Anyone interested in a monthly movie club?

[feihong]

Basically, I'm asking if anybody would like to participate in a Grand Movie Project, akin to the Grand First Episode Project and the Grand Comic Reading Project of yesteryear. The model would be pretty similar to the previous two endeavors:

 

1. Pick a different movie each month.
2. Create a new thread for the movie that includes summary and general info.
3. Anyone who's interested watches the movie via totally legitimate, non-bootleg channels 
4. People post comments about what they thought about the movie.

A few years ago I wouldn't have thought this would be a good idea, but nowadays there are SO MANY Chinese movies that you can access on various streaming sites. Just about any movie that hasn't been censored and isn't too new can be found via Youku. YouTube itself is host to hundreds if not thousands of Chinese films.

 

I can volunteer to lead this for 12 months or so (after which I completely disappear for a while  ), but hopefully it gains enough traction that someone else will pick up the torch. Of course, being me, I'll focus on films that haven't attracted much attention from the West. For example, Black Coal, Thin Ice won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival and you can actually buy/rent it on YouTube, so I wouldn't pick that. The Assassin (an amazing art film, I totally recommend it) won best director at Cannes and appeared on numerous "best of 2015" lists, so also ruled out. A good example of a movie I'd actually pick would be Rigor Mortis (僵尸). Yeah, it only has a rating of 53 on Metacritic, but if you watch the first 20 minutes, you can see that even if the film fails, it at least does so in an interesting way (also, I like horror movies).

 

I'm open to suggestions because I am not an expert on Chinese cinema, and ideally there would be some variety in the selections (i.e. not just horror movies). However, I'm not going to ever put it to a vote because I'm afraid that dreck like Tiny Times 3.0 or Finding Mr. Right 2 will float to the top. Someone else can start a club for watching terrible Chinese movies and making fun of how bad they are.

 

So, anybody else in? More importantly, is there anybody else who wants to be on the selection committee?

[Angelina]

me

[imron]

Basically, I'm asking if anybody would like to participate

I wouldn't ask, I'd just do it.  The first few threads probably wouldn't get much traction (much like the first episode project), but after that people who are interested will join in with their own suggestions.

 

Same with the 'selection committee'.  Just decide yourself, with any suggestions going on the end of a list that you then choose from the next time.  The more people involved with the selection process the less likely anything is to happen.

 

From my experience, projects like this need someone to drive them otherwise they falter - see the Grand First Episode Project as a prime example.  By all accounts it was a great success, but it hasn't had any sort of regular update in the last 4 years (I'm sure there have been plenty of new series released since then).

 

You say you're willing to drive it for a year, so go for it.

[winterpromise31]

I'd join!

[feihong]

@imron You're absolutely right. Here we go: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/51607-grand-movie-project/

[imron]

Excellent!

[Lu]

Good idea! I might join for the occasional movie, especially if they're good. Horror movies are not my thing though, so I'll sit the first one out.

[feihong]

I can't make any guarantees about quality, since I'll be choosing movies that I myself haven't yet seen. I'll be watching each movie for the first time along with everyone else.