On deciding what to watch

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Yojimbo
Joined: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:06 am
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#51 Post by Yojimbo » Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:15 am

Ben Cheshire wrote:Thanks for that Tomasso, that's definitely an attitude I'd like to try taking. I know I've felt that at times, like when i was studing film in my lit courses back in the day, and when I first got obsessed by Orson Welles and Douglas Sirk. I was hypnotised by both of them I would watch Touch of Evil and Written on the Wind and just marvel at the way they chose to shoot things, the rhythm of shots, the framing, all that jazz. I haven't felt it for a while.
Touch of Evil had for many years been my favourite Welles since I first saw it, about 30 years ago, but in recent years it had been supplanted by 'Lady From Shanghai', until I got the recent Special DVD with the three versions and I watched all three with commentaries on and I'm not ashamed to say I've come to appreciate it even more.
There have latterly been many claims for 'Chimes At Midnight' at best alternative to 'Kane', or indeed best overall Welles but for me 'Touch of Evil' is here to stay as my Numero Uno
btw, Ben, have you seen 'A Time To Love And A Time To Die"?

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Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: On deciding what to watch

#52 Post by Tommaso » Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:36 am

Yes Ben, one should always go back to one's first cinematic loves, regardless of where you encountered them. Somehow I am even a bit nostalgic about the pre-DVD era, when my collection mostly consisted of dubbed films recorded from TV on VHS, because it was very difficult to get original language VHS films (and I wouldn't have had the money to buy them, anyway). So, I watched far less films than today and less often, but at that time I had a far better chance to really delve deep into those that I had at my hand, and it's basically films I encountered at that time (Lang's "Metropolis" and "Nibelungen", Dreyer's "Vampyr", Murnau's "Nosferatu", some Pasolini, Greenaway, Tarkovsky and Cocteau) that still form a large part of my list of all-time favourites. Perhaps because these are the ones I really know by heart. And there were few later additions that I became equally obsessed about; only Kurosawa, Powell & Pressburger and the Astaire/Rogers-films are as dear to me now as these 'first loves'.

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manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#53 Post by manicsounds » Sat Oct 03, 2009 10:11 am

Whenever I can't figure out what to watch, I usually come here online to see what everyone else is going on about and choose from there. Unfortunately, reading threads like this just puts me in a cylce of ending up not watching anything for the night....

I do have a "pick a number" system, where my girlfriend picks a random number from my sequenced collection and watch that. Or pick a few from my unwatched and she chooses from there. Kevyip at 622 discs by the way.... It's getting too much....

Do you know what I do with ALL my boxsets now? They are all in my closet because I have no space! But it's still overflowing in my living room that I might have to put more than just boxsets in the closet to keep things looking nice....

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Ben Cheshire
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:01 am

Re: On deciding what to watch

#54 Post by Ben Cheshire » Sat Oct 03, 2009 10:57 am

Yojimbo wrote:... until I got the recent Special DVD with the three versions and I watched all three with commentaries on and I'm not ashamed to say I've come to appreciate it even more.
There have latterly been many claims for 'Chimes At Midnight' at best alternative to 'Kane', or indeed best overall Welles but for me 'Touch of Evil' is here to stay as my Numero Uno
btw, Ben, have you seen 'A Time To Love And A Time To Die"?
Hi Yojimbo.

I forgot about ordering that Touch of Evil set when I went Blu; it'll be ages if ever they put a seamless branched multi-version release of Touch together on blu, so as a rabid fan of the movie who's only ever seen the "restored to match the memo" cut, I absolutely must consume that dvd. I've been getting back into DVD recently, based on the incredible range of releases available, sometimes which look surprisingly good when upscaled.

Funny you should mention Time to Love, Just got it on DVD, watched it for the first time the other night. Since I first got my Written on the Wind Criterion, I've been looking for another widescreen technicolour Sirk that can be my second favourite, and I think this 1959 war film could one day come close. Aussie label Madman have released (ported probably from a UK set) a series of lesser known Sirk films (ie, ones Criterion haven't released), and I hadn't tried a new Sirk in a while, so I went with the only widescreen colour one. There's Always Tomorrow, All I Desire and a few others I have yet to see, but theyre all 1.33:1 b/w so I don't feel the need to rush somehow. Funny thing, though, the first one I ever saw was like that, it was La Habanera, a caliente flavoured earlier one, but still American I think. I just happened across it on TV, 15 mins in or so, and it was love at first sight. I grabbed a tape (yes a tape!) and recorded the rest of it. I watched my truncated version of La Habanera probably fifteen times at the age of I'd say 20 or so, just enraptured by the simplest things about it. I still haven't bought a good copy of it. As far as I know there's only the Kino DVD, but I'm in Australia, and I've never been totally region-free until just this weekend, so its time to catch up on those R1/RA holes in my collection. Now I can properly look forward to The General Blu in November.

Which reminds me, discovering Buster Keaton via the short The Boat, first thing I saw Buster do, was pull down an entire house for a single three-second shot, and about three very good gags. Again, love at first sight. I proceeded to see every single thing he ever directed and I'd say he's the only actor aside from Orson Welles I've ever been a completist of, or tried to be. At one stage, for instance, I was so keen on seeing anything Buster did that I bought the set of his mediocre Jules White sound shorts from the 30's and the series of industrial films and random odds and ends called Industrial Keaton, the latter probably being the only Buster purchase I never bothered getting into.

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Yojimbo
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#55 Post by Yojimbo » Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:29 am

Ben Cheshire wrote:
Yojimbo wrote:... until I got the recent Special DVD with the three versions and I watched all three with commentaries on and I'm not ashamed to say I've come to appreciate it even more.
There have latterly been many claims for 'Chimes At Midnight' at best alternative to 'Kane', or indeed best overall Welles but for me 'Touch of Evil' is here to stay as my Numero Uno
btw, Ben, have you seen 'A Time To Love And A Time To Die"?
Hi Yojimbo.

I forgot about ordering that Touch of Evil set when I went Blu; it'll be ages if ever they put a seamless branched multi-version release of Touch together on blu, so as a rabid fan of the movie who's only ever seen the "restored to match the memo" cut, I absolutely must consume that dvd. I've been getting back into DVD recently, based on the incredible range of releases available, sometimes which look surprisingly good when upscaled.

.
In keeping with the spirit of this thread's topic, Ben, after buying that TofE SE, then you'll be faced with the dilemma of which to watch first, and in what order! :lol:
(be prepared for very persuasive arguments as to why you can still love the original, truncated, cut)

I was prepared to accept I was about to be disappointed by 'A Time...' until a very powerful shot, about 30 minutes in, hit me like a sucker punch.
As with just about everything by MoC,I should have known better.

And now you're gone all-region, you MUST buy the MoC Keaton box-set
(although I admit I still haven't watched all these, yet!) #-o

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MichaelB
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#56 Post by MichaelB » Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:35 am

Highway 61 wrote:This is me in a nutshell. Virtually every opportunity I've had to watch a movie in the last two years has been around 10PM, after coming home from work, making dinner, washing the dishes, etc. After that, I'm drained, and I have to fight to stay awake for anything that's not a TV show or a modern Hollywood crowd pleaser.
This is my headache with Blu-ray - for various domestic reasons, unless my wife is going out for the evening it's virtually impossible to start watching one before about 10.30pm.

I also have a gargantuan Polish/Czech/Hungarian kevyip, which I'm thinking of tackling in a few weeks using a tactic nicked from Simon Rattle's 'Towards the Millennium' project - ten weeks from the end of the year, I'm going to watch previously unwatched films from the year 2000 in week one, 2001 in week two and so on. A completely arbitrary system, of course, but it might at least encourage me to watch something I might otherwise have ignored.

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: On deciding what to watch

#57 Post by Gregory » Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:41 am

Ben Cheshire wrote:La Habanera, a caliente flavoured earlier one, but still American I think.
Nope, German. In addition to the Kino release, it's also in one of the Carlotta sets, but I don't know if anyone's compared the two.

Tom Peeping
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#58 Post by Tom Peeping » Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:05 pm

I feel better somehow now that I know there are guys like me out there.
Yesterday evening, I cam home exhausted from a long week of work and I wanted to watch a film from my pile of unwatched DVDs. I had a choice: Senso, Comrades, Gervaise, From the Terrace, Moderato Cantabile, Anatahan, The Collector... to name just a few on the top of the pile.
After an eternity of indecision, I ended up watching Twilight. And I felt like crying.

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Ben Cheshire
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:01 am

Re: On deciding what to watch

#59 Post by Ben Cheshire » Sat Oct 03, 2009 8:17 pm

Or it keeps growing like your fingernails... Creepy!

MoC's Keaton Box is one of their R0 releases, Yojimbo. I've got that box, as well as Kino's complete Keaton set (former has better PQ, but is only the shorts... And the features are great), as well as an Australian set that ports the french M2K transfers of The General, Steamboat Bill, College and Three Ages (probably my least favourite feature). For the record my favourite shorts are The Boat, The Scarecrow, Sherlock Jr, and the one where he's suicidal and he kills himself a million ways.. Hard Luck. Though its probably in the worst shape of all, being nearly lost I think.

I've got more Buster than there is! My only question has been since it came out, if I get the Harry Langdon set of shorts, would I watch them? I've bought sets of silent comedy before that weren't Keaton or Chaplin, but I don't ever watch them more than once... Tricky... Whereas I've watched City Lights, The Circus, The General, The Navigator, etc, heaps of times, maybe because they feel more important, as well as because I like them.

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LQ
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#60 Post by LQ » Sun Oct 04, 2009 8:55 am

It's a pleasure reading through this thread, the systems some of you have for deciding what to watch are fascinating!
I don't necessarily have a staggering physical dvd kevyip because I'm much more discerning about buying dvds nowadays...but my netflix queue is outrageously long. I tinker and rearrange almost every day because of a number of factors, almost all of which directly relate to this forum. I too have been plowing through the 2000s recommendations for the sake of the Lists Project; also there's one forum member in particular whose tastes are seemingly 99.9999% similar to my own so if he recommends something either here or on facebook, that always rises to the top of my queue.

My two biggest problems with whittling down the queue and watching my dvds in a timely fashion:
The pressing issue of the bulging DVR, which I think cdnchris also mentioned a page back or so. That poses the biggest obstacle because Curb Your Enthusiasm/Mad Men/How I Met Your Mother/The Office/Top Chef/hell, even Jeopardy all demand to be watched, and more often than not mfunk and I decide to watch our shows rather than watch a movie together.

The second would be the new addition of a blu-ray player to our household. Instead of watching whatever came in the mail from Netflix, we'll opt to watch whatever new Blu we've just gotten. (not a bad thing! -revisiting Pierrot recently was a sublime joy)
Other smaller factors, such as my dogged insistence on showing everyone in my life whatever movie I've been enthralled by as of late(who else has seen 3 Women 10 times in the spance of a couple of months??), our constant cinema-outings (we probably go to the movies on average at least once a week), being consumed by whatever book I'm reading, all contribute to the netflix envelopes resting forlorn on the shelf for a week or so before I get around to watching them.

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: On deciding what to watch

#61 Post by Gregory » Sun Oct 04, 2009 11:49 am

Quite often I structure my viewing into small series of films by the same director. I wait until I have more than one new title by a single filmmaker, usually three to five, sometimes including discs I've already watched but want to see again. Then I watch them all in chronological order over several nights. Not too long ago, I did a Hitchcock series that probably lasted the better part of a month -- mostly the Network and Optimum sets with a few American films thrown in at the end. I think this way of viewing really allows one to see a lot about a filmmaker's trajectory and to make comparisons among individual works. Intensive viewing of one individual also encourages me to find the time to do a little reading of related criticism, especially of book or articles I already have on the shelves. This is something I'm less inclined to do when watching a single film by someone and then moving on immediately to something else the following night.
The main downside of this kind of viewing is that sometimes such an intensive chunk of viewing of one director's works can form sort of a blur in my memory, perhaps even making it harder to remember what memories belonged to which particular film. I'm interested in others' thoughts on the pros and cons of this kind of series-based viewing, and indeed it's something on which I've thought about starting a thread. I haven't been able to get much of an idea how many people on the forum even use this approach routinely.

I think my kevyip got out of control largely because a couple years ago I started keeping unwatched DVDs in several different places throughout the apartment. Having them spread around disguised how many I was accumulating. Now I've slowed way down on buying and am making pretty good progress catching up. I don't have Netflix, which helps, and it's also for the best that there are no TV series I'm interested in watching. The exception to this is that my partner and I will occasionally watch a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but those are so short that it doesn't get in the way of our movie-watching.
My decisions about what to watch are based not only on what directors or areas of film I'm interested in at the time, and I also take into account when something was purchased. Some priority goes to things that have been sitting around the longest. However, I also try to watch the newest acquisitions within a month so that if a disc is defective I can still exchange it. Much of what I buy slips through this window, though.
Like a few others have said, I also have many of the unwatched DVDs sorted by length -- under an hour, 60-89 minutes, 90-120 minutes, and over 2 hours -- so that I can quickly choose something based on how much longer I plan to be awake.

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Yojimbo
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#62 Post by Yojimbo » Sun Oct 04, 2009 2:09 pm

Ben Cheshire wrote:Or it keeps growing like your fingernails... Creepy!

MoC's Keaton Box is one of their R0 releases, Yojimbo. I've got that box, as well as Kino's complete Keaton set (former has better PQ, but is only the shorts... And the features are great), as well as an Australian set that ports the french M2K transfers of The General, Steamboat Bill, College and Three Ages (probably my least favourite feature). For the record my favourite shorts are The Boat, The Scarecrow, Sherlock Jr, and the one where he's suicidal and he kills himself a million ways.. Hard Luck. Though its probably in the worst shape of all, being nearly lost I think.

I've got more Buster than there is! My only question has been since it came out, if I get the Harry Langdon set of shorts, would I watch them? I've bought sets of silent comedy before that weren't Keaton or Chaplin, but I don't ever watch them more than once... Tricky... Whereas I've watched City Lights, The Circus, The General, The Navigator, etc, heaps of times, maybe because they feel more important, as well as because I like them.
Offhand I don't recall 'The Scarecrow': I'm not sure which short features 'multiple' Busters,...'The Playhouse', I think, - which perhaps inspired 'Being John Malkovich', as 'Sherlock Jnr' certainly inspired 'Purple Rose of Cairo'.
I'm currently compiling my very first Top 1,000 list, and I've decided I'll allow a max. of 5 each Keaton and Chaplin shorts to be included: 'The Immigrant' is a shoo-in for Chaplin, and probably 'The Rink' which I'm sure I first saw as a 7 year old!!
(I've got various Mutual and Essanay Chaplin R2 sets, which were among my first DVD purchases; whereas I had the MoC Keaton box-set on pre-order from as soon as it was announced)
'Sherlock Jr.' and 'City Lights' are my respective favourite features of Keaton and Chaplin

karmajuice
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:02 am

Re: On deciding what to watch

#63 Post by karmajuice » Sun Oct 04, 2009 3:08 pm

I fear my viewing methods aren't nearly as mathematical as some folks' here. I watch a film nearly every day -- nowadays probably four to six a week, depending on how active I am. I at least try to squeeze in a short film, if nothing else.

I have a substantial keyvip but only because I've had the luxury of recording films off of TCM, IFC, and Sundance for the past year, which occupied most of my time. I choose what films to record solely on the basis of having heard of them, and sometimes I record something on pure impulse. I choose how to watch those about the same way as DVDs, although there is also a factor determining whether I watch a recorded film or a DVD. Typically recorded -- I'm about to lose this TV luxury, so I'll rely on DVDs, theatrical releases, and the internet -- but if it's likely that I'll be bothered, or if it I feel like "treating myself" (to higher quality, more intimacy; I watch films on my laptop), I'll watch a DVD.

I choose what to watch based mostly on my mood at the time. I think about what I watched the previous nights, what I'm doing the next night, and pick something different. So, if I watch a Kurosawa film from the fifties yesterday, I might watch a contemporary British film tonight, and an American silent film tomorrow. Diversity is the primary factor, and my general mood, since I know I'll get around to watching all of them eventually.

When watching with others I try not to recommend films that I own but haven't seen. I've done that a few times to disastrous results. I'm fine recommending a new release or a rental that I haven't seen, but I feel responsible if they don't like something that I own and recommended. So if I own it and we're watching it, I've probably seen it before. This is typically how I re-watch films, by viewing them again with others. Having friends around often changes my perspective in interesting ways and I can gauge better what they might like to see. Some very rewarding viewings have come from this, some of my favorites: watching Psycho with my friend and sister (far superior to watching it alone, even more exciting the second time), watching Eyes Without a Face projected in an empty building with some friends (one girl had to close her eyes during the surgery scene), and others. Recently I got away with showing a friend some Brakhage, which went off surprisingly well.

Cannot wait to dig into the Keaton set, which I've had for nearly a year and have only glanced at, and Satantango, which awaits the perfect night when I have nothing whatsoever to do.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: On deciding what to watch

#64 Post by zedz » Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:38 pm

e) all of the above.

I’ve been running a three-figure kevyip for some time and in the last several months, with lots of stuff in storage, it’s become a desert-island kevyip (i.e. the only discs I have on hand are the unwatched ones), with the intention that I will therefore knock the bastard off – or some of it, at any rate.

But this doesn’t take into account that mine is an enchanted kevyip that never really declines no matter how many films I watch. I keep a list of the offending items that also notes ‘to do’ extras and commentaries.

I try to combat kevyip paralysis by extracting strands and selections and sticking them in little piles or boxes (some of them those very same Deep Discount ones that Yojimbo uses) to limit my choice. Meanwhile, a big ol’ box o’ motherlode kevyip glowers under my desk and a second box slowly fills up with the empties. In order to get through a range of different things, I make up all sorts of ridiculous rules and protocols to govern my viewing and guide my choice.

Some species of kevyip extraction and their attendant viewing strategies:
Current Viewing Project – right now, unwatched 00s films, for the List Project. I keep these on hand and these tend to be my broccoli selection – what I should be watching.
Short Films! – Stuff under 90 minutes, for when I don’t have much time or want to have a kevyip clearing marathon.
Box Sets – When I start on a box set, I want to get through it and pack it away, so once I watch the first film in a box, I’ll leave it out until it’s finished. I try to limit myself to one of these at a time, so this can also turn into another medicinal option: I’ll watch the one great film in a set (e.g. The Big Trail) and then have to churn through the filler before I’m allowed to crack open another one.
Compilations – Something like the BFI GPO sets, or the Painleve one, I’ll try to keep ‘on the boil’, fitting in a short or three here or there between regular films. Often, if I get into the swing of it, I’ll end up finishing these off in a feature-length sitting.
RBMs (Really Big Motherfuckers) – There are some huge sets that I’m never going to be able to churn through in anything like consecutive sittings. I’m still only about halfway through Flicker Alley’s fantastic Melies set, but I keep it close by and every so often plough through more of it when I’m in the mood. Also lurking around (and especially irksome since it’s so damn huge) is the massive Laurel and Hardy set, out of which I’ve only just made it to the sound shorts. There’s a huge disincentive to addressing this particular mini-kevyip, as I want to watch the films in chronological order, which entails leaping from disc to disc and sitting through the long, unskippable, identical menus between every short. The mammoth Kluge set could have met a similar fate, but I turned this into a viewing project (see above) and really enjoyed the deep immersion of it.
GFIs (Gagging For Its) – Films I really, really want to see that I’ve managed to avoid watching right away. I keep these on hand for the right moment as a kind of reward. They’re not all easy watches, some could be quite long and might require a special mood, so they’re not comfort food (see below). Right now on the top of the pile are Class Relations, Late August, Early September and Rivette’s Jeannes.
Comfort Food – As somebody else mentioned, there are some kinds of films that are always enjoyable and easy to handle and make good default choices when you can’t make up your mind. I try to have a few noirs up my sleeve for this purpose, some Hawks and Ford, and, even though it’s supposed to be awful, one of my last unseen Hitchcocks, The Paradine Case.
Extras – I figure extras in on my kevyip calculations (or else I’d have no idea which ones I’d watched or not), so I also have a pile of discs with unwatched extras and unheard commentaries. These tend to be crack-fillers or background noise. I listen to commentaries like radio when I’m doing other stuff, and there’s only been a couple of instances out of hundreds where the comments have been so intriguing and screen specific that I’ve had to actually watch the film at the same time. Mealy-mouthed studio-spawned featurettes, lame period shorts and ‘just wait a sec while I grab my printouts from imdb’ commentaries are great for when you just know you’re going to drop off anyway. If you doze through them, it’s no great loss.

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fiddlesticks
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#65 Post by fiddlesticks » Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:46 pm

zedz wrote:RBMs (Really Big Motherfuckers) – There are some huge sets that I’m never going to be able to churn through in anything like consecutive sittings. I’m still only about halfway through Flicker Alley’s fantastic Melies set, but I keep it close by and every so often plough through more of it when I’m in the mood.
The Melies box is a real problem for me, since it's so damn massive (in quantity terms) and thus difficult to remember just where you left off last time. For a while (the first two discs, IIRC), I kept it out next to my movie-watching chair as a constant nagging reminder that I needed to pop in the current disc while the DVD player could still remember where it had stopped the last time. Then, after disc 2, I got wrapped up in the BFI's Free Cinema, and for a while it sat on top of Melies. Now both are back on the shelf, and the current plow-through-it-when-time-permits* box is Unseen Cinema.

I keep my kevyip (which, I'm grateful to learn, is less than many of yours at a mere 48 titles with five more on order) much like Domino described, but in my current configuration it's in another room and out of sight, so the satisfaction of sliding the disc back into place is less than it once was. Plus only the acquisitions since late May are still in shelvable form; the first 1200 or so are packed into notebooks that my cross-country move demanded, and there's a few loyal kevyippies buried in there (e.g., the aforementioned Elvis docos.) So I keep a handy list of the kevyip constituency, along with running times, on my computer (as an adjunct to the master list with the random title selector), and that is generally what I work off for the nightly movie. Although like many, I'm focusing on titles from this decade for the lists project, I purposely try to mix up my viewing in terms of director, genre, and vintage, at least a little bit, to keep from getting stale. Exceptions must be made for special circumstances, however; for example, I had to conduct a private mini-festival in honor of my avatar after her death a month ago.

There is one final variable that enters the formula, one I am somewhat hesitant to mention. I made a decision some time ago to post 140-character review blurbs on Twitter for each movie I watch. Thus, when I'm deciding between, say, L'Eclisse or Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, one factor is "do I really want the Twitterverse to know that I watched that?"

*I don't want to give the impression that any of these boxes are anything less than fabulous. They're hard work, but hard work can be fun, or so they tell me.

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Lamourderer
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#66 Post by Lamourderer » Sun Oct 04, 2009 7:29 pm

I have a kevyip of about 450 titles and it's sometimes a real pain. I usually order a huge amount of DVDs, watch couple of them while they arrive and stack the rest of them in the book shelves waiting for some other time which can be either after couple of weeks or couple of years. And yes, I have every dvd and blu-ray in alphabetical order except the special packages which don't fit beside the others.

Even though I like to list films and study other people's lists (or this forum) and take notes about interesting films, I usually watch movies by just picking something which at the time seems to be interesting and watch it. I usually don't want to watch two films made by the same director consecutively. If, for example, I'm watching Godard, I usually have to watch couple of flicks by other directors before I can start another Godard and so on. Same applies with film movements or eras: Two golden age Hollywood films or New German Cinema flicks consecutively is a definite no-no. Short films are an exception. My usual good night may for example consist of some 60s chanbara, then Estonian animated short films, a Godfrey Ho trash flick and after that maybe some Cary Grant, who knows?

Using the local library, tv, Internet and theaters help keep the interest alive. You don't get so easily frustrated when you have a wide selection of different formats to pick up. The downside is that reducing the kevyip becomes a great deal harder when 80 per cent of the week's watched films are either from the library or watched in theaters.

Even though I usually do not have problems choosing the films, sometimes I'm not satisfied with anything. I walk around my apartment from shelf to shelf and ponder what to watch even for half an hour. Then I take something from the shelf, open the case, open the tray, put the disc on the tray, close the tray, then think for a moment ("Humm, do I really, I mean really want to watch this now?"), open the tray, take the disc from the tray, put the disc in the case and the case back to the shelf. Then I continue pondering and restless walking. Usually after a while I just give up and remember I can entertain myself with various other ways and go out walking, in a restaurant with friends or read a book.

What really also bothers me is when someone overhypes the film for me, even though I may also have very high expectations. This happened with Frankenheimer's Manchurian Candidate which was so praised by one of my friends that when I finally ordered and got it, I put it in the shelf and didn't watch it until a great time had been passed and I had partially forgotten the reason why I didn't watch the film as soon as it arrived. When I finally watched it, I considered it as a masterpiece and blamed myself for being so irrationally provoked by something which was just meant to be a recommendation of a great film. This is not good for the kevyip.

Like Highway 61, I find it easier to watch documentaries than fiction when I'm tired. I also have a bad habit of watching something while not paying attention (while working at the laptop at the same time or something like that) and after the film is over I notice not enjoying it fully and feel like I'm not entitled to give a opinion about it, which means I have to watch it sometime again. If I have seen a film before I buy it as a DVD, I still have the inexlicable urge to rewatch it. This is a very nasty habit if you have friends who give you bad films which you have already seen as a present so you have to watch them again.

I also make notes after watching the film, rate them with stars and stuff like that so as to remember better what I thought about it. Sometimes I feel I have to rewatch something because I have a feeling my opinion may change significantly during a second viewing or because I wasn't as honest to myself the last time I made notes about the film - in other words convinced myself liking the film more than I actually did. I have about 80 films on my must-rewatch list. This doesn't include films which I want to revisit just for kicks.

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Yojimbo
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#67 Post by Yojimbo » Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:30 pm

My strategy with regard to watching films is not dissimilar to food's 'balanced diet': every now and then, in between the gourmet foods, and occasional 'health' foods, its no harm to gorge oneself on 'junk food'.
So, if I've been digesting a season of Tarkovsy and Wenders, I'll probably take time out to gorge myself on Three Stooges and Mr Moto films
(thats not to say that the films I've seen in the latter series aren't hugely enjoyable and well-crafted and featuring a clutch of expert Hollywood character actors)

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Mr Sausage
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#68 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:08 am

yojimbo wrote:(thats not to say that the films I've seen in the latter series aren't hugely enjoyable and well-crafted and featuring a clutch of expert Hollywood character actors)
The Motos are great fun. Each one is eighty minutes of excitement. On top of the excellent character actors (and, of course, the great Peter Lorre), I'm always astonished by the stunt actors. There's nothing dated or hokey about the fights in those things: the stunt guys go at it with gusto. It's too bad there's only eight of those movies.

The Motos, as well as many of the Universal horrors and the film noirs in the Warner sets, are perfect when you want a concise, quick moving, technically sound 75 to 80 minute movie to hold your interest without wasting any time, yours or its own.

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Sanjuro
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#69 Post by Sanjuro » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:24 am

I'm sure it's obvious to most people, but one way I keep my Kevyip down is by conditioning myself not to make copies of any rental films - watch them, send them back. And also to not burn anything on the HDD recorder onto DVD - just watch as much as possible and when the wife needs Drama space, delete stuff. It's always tempting to make copies but if it's really a film I'll come back to again and again I'll buy it. If I don't have the money, I put it out of my mind and watch something else. There's always going to be good films I haven't seen out there.

Back in the days of VHS and decent film programming on BBC2 and Channel 4 I managed to build a massive shelf of Long-Play Kevyip in no time at all. I expect it's all still lying unwatched in a box in my father's attic somewhere.

Sheriff Chambers
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#70 Post by Sheriff Chambers » Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:00 am

Mr_sausage wrote:
yojimbo wrote:(thats not to say that the films I've seen in the latter series aren't hugely enjoyable and well-crafted and featuring a clutch of expert Hollywood character actors)
The Motos are great fun. Each one is eighty minutes of excitement. On top of the excellent character actors (and, of course, the great Peter Lorre), I'm always astonished by the stunt actors. There's nothing dated or hokey about the fights in those things: the stunt guys go at it with gusto. It's too bad there's only eight of those movies.

The Motos, as well as many of the Universal horrors and the film noirs in the Warner sets, are perfect when you want a concise, quick moving, technically sound 75 to 80 minute movie to hold your interest without wasting any time, yours or its own.
I quite agree, and well said! This is an area of film appreciation which I find a lot of people are unwilling to acknowledge – the virtues of studio ‘product’ – and are even quite snooty about older films and particularly the type of films you refer to here. For many it seems to be that their filmic experience has to be a unique, artistic experience every time, which roughly translates as seeing a recent ‘cool’ film (i.e., one which has ‘artistic’ merit bestowed upon it and a concomitant elitist value – often the result of respectable middlebrow reviews by critics that probably think film is the poor relation of literature). These same people often have no appreciation of film history (and probably aren’t really interested in film at all) and baulk at the idea of film as something to be ‘consumed’ in the way you describe – as if it were an uninformed activity undertaken by people in anoraks. But as we know, film is all sorts of film and all sorts of film cultures.

Rant over.

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Sloper
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#71 Post by Sloper » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:25 am

Charlie Brooker's latest column reminded me of this thread. Here's a few paragraphs:
Charlie Brooker wrote:The other day I bought a DVD boxset of Carl Sagan's astronomy epic Cosmos: by all accounts, one of the best documentary series ever made. On my way home, I made the mistake of carefully reading the back of the box, where I discovered it has a running time of 780 minutes. Thirteen hours. It's against my religion to only watch part of it – it's all or nothing. But 13 hours? That's almost a marriage. The sheer weight of commitment is daunting. So it sits on the shelf, beside similarly unwrapped and unwatched obelisks. I'm not buying these things for myself any more. I'm hoarding them for future generations.

DVD and book purchases fall into two main categories: the ones you buy because you really want to watch them, and the ones you buy because you vaguely think you should. Two years ago I bought Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, partly because I'd heard it was a good book and an easy read, but mainly because I figured reading it would make me cleverer – or at the very least, make me seem a bit cleverer to anyone sitting opposite me on the tube. I never read it. A few months ago, having forgotten I already owned a copy, I bought it again. This means I haven't read it twice.

And I haven't read it (twice) because it's got too much competition from all the other books I've bought but never read. Popular science books. Biographies. Classic works of fiction. Cult sci-fi and horror stories. Reference works. How-to guides. Graphic novels. I can't buy one book at a time: I have to buy at least four. Which makes it exponentially trickier to single out one to actually read. When I buy books, all I'm really doing is buying wall insulation, like a blackbird gathering twigs to make a nest.

Ditto DVDs. Scenes From a Marriage and The Seventh Seal – two well-regarded Ingmar Bergman films I bought during a short-lived fit of self-improvement. I should have thrown them in a bin on my way home from the shop. It's hard enough to choose between the two: am I in the mood for a lyrical 92-minute meditation on death, or an unflinching three-hour portrayal of a dysfunctional relationship? Neither, as it turns out. They'd only be interrupted by emails and texts anyway. Perhaps something more lightweight? They're sitting on the shelf in-between JCVD (a post-modern Jean-Claude Van Damme film) and season two of Entourage. I've never seen those either – partly because I feel guilty about not having watched the Bergman films first. Somehow I've purchased my way into a no-win situation.
...

Here's what I want: I want to be told what to read, watch and listen to. I want my hands tied. I want a cultural diet. I want a government employee to turn up on my doorstep once a month, carrying a single book for me to read. I want all my TV channels removed and replaced by a single electro-pipe delivering one programme or movie a day. If I don't watch it, it gets replaced by the following day's selection. I want all my MP3s deleted and replaced with one unskippable radio station playing one song after the other. And every time I think about complaining, I want a minotaur to punch me in the kidneys and remind me how it was before.
Someone needs to get him the 3-disc CC edition of Scenes From a Marriage...

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Yojimbo
Joined: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:06 am
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#72 Post by Yojimbo » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:34 am

Sloper wrote:Charlie Brooker's latest column reminded me of this thread. Here's a few paragraphs:
Charlie Brooker wrote:The other day I bought a DVD boxset of Carl Sagan's astronomy epic Cosmos: by all accounts, one of the best documentary series ever made. On my way home, I made the mistake of carefully reading the back of the box, where I discovered it has a running time of 780 minutes. Thirteen hours. It's against my religion to only watch part of it – it's all or nothing. But 13 hours? That's almost a marriage. The sheer weight of commitment is daunting. So it sits on the shelf, beside similarly unwrapped and unwatched obelisks. I'm not buying these things for myself any more. I'm hoarding them for future generations.

DVD and book purchases fall into two main categories: the ones you buy because you really want to watch them, and the ones you buy because you vaguely think you should. Two years ago I bought Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, partly because I'd heard it was a good book and an easy read, but mainly because I figured reading it would make me cleverer – or at the very least, make me seem a bit cleverer to anyone sitting opposite me on the tube. I never read it. A few months ago, having forgotten I already owned a copy, I bought it again. This means I haven't read it twice.

And I haven't read it (twice) because it's got too much competition from all the other books I've bought but never read. Popular science books. Biographies. Classic works of fiction. Cult sci-fi and horror stories. Reference works. How-to guides. Graphic novels. I can't buy one book at a time: I have to buy at least four. Which makes it exponentially trickier to single out one to actually read. When I buy books, all I'm really doing is buying wall insulation, like a blackbird gathering twigs to make a nest.

Ditto DVDs. Scenes From a Marriage and The Seventh Seal – two well-regarded Ingmar Bergman films I bought during a short-lived fit of self-improvement. I should have thrown them in a bin on my way home from the shop. It's hard enough to choose between the two: am I in the mood for a lyrical 92-minute meditation on death, or an unflinching three-hour portrayal of a dysfunctional relationship? Neither, as it turns out. They'd only be interrupted by emails and texts anyway. Perhaps something more lightweight? They're sitting on the shelf in-between JCVD (a post-modern Jean-Claude Van Damme film) and season two of Entourage. I've never seen those either – partly because I feel guilty about not having watched the Bergman films first. Somehow I've purchased my way into a no-win situation.
...

Here's what I want: I want to be told what to read, watch and listen to. I want my hands tied. I want a cultural diet. I want a government employee to turn up on my doorstep once a month, carrying a single book for me to read. I want all my TV channels removed and replaced by a single electro-pipe delivering one programme or movie a day. If I don't watch it, it gets replaced by the following day's selection. I want all my MP3s deleted and replaced with one unskippable radio station playing one song after the other. And every time I think about complaining, I want a minotaur to punch me in the kidneys and remind me how it was before.
Someone needs to get him the 3-disc CC edition of Scenes From a Marriage...
I'd recommend 'The Brothers Karamazov' to Charlie: a far superior novel to 'Crime and Punishment' and, consequently, I believe a better novel to display when he wants people to believe he's cleverer than he is

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: On deciding what to watch

#73 Post by Gregory » Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:03 pm

fiddlesticks wrote:
zedz wrote:RBMs (Really Big Motherfuckers) – There are some huge sets that I’m never going to be able to churn through in anything like consecutive sittings. I’m still only about halfway through Flicker Alley’s fantastic Melies set, but I keep it close by and every so often plough through more of it when I’m in the mood.
... after disc 2, I got wrapped up in the BFI's Free Cinema, and for a while it sat on top of Melies.
That Free Cinema set has a lot more hours of films in it than one would think by looking at the size of it, and maybe it was savvy of the BFI not to print the total running time on the box so people would be put off by the commitment. The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection is another one: all those short films and over twelve films of between roughly an hour in length to 100 minutes, not to mention extras. In both cases, though, I'm couldn't be more glad that there's so much.
I can't say the same about the season sets of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The good episodes make it worthwhile to have them, but there are so many bad ones to slog through, and so many episodes in a season, that it takes me an eternity to get through each season.

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A
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 6:41 pm

Re: On deciding what to watch

#74 Post by A » Mon Oct 12, 2009 4:47 pm

Seems like we all have the same problem. I enjoyed reading this thread, but I must admit that I felt very guilty for not watching a film instead. #-o
Anyways, some interesting ideas here. I've tried some of them already, but they didn't really work in long-term. The one with the unseen DVDs sitting more at the front of your shelves than the rest seems intriguing, though.
But I think I simply won't find an ideal method in the upcoming years. From the films I own, I currently haven't seen some 2000 titles yet, and though I've been watching roughly one film per day for the last ten years, I usually sit at the cinema or watch something with friends, meaning that fromthe 400 films I watch each year, only about 100 are from my own collection. Thus I'd need (realistically speaking) at least 20 years to finish my current 2000 unseen films, what with my obsession to rewatch as many films as possible (from the ca. 6000 films I've seen so far in my life, I've rewatched half of them at least two times). And it sure doesn't look like I'll stop purchasing movies in the future.

I think, the most important thing you have to consider is this. While you stand in front of your shelf trying to decide which film to watch, you could have already seen one instead of pondering the decision. Make quick decisions, and just watch anything that comes to mind (unless you have a huge temporary aversion to it).

But the really embarassing situations happen, when I spend a day or a night with some fellow cinefreaks, and you have 3 to 6 people wondering what to watch... It has happened that we only watched two films during 12 hours of possibilities, just because we were arguing what to watch.

I am probably also longing for the old days of recorded VHS movies, and one crappy cinema in town... Those were the glorious days of cinematic discovery. :roll:

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dad1153
Joined: Thu Apr 16, 2009 10:32 am
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Re: On deciding what to watch

#75 Post by dad1153 » Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:02 pm

LQ wrote:My two biggest problems with whittling down the queue and watching my dvds in a timely fashion:

The pressing issue of the bulging DVR, which I think cdnchris also mentioned a page back or so. That poses the biggest obstacle because Curb Your Enthusiasm/Mad Men/How I Met Your Mother/The Office/Top Chef/hell, even Jeopardy all demand to be watched, and more often than not mfunk and I decide to watch our shows rather than watch a movie together.

The second would be the new addition of a blu-ray player to our household. Instead of watching whatever came in the mail from Netflix, we'll opt to watch whatever new Blu we've just gotten. (not a bad thing! -revisiting Pierrot recently was a sublime joy)
This is my story too. I have a "Law & Order" addiction. Have seen every episode of all three shows (mothership, "Special Victims Unit" and "Criminal Intent") several times, and yet I crave the cable/TV repeats like a diabetic craving his sugar. I'm also a high-definition whore with an HD-DVD and Blu-ray pile to go along with the 47" 1080p flat screen with kick-ass surround. There's also those wonderful will-never-be-shown-anywhere-else flicks on Turner Classic Movies (HD), IFC (HD) and Sundance Channel... heck, even Ovation every once in a while. If the movie's name has been tossed around in this (and other) movie forums and if these channels air them (and if I notice them in the schedule and if there is enough room in the DVR and if it doesn't conflict with my other TV choices and if... hope Lindsay Anderson doesn't sue me! :wink: ) I try to DVR it so I can see it and judge whether the movie is actually good-enough to own. That's how a midnight showing on TCM of Ozu's "There Was A Father" in June of '08 morphed into a dozen of his Criterion flicks on my collection (particularly "Late Spring," now among my favorite movies of all time), although most of my Ozu's are sitting on my triple-digit kevyip pile of DVDs, HD-DVDs, BD's and even videogames. :?

Today I was sick all day at home with the flu but not sick-enough to not watch TV. But did I use the opportunity to cut into the pile? Nope, because there was an "SVU" marathon on USA all day long. But last night I got around to watch the TCM airing of Antonioni's "Blow Out" that had been on my DVR since last July. And last week I also saw movies from Varda, Castle, Rossellini, Pakula and Kalatozov that had been gathering space for a while. Plus there are Blu-rays of "The New York Ripper" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" that are on dock for tonight. Why am I choosing to watch these flicks instead of the many Fuller, Mizoguchi, Orphus, etc. movies and TV-on-DVD Box Sets/shows all over my apartment and busting-at-the-seams DVR? For the same reason I haven't seen fit to watch the last four weeks' worth of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" shows even though I love the show (and movies from the aforementioned director) or unseal my Mizoguchi and Ozu Eclipse Box Sets: because when faced with the overwhelming choices at my disposal I freeze, question myself and then choose to go with my gut. Most importantly, I never force myself to watch something I haven't seen before when I don't feel like it for fear of 'contaminating' my viewing. The filmmakers this forum (and myself) appreciate more have chosen to specialize in the type of movies that aren't meant for mass-consumption or casual viewings. The least I can do when judging their work for the first time is give their movies the courtesy of a focused and willing viewing, something that frankly is hard to do when you're juggling work/family/DVR/the works/etc.

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