Gaming World Film Club

What's up?
I thought this could be a neat little idea for a few reasons. Firstly, getting people to watch movies that they might not necessarily have heard about before and that wouldn't really come up in discussion seeing as they are old and a lot of the topics made in the forum are usually about new releases for films or films that have just been released and people want to chat about. I thought this could be a cool way to get discussions going on some awesome films.

How's it going to work?
I'm thinking that I will host the topic, I'll suggest a film for your guys to watch and it's up to you to find it how you will. If you have it lying around on DVD, if you can obtain it from the internet or find it for $3 on ebay. I'll try and suggest films that are good yet generally accessible. Maybe you have seen them before anyway. After watching the film for the first time or rewatching it all you have to do is come here and post your opinions. You can read other peoples opinions and start discussions or if you are lazy just post about what the film made you think/feel and leave it at that.

All discussion and updates will take place in this topic and I'll be keeping the first post up to date with what's going on. I'm thinking It will probably work weekly or bi-weekly as it only takes a few hours of your week to watch a film and I'm sure you all watch films throughout the week anyway. This is all subject to change based on activity. If a really good discussion is going on I could extend it, if everything is dry I can shorten it.

What kind of films will we be watching?
Anything and everything, I'm open to suggestions but I've already compiled a pretty massive list of films that could keep this topic going for the next 2 - 3 years should it be popular. I don't expect it to be but I'm prepared nonetheless. I've also tried to avoid the obvious ones and the list includes films that date back to 1902.

Okay!

Week 1 - Le Voyage Dans La Lune

I was a little unsure how to start this off but it's pretty obvious really. At the very beginning. This is probably the oldest piece of film footage I have ever seen. It's short and freely accessible to everyone thanks to the wonders of Youtube. Our first film is Georges Melies "Le Voyage Dans La Lune"


Now to film students this has probably been seen before but I've never studied film in school or college so I didn't see this film until quite recently. From what information I've gathered this is considered the first science fiction film ever made and was revolutionary in the invention of special effects which are now considered standard in film making. ACCORDING TO SOURCES: The first uses of things like superimpositions for isntance the iconic MAN IN THE MOON imagery which I'm sure everyone has seen before, even if you didn't know where it came from.

I think despite the short length of the movie it really shows everything it needs to show. At first I didn't really understand what was going on. This congregation of people gathered in a room, some kind of court or something but very quickly it all comes into perspective and for the time the film carries so much atmosphere and storytelling without the use of words.

I don't really want to get into my own opinions on this because I'm more interested in what everyone else has to say. The clip here is only 8 minutes long. It's the best one I could find without annoying french people talking over the top of it.

Anyway, Let's see what you guys think.

I think the reason there are so many wide shots with swarms of people is that this is still an era where film is a derivative of stage performance. It's like there is a single camera pointing at a stage and all they are doing is recording the stage performance. There are swarms of people but each character in the film is named save for like INDIVIDUAL ALIEN #1. For instance the "Main Character" is Professor Barbenfouilles played by Melies himself. And the aliens are called "The Selenites." This is just stuff I have picked up from the net so I have no idea about how these people know this because it's not ever mentioned anywhere.

Hey guys, I didn't really know which way to swing for a movie this week so I decided to put up a poll and let you guys decide. The poll is FAIRLY VARIED, An old film, a new film, a "classic" film and a film that is so fucking obscure I bet none of you have ever heard of it so whichever way you guys want to swing I will go about making these films available to you. You can click on the poll option to get some information about what the film is about and we'll run from there.

I didn't really want to include such modern films like No Country for old men but seeing as it won 4 Academy awards I figured it might be a good topic for discussion. But it's all on the vote.

EDIT: and before you get me all wrong, I think Un Chien Andalou is one of the worst most pretentious films ever made and the thought of watching it again frustrates me, and I have never even seen the Maltese Falcon so I am not restricting the list of films to FILMS ONLY I LIKE. I'm trying to keep this wide open for everyone.

This is a pretty rad idea man.

It seems to be pretty much a coin toss between the maltese falcon and no country for old men including verbal votes, but the poll says no country for old men so I guess that's what we will do. The version on the zoo is a 4GB HD version so I will put up a screener later today.

I haven't closed the poll yet, I'm kind of hoping it swings for the maltese falcon.