concept experimental films set to pop music. He's a filmmaker that really needs the discipline of tight commissions like these to do his best work.

zedz wrote: ↑

Thu May 30, 2019 6:05 pm

denti alligator wrote: ↑

Thu May 30, 2019 4:54 pm

A thread of recommendations would be needed. Off the top of my head I can't think of that many I would rank in any list.

If you can pick up that old DVD of Michel Gondry videos, it's a good place to start. 'Sugar Water', 'Let Forever Be' and 'Come Into My World' are brilliantly executed high-concept experimental films set to pop music. He's a filmmaker that really needs the discipline of tight commissions like these to do his best work.

My sketch of my potential list is led by three Gondrys in the top three positions, though only two of them are mentioned in zedz’ post (though I may vote for the other one further down)

We will of course have a thread to collect suggestions, discussion, and links once the list actually starts, so hold onto your enthusiasm and remember to bring it with you in a few months!

Definitely like the idea of a music video list project. I might be able to participate a bit in this one! I have those "The Works of..." collections as well, so would be able to collaborate with zedz on talking about them (and I also have fond memories of Channel 4's fantastic Mirrorball series from 1999 which preceded it)

And I agree on Michel Gondry working wonderfully in the music video area. Sugar Water and Come Into My World are fantastic, and I hope the other video domino mentions is the Massive Attack one, which seems like a music video version of stylistic conceits used in Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet!

colinr0380 wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 05, 2019 4:17 pm

Definitely like the idea of a music video list project. I might be able to participate a bit in this one! I have those "The Works of..." collections as well, so would be able to collaborate with zedz on talking about them (and I also have fond memories of Channel 4's fantastic Mirrorball series from 1999 which preceded it)

And I agree on Michel Gondry working wonderfully in the music video area. Sugar Water and Come Into My World are fantastic, and I hope the other video domino mentions is the Massive Attack one, which seems like a music video version of stylistic conceits used in Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet!

I'm pretty sure domino's top three includes 'Let Forever Be'. From memory he's an even bigger champion of that one than me.

The odds of anything but Let Forever Be topping my list are so infinitesimal that they rival the lotto. To put guessing games out to pasture, that and Come Into My World and Bjork's Bachelorette are the three I was thinking of

Voila!

It's as if Busby Berkeley somehow had a glimpse into the future, saw the cheap video effects of the 1980s, and tried to recreate them with real-life choreography.

As with 'Come Into My World' and most of Gondry's best videos, just coming up with the concept for the film is as remarkable as actually pulling it off.

'Come Into My World's imaginative coup is managing to conceive of a universe in which time is both linear and looped, and choreographing his action in four dimensions with motion control in order to demonstrate what that would look like.

Come Into My World

Worth keeping in mind that the only version of Let Forever Be on YouTube is cropped to be "widescreen," so one will need to watch it on the Gondry DVD to get the full effect. The disc is actually OOP, but there appears to be several used copies available on eBay for less than $10 shipped

And here's the "making of" for Come Into My World.
It was shot in a real street of Paris (not a studio set) and in one take!

There are so many great Gondry videos on that set that Let Forever Be is a worthy number one (Bachelorette is also a fave too). Especially for anyone who can sympathise with being kept awake by incessant drumming only to oversleep and end up being late for work in the morning! And Come Into My World is wonderful too: I sometimes think that it is all of the themes of Haneke's Code Unknown compressed into a couple of minutes!

It is worth noting also that The Chemical Brothers got a run of magnificent music videos in the late 90s and early 2000s: The Test is my absolute favourite (Buster Keaton homage and all), but I also like Setting Sun (mostly for the film posters on the walls!) and the 'life story of a bone obsessed party animal' Hey Boy Hey Girl and of course Block Rockin' Beats (which is a kind of homage to The Warriors). Not to mention Sofia Coppola doing gymnastics in Elektrobank (NSFW) by Spike Jonze, and Out of Control with Rosario Dawson!

Discussion of the country viewing project moved here

For those who missed it, all of seven people submitted a ballot for the Shakespeare List, Far below the bare minimum of ten (and even that is a pathetically low number to begin with). It looks like the Music Video list will probably have strong participation, and the Horror List Redux will likely repeat huge numbers like the first edition, so we won’t have to think about this for a few months, BUT if we get another less than 10 member submission list again, I’m scrapping all scheduled non-decade lists— it’s just not worth the energy or effort if no one is going to play

Just an idea. Maybe it would be a good idea to have members that want to play express their commitment to do so at the start, so that there would be a certainty of the project reaching fruition?

We already kinda did that via the voting process, which was supposed to prevent this from happening. I don’t want to get into members pledging and feeling like they owe or are indebted to submit— I want members to want to participate. If these no longer fit the needs of the forum, that’s too bad but it’s also okay. I don’t take it personally, but I’m also not looking to bother again on something and ask others to do the same if it turns out to be something so few people care about

I agree that it's incredibly frustrating and have to wonder what variables are at play that prevent people from submitting lists. Not that there's an excuse, but a lot of lively participation occurred from enough members in the Shakespeare thread where I have to imagine at least a few people will see that it's scrapped in the next day or two and realize they missed the boat. I'm not necessarily suggesting hand-holding interventions like reminding people to subscribe to the tab for notifications (something I only learned was an option recently...) but that could be a factor and potentially a helpful reminder; or perhaps people mistakenly thought they had until the end of the month like other lists and planned to submit theirs with their rent check? I'm clearly grasping at straws here, and the responsibility absolutely lies with the members to stay on top of it, but I have a hard time believing that incredibly motivated people in the thread didn't submit a list intentionally, or didn't want to participate, and whatever these barriers are, they're worth exploring or at least putting on the table.

I do all the decade lists now and have done some of the filmmakers. I like the 9 month cycle of the decade lists. I can take a few months slow, dive in, watch increasingly more, buy increasingly more, then submit a list... with still a 100 films on my shelf to watch and another 100 from backchannels and the like (I never learn). Rinse and repeat.

The tempo of many of the other lists is to quick for me, perhaps as I am starting from a lower base than others. I'll likely do Wilder as I can watch another 7 or 8 of his films over a couple of months and have seen most, but no desire to go from having seen 4 or 5 Hawks films to 20 or 30 in such a short time. No idea why I didn't do Renoir or Godard last year though. Was a dry patch for film watching I guess.

Genre I find unappealing for two reasons. 1) I don't have the appetite to deep dive in any genre for more than a few weeks. I'm finding it exhausting just trying to watch all the possibly Italian neorealist films for the 1940s project, whilst allso wanting to watch more widely, and that's quite a tiny pool of 20-40 films! 2) With decades (and filmmakers) it is more cut and dry what is included and not. I prefer topics that are more black and white. OK, Shakespeare arguably is that, but many of the other themes are more wishy-washy.

I probably would have done the Best Picture Winners list, but I probably completely missed that when I didn't visit the forum that often for a few weeks. I've literally only just clicked in that thread for the first time. Two months is a short timespan, especially for the nominees lists.

Digging into Shakespeare didn’t seem that appealing and I’m trying to cut back on any new viewing projects because My kevyip pile has started to grow with the channel and because the programming on the channel is so superb I’d kind of rather take those small batches of something than a mega dose of Shakespeare.

And I’m still sorta hooked on the fun of the best picture project and have been rewatching a couple winners every month since it ended.

Is there a reason the Lists sub-forum threads don't appear in the "Active Topics" tab?

I unfortunately don't have the time to be the most active list-maker, but even after participating in the Pre-Code mini-list, I missed the 1930s list because I just forgot to check the sub-forum for a long time, and I know IRL at least one other poster who had similarly just missed/forgotten about the sub-forum. Most of the time, the Active Topics tab is how I stumble across threads I'm not already subscribed to, unless it's a really slow day and I start spelunking elsewhere... Maybe I'm alone in using it that way, but if I'm not, there might be more buy-in if folks had more opportunity to stumble across the active List threads.