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Response to: Suspended for Assigning Lil Wayne Posted February 5th, 2014 in General

At 2/4/14 10:42 AM, Earfetish wrote: While Lil Wayne is awful, it's good to get kids to engage with modern media, and swear words or adult themes, sheesh, they're gonna read Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies or some other classic novel with swear words and adult themes

Agreed. In general I think English teachers doing these sorts of projects to get kids more engaged with the process of literary analysis is a great idea, as long as that's ultimately in the service of guiding them towards analysis of actual literature.

And I don't mean that as some sort of snobby high/low culture dismissal of rap music or whatever, it's just that kids don't need English class to engage with modern pop culture, they're doing it already on their own all the time. What they do need English class for is to help make sense of older and more seemingly impenetrable - but still incredibly important - works that they probably wouldn't be reading or understanding otherwise. Not to mention the spelling and grammatical and writing skills they'll naturally pick up from constantly reading.

but arguably hip-hop lyrics are more important and more relevant to modern life than Shakespeare's novels and understanding them will put kids in good stead to be the linguists of the future

No, no they aren't. I mean, sure, the surface trappings are obviously more relevant, but the actual important stuff like theme and character and form? Shakespeare had an understanding of the human psyche and a way with words (and a knack for story structure, something I didn't recognize in high school but do now) that are still pretty much unmatched and still just as relevant as they always were. An entire body of work doesn't survive for 400 years and get consistently held up as the greatest pieces of literature in their language by inertia alone.

Something being old doesn't automatically render it obsolete, that's one of the nice things about art and something that any good English class should illustrate.

Response to: Happy Birthday Ryan! Posted February 5th, 2014 in General

It is your birthday.

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Response to: Most retarded phrases Posted February 5th, 2014 in General

"Retarded."

And of course, "friend zone."

At 2/4/14 06:32 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: "I could care less."

Ugh, yes, this is the one I was going to post. Just like with the way people use "literally," they mean the exact opposite of what they're saying!

At 2/5/14 03:47 AM, tsukikomi wrote: As fuck

Oy, yeah, this one too. And "epic," "feels," "because [noun]," "alpha/beta," etc.

Response to: Soda war! Posted February 5th, 2014 in General

The best sodas are Fitz's Coffee Cola and pineapple Jarritos. All the things you've listed pale in comparison so whatever, fuck 'em.

Okay good talk guys.

At 2/4/14 04:08 AM, Boomstick wrote: Perrier

No wait it's this. This is the winner.

Response to: America the Beautiful, pc wasteland Posted February 3rd, 2014 in Politics

Dude, I think you're projecting a whole lot of things onto that ad that aren't really there. First of all, the ad seems to use different languages solely for the purpose of getting its message of celebrating American diversity (well, really its message of celebrating Coca-Cola, but you know what I mean) across via audio as well as video in an efficient and artful way. That's it. I don't know how else they could have accomplished that in a way that would be to your satisfaction.

Second of all, how does the mere existence of multilingualism as depicted in the ad devalue or denigrate English in any way? Hell, how does the use of other languages suggest that those people don't also speak English? The ad includes and even privileges English.

I can assure you that a soft drink company paying millions of dollars for Super Bowl ad space probably has no interest in using that space to make some kind of political statement about whether or not immigrants should learn to speak English. If you get anything out of that ad other than "gee America sure is nice, I should buy a Coke," then I think you might be missing the point.

Also the corny liberal multicultural idealism of the Coke ad was offset by the crass conservative ethnocentric jingoism of the Bob Dylan Chrysler ad later in the game anyway, so it all balances out I guess? These are silly TV commercials, who the fuck cares.

At 2/3/14 01:57 PM, poxpower wrote: What makes America great is freedom, not hot dogs and diversity.

Except "freedom" isn't something that we do especially better than every other country. Diversity is (and so are hot dogs).

Response to: Cinema Club Posted February 3rd, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

The Randomizer has spoken, and it has selected @Auz to pick this week's film!

Try to announce your pick sometime tomorrow, and remember, you'll want to pick something that's conducive to discussion, that all or most of us haven't seen, that branches out from our comfort zones, and that comes from a different decade and genre (and maybe country) from the previous week's film.

Anyway, a couple last-minute thoughts on Dark City:

Watching the film for the second time a couple nights ago, the first thing that stuck out to me, which I hadn't remembered from the first time I watched the film, was how incredibly brisk the film's pace is and how confident it is in revealing its secrets early on; how (in the director's cut at least) we're thrown right into Murdoch's story, how early we see the Strangers' underground lair and learn about their experiments, how quickly it becomes apparent that Shell Beach probably doesn't exist. Proyas, unlike, say, J.J. Abrams, understands that head-scratching intrigue alone isn't enough to sustain an entire feature-length narrative. Instead, he lets us in on those details early to allow the film to get to the real meaty stuff, exploring the narrative possibilities and thematic consequences laid out by its premise.

And what a premise it is. Whether or not we're more than just the sum of our memories is a pretty fascinating and kind of horrifying question, especially since our memories can be so fragile and faulty and easily influenced by outside forces. This must have been a particularly pressing concern in the late '90s because there's a whole little microgenre from that era of films paranoid about our individual realities and memories lying to us in the service of some outside collective (this movie, The Truman Show, The Matrix, arguably The Game or eXistenZ, etc).

Actually, it's not a fully coherent theory or anything but now that I think of it it's hard not to see Dark City as being in some way a metaphor for cinema itself, with the same "actors" constantly taking on new personalities and life stories, as well as in the constantly shifting "sets" where all those little stories take place. At one point Schreber says that the city is a mix of memories from different eras, but of course nobody's memories look anything like that. The city is really a mix of cinematic eras: '40s film noir and '70s sci-fi dystopia and '20s German Expressionism (the Strangers and their lair look like something right out of a Fritz Lang film). And then of course all these variables are being manipulated at the behest of behind-the-scenes "directors" hoping to use these stories to get at some deeper truth about human life. I dunno, just something I noticed that I think is cool to think about.

Looking forward to seeing this week's pick, hopefully it'll be something uncool.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted February 2nd, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 2/1/14 10:21 PM, Natick wrote: one thing i read on imdb a few days before watching it was that it had one of the shortest average length shots of any modern production at that time of 1.8 seconds and a cut every 2 seconds.

Huh, interesting. It certainly didn't feel like an especially fast-cutting film to me (when I'm talking about the brisk pace I mostly mean in terms of narrative). I think the film's impeccable shot composition and production design probably compensate for the fast cutting; no constantly cutting between disorienting shaky-cam closeups here.

the ending battle between john and the head stranger was hilarious, gotta love how underdeveloped cgi effects were back in the 90's

Aside from that scene though I think the special effects hold up incredibly well, the shots of the city transforming are amazing. I'd be curious to see what was practical and what was CGI.

At 2/2/14 05:54 AM, Sense-Offender wrote: Piggler mentioned wanting to know about the when and how. I think it's best left ambiguous as it is.

Agreed. Current sci-fi stories seem to be obsessed with mythology for its own sake, but this movie is economical enough to only give us what's necessary for the story and themes.

Also, notice how elaborate the scenery is in this movie, sometimes noticably more than necessary. The sets are fantastic. I really enjoy very visual movies like this.

Yes yes yes. The production design might be the best part of the movie, there's nothing else quite like it.

At 2/2/14 02:03 PM, TheMaster wrote: BBC reporting that Philip Seymour Hoffman has died.

So incredibly sad. The list of great Hoffman performances is enormous, whether it's his major roles in Capote and Synecdoche, New York and The Master, his small parts in Almost Famous and The Big Lebowski, or his single scene in Hard Eight.

Response to: Who is your biggest nerd friend? Posted February 2nd, 2014 in General

@Idiot-Finder holy shit dude...

Who is your biggest nerd friend?

Response to: Sociopathy and Empathy Posted February 1st, 2014 in General

At 2/1/14 12:58 PM, Sekhem wrote: do you respect my feeling of disgust that i'm feeling towards you right now

What the fuck did I do?

Sociopathy and Empathy

Response to: Why do many people age badly? Posted February 1st, 2014 in General

Heavy drinking and poor sleep and dietary habits, mostly.

Response to: Sociopathy and Empathy Posted February 1st, 2014 in General

Empathy is natural, sociopathy (as an adult) isn't (though I guess it depends on what you mean by "natural"). But I don't even know if it's worth getting into it now because in addition to your usual rambling, you're also operating on faulty understandings of both those terms. You keep using empathy as synonymous with "having emotions" but that's not what it is at all, nor is sociopathy the opposite of having emotions. Sociopaths have plenty of emotions, they just don't recognize or respect other people's.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted February 1st, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

Rewatched Dark City, it's just as great as I remembered it. Detailed thoughts later, sleeep nooow.

Response to: Longest sleep ever Posted February 1st, 2014 in General

One time in college after a series of all-nighters in preparation for midterms I decided to take a short nap at around 11:00 PM, and at first that's what I thought I had done when I woke up and it was still dark outside. But nope, turned out it was actually around 6:00 PM the next day and I had slept through all the classes I had been scrambling to finish papers for.

At 2/1/14 12:34 AM, Alasky wrote: I average around 10 hours of sleep.

How?? On weekdays I'm lucky if I get 7.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 30th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/29/14 06:59 PM, TheMaster wrote: but I suppose you can read it as a metaphor for how his life will continue to go in circles. The whole film is him going through cycles of failure due to his inability to plan ahead, so making the film cyclical too does sort of make sense.

Well there you go. The cycle repeats because he hasn't really learned anything, or even if he has he's still stubbornly sticking to the attitudes he started out with anyway.

But also I think the repetition at the end punctuates the ways in which the film (appropriately) takes on the structure of a folk song. Each episode that we see in Llewyn's life acts as a "verse," until the first "verse" is repeated at the end of the film, with our knowledge of all the other verses informing and enhancing it. It's just like the songs Llewyn sings.

It was never new and it never gets old.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 28th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/28/14 07:12 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: For the movie of the week, I'll pick Dark City (director's cut)

Ah there it is. And that's a great choice! I haven't seen Dark City in a few years (I don't remember which cut it was) so I'm excited to rewatch it.

So just to clarify, this week's film, to be discussed on Saturday, February 1 and Sunday, February 2, will be:

Dark City (Director's Cut) (Proyas, 1998, USA/Australia)

Sorry for the short notice, next week we'll definitely have a new picker by Sunday night and a new film by Sunday or Monday.

@Atlas
@TheMaster
@Natick
@Slint
@darkjam
@Makeshift
@Jackho
@Auz
@Sekhem
@Dean
@Piggler

At 1/28/14 01:35 PM, Dean wrote: Also, I think you'd probably want to have the next film chosen by Sundays at the latest.

That's what we're going for ideally. I only left an extra day this time because I wanted to give everyone who said they wanted to be involved a chance to participate and have as large a pool as possible for the next week's picker.

That way, if it's a film people want to watch, they should be able to order a copy and receive it in time to watch it by (or during) the weekend it's due to be discussed. Or maybe I just have an old fashioned way of thinking and everyone acquires their movies by "other means" or via some streaming service.

Yeah, I think for the most part people are getting the movies through streaming services, digital rentals and "other means," plus they're mostly waiting until closer to the end of the week to watch them anyway.

But I definitely want to accommodate people who prefer or need to get physical copies of the films (and you're not the only one, I think TheMaster is also mostly using physical copies), so we'll definitely try harder in the future to get the announcement of the next week's film in as soon as possible.

However I do want to try and be a bit more open minded with films so unless someone picks a film that they've chosen because of how shit it is

Yeah, I mean I'm totally not opposed to someone picking a movie because they think it's bad in interesting, discussion-worthy ways, but I can see how something like that could be a problem for people who have to pay for physical copies.

At 1/28/14 04:07 PM, Slint wrote: Wow I fucking suck but please let me blame it on the exams.

S'all good man. Though like I said to Atlas, you should watch The 400 Blows anyway at some point because it's fucking awesome.

Once we're a bunch of weeks in I'll make a Letterboxd list of every MotW so people can catch up if they want.

R.i.p. Pete Seeger Posted January 28th, 2014 in General

The legendary folk singer died last night at the age of 94. Seeger collected, preserved, and championed folk music from around the country and the world, and he wrote, arranged or popularized a lot of folk songs that are now so deeply ingrained into our culture that we take them for granted, songs like "We Shall Overcome," "If I Had a Hammer," and "Turn, Turn, Turn." His influence on modern music is pretty much immeasurable. He was also a lifelong passionate political activist, supporting labor and civil rights, standing up to the HUAC, protesting against the Vietnam War, and working to protect the environment.

I was lucky enough to see Seeger perform at a small local festival in upstate NY a few years ago, not long after his 90th birthday. His voice may have been a little weaker than it was on all his old records, but his passion for music clearly hadn't diminished one bit, nor had his unmatched ability to get everybody else singing along.

R.I.P.

How has nobody else made this thread already?
Response to: Post music, rate the one above! Posted January 28th, 2014 in General

At 1/24/14 11:28 AM, Viper50 wrote: Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground

7/10

Pete Seeger & Buffy Sainte-Marie - "Cindy"

R.I.P. to a great musician and a great man.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 28th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/27/14 04:13 PM, Atlas wrote: I didn't get a chance to watch sadly, Sorry. I will definitely watch the next one.

No worries, though you should definitely try to watch the film anyway at some point, it's great.

Does Saturday/Sunday still work best for you (and everyone) though?

At 1/27/14 03:30 PM, Dean wrote: @Dr-Worm can you include me in any future "Movie of the Week" posts you make?
At 1/28/14 01:09 AM, Piggler wrote: I humbly express my wishes to be involved in the Movie of the Week, if the Cinema Club obliges.

Sure thing guys, the more the merrier. I'll make sure you're @ mentioned in future MotW posts.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 27th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

So I had initially figured Saturday and Sunday would be the best days for discussion, but considering how a few people had said they wanted to get involved last week but never ended up doing so, maybe I was wrong? Would a different schedule work better for you guys in terms of everyone watching the MotW in time? Or should we keep it at Saturday and Sunday?

In any event...

At 1/27/14 02:02 PM, Natick wrote: how do we decide what the next movie of the week will be again?

I put the names of everyone who participated in last week's MotW into this list randomizer (excluding myself since I've gone already). The results:

@Sense-Offender will be picking this week's film!

Sorry for the short notice (I guess normally we'd be announcing a new picker on Sunday night, but I wanted to leave a little extra time for people to participate since it's the first week), but if you could announce your pick by tonight or tomorrow that should give everyone enough time to watch the film.

And remember, ideally you'll want to pick a film that's conducive to discussion, that all or most of us haven't seen before, and that's from a different decade, genre and/or country from the previous week's film. Have fun with it!

At 1/26/14 02:58 AM, Sense-Offender wrote: I think Truffaut was a critic berore, wasn't he?

Yup, like I mentioned in my last post he got his start writing for the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema, where among other things he was a major developer and early proponent of auteur theory.

At 1/26/14 09:35 AM, TheMaster wrote: It was interesting to see social realism done so well in a foreign language. I'd perhaps naively thought of the "genre", if you can call it that, as being an almost fundamentally British thing. It definitely felt more similar in tone to something from Ken Loach or Alan Clarke than to most French cinema I've seen.

Yeah, that whole genre of British "kitchen sink" dramas has some clear antecedents in the French poetic realism of the '30s and (even more so) the Italian neorealism of the '40s, both of which were also obviously huge influences on The 400 Blows. If you haven't seen many films from those movements and you're a fan of social realist dramas you should definitely check them out.

Don't think you can understate the importance of the classroom scenes, either. They're genuinely funny, and provide a much needed break from the grimness of almost everything else in the film.

Definitely, though of course they also add to that grimness in their own way, since Antoine is misunderstood at school just as much as he is at home. Antoine is actually kind of the most enthusiastic student in the class when you think about it (he builds a shrine to Balzac in his bedroom for fuck's sake), but because of everyone's preconceived notions about him, that enthusiasm is mistaken for troublemaking, both with the fire incident and his alleged plagiarism. A better, more conscientious teacher would have recognized and nurtured Antoine's enthusiasm to more productive ends.

Response to: Bladder shyness Posted January 26th, 2014 in General

Honestly? I sing a little made-up song about pee to myself in my head.

I know how that sounds, but I swear to god it's the perfect method.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 26th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

Glad to see some you guys have watched/are planning on watching the film. It's a great one. A couple fun facts about The 400 Blows off the top of my head:

-You may have noticed at the end of the opening credits that the film is dedicated to Andre Bazin. Bazin was a hugely important French film critic and theorist who co-founded the influential critical magazine Cahiers du Cinema, where among other things several New Wave directors like Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard got their start. He was also a major personal mentor for Truffaut and helped him escape a fate not dissimilar to Antoine's (the film is pretty semi-autobiographic in a lot of ways).

-The scene where the kids gradually peel off from their class and sneak away from their teacher in small groups is a direct homage to Jean Vigo's 1933 short film Zero de Conduite, which was a major influence on the film. Vigo died at 29 after only making a few shorts and one feature, L'Atalante, but his stuff is really awesome and ahead of its time and you should definitely check it out if you get the chance.

At 1/25/14 08:22 AM, Sense-Offender wrote: Very good performance for a kid.

I don't even think you need to qualify it like that, it's just a great performance, period. Certainly one of the most impressive child performances I've ever seen.

Quite a memorable ending.

Yup, which is why it's been so relentlessly copied ever since. I could be wrong but I think it may have been the first film to end on a freeze-frame like that.

I got the impression she might have been making shit up just to hurt him when she told him that his stepfather didn't care about him anymore.

I dunno, she may be exaggerating but I don't think the stepfather is totally blameless when it comes to Antoine's mistreatment. He's nice to Antoine in a casual way, which is at least more than you can say for any other adult in the film I guess, but it's clear that he has no real paternal affection for him.

When they found him after he ran away the first time, was she being two-taced and just being nice to him because he saw her with the man?

That's the impression I've always had, yeah.

At 1/25/14 10:19 PM, Natick wrote: i loved the scene where the mother arrives home very late and has a brief argument with the stepfather about antoine and the camera just focuses on antoine's facial reactions while he's lying in bed wide awake.

Yes, that scene is great and it illustrates one of my favorite stylistic things about the movie, how we're always kept so close to Antoine's perspective, making us really understand what he's feeling. Like you said, the camera stays on his face and lets the argument happen offscreen and muffled, but it also stays at his height, cutting off his parents above the leg as they pass by. The film is full of interesting little choices like that that serve to really put us inside Antoine's head. My favorite of these might be later on in the film, when there's a shot from Antoine's point of view as he's being chastised by his mother. The shot starts out focusing on her face, but the camera slowly drifts up to look at her hat as she speaks. It's a brilliant visual representation of a universal feeling, that of being a kid getting yelled at and drifting off out of a mix of guilt and boredom. Where most other films tend to use perspective only for functional or dramatic ends, this one uses it to create little human moments and generate empathy.

Between this movie and his 1976 Small Change, I think Truffaut really perfectly understood how to capture a child's perspective and psyche on film in a way that few other filmmakers can match. The only other people I can think of immediately who might compare are Spielberg and Miyazaki (this probably goes some way toward explaining Truffaut's acting role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Response to: Post music, rate the one above! Posted January 21st, 2014 in General

At 1/21/14 01:44 PM, Oliver wrote: I've had this stuck in my head for the longest time.

Bouncy! 7/10

Michael Hurley - Hog of the Forsaken

Response to: Post music, rate the one above! Posted January 21st, 2014 in General

At 1/16/14 07:48 PM, Viper50 wrote: Bad Company - No Smoke Without A Fire

Finely grated cheese. 5/10

Whiskeytown - Jacksonville Skyline

Response to: Gary Jules-Mad World. Posted January 21st, 2014 in General

I don't know if "pretentious" is the right word for it, but yeah, there's a reason why this song only had a brief moment as go-to melancholy mood music before falling off the map entirely. It's kinda dull.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 21st, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/20/14 10:11 PM, Natick wrote: it felt as if he borrowed a lot from his villainous turn as calvin candie in django unchained, which i think he should have won an oscar for last year.

Between those two roles he certainly seems to be having a lot more fun as an actor, and it shows.

it's an extremely unflattering portrayal of him and his life that hardly does anything to balance out his flaws or unbelievable fuck-ups.

That's because Scorsese and Terence Winter rightly recognized that no such redemptive material exists, and (unlike Belfort himself in his book) they were brave and honest enough not to pretend it did. Hell, like you pointed out a lot of people have complained that the film is too easy on Belfort. Few if any people have argued the opposite.

The key difference between Belfort and figures like La Motta and Hill, and one that I think Scorsese was very aware of in making this movie, is that in one way or another those other men were ultimately punished for their sins, and Belfort decidedly was not. Given the strict Catholic sense of morality that so many of Scorsese's films are chiefly concerned with, that distinction becomes kind of a huge deal, and I think it goes some way towards explaining that lack of sympathy you're talking about.

It's also worth noting that Belfort's story can't quite be made into an historical abstraction the way La Motta's and Hill's can (at least not yet). Unlike with La Motta's very specific personal demons or Hill's insular, alien (to us) world of organized crime, the Jordan Belforts of the world are mostly still at large today, they operate in the mainstream "legitimate" world we all live in, and their victims are you and me. Our society is still reeling from the fallout of those criminals' actions (even as we secretly continue to envy their lavish lifestyles to a certain extent), and I think the film very deliberately reflects that climate.

and i just wondered how they could manage to get him on camera after this hedonistic and excessive life-style they portrayed of him

Well if his interview with Piers Morgan that I was watching tonight is any indication, they managed to get him on camera because he's an utterly shameless and un-self-aware moron.

i can agree with the notion that this will be a fight club or scarfaceof it's generation. mainstream audiences are not going to like it today but a decade from now, it will be hailed as a classic.

I mean, aside from a certain vocal minority of dissenters it's already mostly garnering high praise pretty much across the board. I agree that people's offense at the film's so-called glorification of Belfort's lifestyle will probably soften as we get more distance from the financial crisis, but...

If anything, the biggest similarity between the reception of WoWS and that of Fight Club or Scarface will be that a large concentration of idiots will mistakenly view it as aspirational.

i can understand why some people will want to avoid it considering the financial crisis that happened 5 years ago, even if this film isn't about that.

Right, but again I don't think you can underestimate how much that climate effects the actual meaning and intent of the film, not just audiences' reaction to it.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 20th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

Hey guys. So our very first Movie of the Week, to be discussed on Saturday, January 25 and Sunday, January 26, will be:

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959, France)

Typically credited as one of the earliest and most influential films of the French New Wave, The 400 Blows tells a deceptively simple yet deeply resonant story of a young adolescent gradually slipping through the cracks of society as he's mistreated and misunderstood both at school and at home.

I figured it would be best for our first week to pick a broadly praised bonafide classic, though one that a bunch of you have said you've never seen before. I also thought this would be an especially fitting pick for Newgrounds given the film's focus on juvenile delinquency.

Anyway, it's one of my all-time favorite movies, I hope you guys enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to talking about it with y'all on Saturday.

@Atlas
@TheMaster
@Natick
@Slint
@darkjam
@Oolaph
@Makeshift
@Sense-Offender
@Jackho
@Auz
@Sekhem

And remember that the only way to get your name in the pool to select next week's MotW is to participate this week!

At 1/17/14 03:23 PM, Natick wrote: well, i already took notes on this film yesterday in preparation and i never do that on my own time

Bummer dude. You could always pick that movie yourself if you want, or maybe someone else will. But even if it isn't picked as a MotW it's not like closely watching a great movie is ever a waste or whatever; I don't really take physical notes anymore but if I like something enough I usually try take some pretty vigorous mental ones.

In any event, you're definitely setting a high bar for dedication to the MotW discussions, the note-taking is probably a good habit to get into and I'll try to follow your example.

Cinema Club

Response to: help me to make a good fundraiser Posted January 18th, 2014 in General

1. Your Kickstarter page should be written in coherent sentences with correct spelling and grammar (i.e. nothing like your posts here) or nobody will take you seriously.

2. Make sure you actually have something to show on the page, whether it's a trailer or test footage or concept art or a poster or, preferably, some combination of all those things.

3. Try to raise some of the money independently before you head into the crowdfunding stage. Potential investors will be more confident in your project if they see that other people have already invested and that you're already on your way to your fundraising goal.

In terms of investment rewards: Special Thanks credits, Producer and Executive Producer credits, early access/free copies of the film, memorabilia (posters, t-shirts, drawings, custom stuff, whatever).

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 17th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/16/14 09:18 PM, Sekhem wrote: Anti-semitism is certainly a loaded term.

I'm well aware, and I don't throw it around lightly.

Most of us are simply anti-Zionism and pro-Palestine.

I have read many, many pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist articles, and they're often quite unsparing and harshly critical of Israel. But none of them made me nauseous the way your site's Wolf of Wall Street review did (a movie that barely even makes any passing references to Judaism, and that certainly has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet such is the site's apparent obsession; hell, you guys even managed to shoehorn a couple digs at Jews into your review of 12 Years a Slave).

Out of morbid curiosity after reading those reviews I checked out some of the site's pieces on films that are more directly related to Judaism/the Holocaust/WWII, and what I found was...off-putting, to say the least. And as in the other reviews, the constant pejorative references to Judaism often have little, if anything, do with making any kind of substantive point about Zionism or Palestine.

Look, I don't want to get into a whole thing here because it's pretty tangential to the thread, but I'd be happy to continue talking about this via PM, so feel free to send a response to my inbox if you want and we'll take it from there.

At 1/16/14 09:30 PM, Natick wrote: alright, i saw boogie nights today, where do you want to start?

Sorry if it wasn't totally clear, but the first MotW pick will be announced on this coming Sunday night and the first discussion will be next weekend.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 16th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/16/14 06:42 PM, Sekhem wrote: We're all black. In case you were wondering.

Um, I don't see what that has to do with the site's rabid anti-Semitism (among other things), but okay.

Or would they just be eliminated from the pool for a set amount of time?

Yeah, my current plan is to just make a new pool each time, removing the people who have gone already from the list until everyone has gone and we have a rotation (or maybe once everyone's gone we'll do a new pool and get a new order). Does that sound good? I guess the idea is to build a rotation while still being flexible enough to allow for people to pop in and out.

Response to: Cinema Club Posted January 16th, 2014 in Clubs & Crews

At 1/16/14 06:43 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: How do we decide who picks next?

Slam poetry battle.

Srsly though, would this work?