Film Fanatics - Chat Thread II

Right then, i know this is more gaming than film but it's still relevant.

Valve recently introduced a Replay feature into TF2 and have then run a competition (The Saxxys) to find the best user made videos with the major limtiations being that the footage must originally come from the TF2 replay feature and that the video is 1 minute or less.

These are the finalists for the 'Best Cinematography' category.



'Badwater D' and 'Cartographers Lament' are my favourite from that selection.

Whilst none of them are brilliant as films i think it's a brilliant way to advertise the game. Get the users to make videos, upload them to youtube through the game and then give out rewards to those that get large amount of views. And running a 'film' competition alongside to hype the feature up.

Good point! I'm only in England for 18 days, but I may as well Should probably do it on Facebook too... Woo!

Oh and back on topic - I watched The Running Man on TV last night... I really didn't get into it at all. Am I just missing something or does everyone else think it's crap too?

Do you want to count how many times people have asked when Amy was switched or shall I?

I don't think they grasp the concept of a question not being answered in the episode in which it's presented. Or the words at the end .... 'To Be Continued'.

Do you want to count how many times people have asked when Amy was switched or shall I?

I very rarely post in there but tend to read it all - I don't think I've ever wanted to neg so many people at once.

Figured I would ask you two in here. Are The Dark Tower books worth reading? I was planning on spending my summer reading Infinite Jest but considering I've been reading some fairly challenging classics (and some which were very dry and very boring) for a good few months, I want something that's not easier but at least something that is fairly epic in scale with a good fantasy story. Does Dark Tower fulfil this?

I really like The Shining and The Stand from King so I'll probably enjoy this.

One interesting idea I had was that of an episodic film for the second book. I don't really think it flows particularly well from one section to the next at all, and I think if you tried to shoot it as a film then it would become very disjointed and awkward to watch. I don't think moving to TV is necessarily a good idea either though, as it's completely different skills because of the different size of the finished product so you're either going to end up with a different crew and a lack of continuity or an inferior TV show.

With an episodic film you'd chop it up into three sections, release them over the course of a year, make them fairly short (~1 hour) and sell tickets a little bit cheaper. In the past this business model would have been pretty unworkable because the limiting factor on cost was always the hefty price of a reel, but with the move to digital projection (and so you only need the film on a CD) I see no real reason why this couldn't be done in the future.

We have 3 months of this coming up...

Yes, absolutely. Though I have to warn you that after the third book, it goes downhill. So you will really need to invest to carry on after book three to get to the ending. If you're looking for epic in scale with a good fantasy story, you could also check out the A Song of Ice and Fire series.



Was contemplating checking out The Stand.



That's not a bad idea. Though, I'd personally be somewhat dissatisfied if I got a 1 hour chunk of story and then had to a wait a few months for the next part.

Roger Ebert really doesn't like 3D

Or most films that come out in mainstream cinema, or a a lot of things in general at that

to be fair to him his reviews are pretty funny to read.

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Ahh super 8, maybe a sleeper hit this year, looks great though