I had the idea of doing a movie review style podcast when I was discussing movies with a good friend of mine and film school graduate. I noticed in our conversations that I would always use the word “movie” when discussing a motion picture, and he would always use the word “film.”
Our discussions were always interesting (to me at least), and I thought putting us behind a microphone and recording those conversations would make a good show. While driving home from the movie theater one night, I was thinking about how to format such a show. Reflecting on my conversations with my friend, I thought, why don’t I be “Mr. Movie” and he can be “Mr. Film” and we’ll call it The Mr. Movie and Mr Film Show? He’ll never say the word “movie” unless addressing me as Mr. Movie, and I’ll never say the word “film” unless addressing him as Mr. Film.
So the idea was born. I soon shortened the title to The Movie Film Show and, luckily, the domain was available, and I bought it.
My friend did not live in Los Angeles, so doing a show with him would prove difficult. I didn’t really have my Mr. Film. The idea was tabled until, a few months ago, I reconnected with a former colleague, Chris Wolski, a film school grad, movie reviewer and freelance writer that I had hired at one point during my days at Box Office Mojo.
I knew I had found a good candidate for the Mr. Film role. I pitched him the idea and he liked it. We agreed to give it a shot.
The basic idea was to just have fun reviewing movies from our distinct perspectives—two unique takes on the same thing, a movie or film. The show would sometimes cheesy, sometimes funny and sometimes serious. But most of all it would be two guys having fun and illuminating conversations about a topic they loved.
This conversational tone is what worked best in other podcasts I’d listened to, like Leo Laporte’s This Week In Tech show on the TWiT Network, and I wanted to emulate the quality and production value of such shows.
Also, the vast array of podcasts I had sampled on the topic of movies was too long, boring, and too often digressed into the personal lives of the people on the show. Listening to a 60 minute or more podcast about a two hour movie just wasn’t practical for most people. In short, there was too much chit-chat and not enough content.
For my show, we would cut to the chase, and let our personalities come out over time and, most importantly, in the process of reviewing the movies themselves. People don’t care what kind of jeans we wear, or what restaurant we visited lately, or what celebrity we ran into at the supermarket. No, this would be a straight, tell-the-audience-like-it-is kind of show, explaining what the movie is about, what is interesting about it, and whether it was good or bad. Then, we would move on to the next review or topic, enjoying it all the while with a smile on our faces and sometimes with a tongue in our cheeks.
The idea of playing the Mr. Movie and Mr. Film characters was not just a gimmick; it would help us keep focused on the content, and avoid the pitfalls and rat holes so many other shows fall into.
And so that is the philosophy by which I am producing The Movie Film Show. The show’s basic structure is this: we start out with a fun and a little cheesy Bob Barker, The Price is Right kind of theme song (and a Saturday Night Live style of announcer), dive into the reviews, maybe do a feature or DVD pick, and then end with over the top but serious, wide sweeping epic film music. It would be only as long as absolutely necessary, and as short as possible.
This is the kind of tone and progression you get from any good romantic comedy, one that delivers laughs but also leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart, and a smile on your face. That is the kind of tone we are aiming for.
A final concept I wanted to include—and too often neglected in movies today—is the idea of the “curtain call.” Over the end music, we would play clips or outtakes from the show. This done to highlight a point discussed on the show, to replay an interesting or insightful sound bite or just for plain goofy comedic fun (and can be easily skipped by those who aren’t interested or don’t have time to listen to it).
So that’s The Movie Film Show, and the genesis behind it. I invite you to listen and hope we achieve the goal of giving insightful reviews—regardless of whether the movies or films we review are worth seeing or not—that leave you with that warm fuzzy feeling and a smile on your face.
Netflix has announced a “Stream Up” event in San Diego on August 26, inviting its users to “…check out some of their favorite films and maybe even make a love connection based on their cinematic tastes.” Could this mean they are getting into the dating business?
Why not? Netflix has invested millions of dollars into their movie-matching engine, helping customers find movies they’ll love. That same technology used to guess what you’ll rate a movie you haven’t seen could just as easily be applied to matchmaking.
Dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com have their own algorithms for helping their users find the perfect mate. Such matching algorithms require you to fill out long questionnaires about your values, interests and tastes and use that as a basis for matching you up with Mr. or Mrs. Right.
Such systems are far from perfect and, in my single days, I tried out such services with little success. But using movies as a basis for mating customers is intriguing, to say the least.
Ayn Rand defined art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments…. [B]y means of a selective re-creation, [art] concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important.” (From “Art and Cognition” in The Romantic Manifesto)
The beauty of using art (and in this case, movies) is that you get at a person’s fundamental view of the world, and matching two similar approaches to life is a recipe for romantic success.
Because we’re talking about one’s reaction to art, you get at issues of one’s personality that are nearly impossible to quantify in a typical questionnaire—issues such as sense of humor, one’s implicit sense of life and implicit philosophy. Matching people by their taste in movies skips the step of need to make explicit one’s philosophy and sense of life on a system like Match.com, which many have difficulty articulating even their own minds.
Taste in movies can’t measure things like physical attraction (which is important in any romantic relationship, and what profile pictures are for). But like all dating and matching services, these are tools, a mere starting off point to help narrow the playing field and increase one’s chances of finding their soul mate.
Whether Netflix decides to enter the dating business is to be seen. But their movie matching engine is an untapped asset in the field of relationship matching. If they don’t pursue creating such a service (or license their technology for someone else to do it), I hope someone else will create such a service. I would definitely use it—if I wasn’t already married.
Ratings by movie reviewers are ubiquitous, from thumbs up or down to a star-rating system or any kind of sliding point system. Are they a waste of time that should be avoided and abolished, a necessary marketing tool to pull readers in to read reviews, or an objective measurement of the reviewer’s overall evaluation of a movie?
During my days as Managing Partner at Box Office Mojo, when the site still published movie reviews, we struggled with this question. Initially we used a letter grade scoring system.
However, the grading system was a source of consternation for us and our reviewers. Readers of the site would often write in and say, “How could you give such-and-such movie a C+ and then give thus-and-so movie an A-?!” Some of them clearly had not even read the reviews and were writing solely on the basis of the grades—and in some instances readers hadn’t bothered to notice the two reviews were written by different people. Sadly, such trifle led us to decide to do away with the rating system.
(In July of 2008, we sold the company to Amazon.com, an acquisition for IMDb.com, which Amazon owns. Post-sale, they decided to stop producing reviews which, incidentally, was probably the right move for the company as they were a money-losing proposition and generally disliked by the site’s readers).
I’m not sure axing the rating system was the right choice. The need for succinct headlines was still there to draw attention, and we found ourselves changing our headline policy to be more evaluative in order to draw readers in. We had avoided a specific rating system per se, but succumbed to the purpose a rating system is meant to employ.
That purpose is to draw attention. Whether for a movie review or a headline to a news article, there is an objective need to draw the readers’ attention and state why an article or review is important.
Arguably, a rating scale achieves that purpose in the quickest way possible. It is a succinct, immediate advertisement of the reviewer’s evaluation of the movie. It can also help the movie-goer who doesn’t like to read reviews prior to seeing a movie be given an indication of the review without having to read or know anything about the movie prior to seeing it.
However, a rating is not a substitute for a review, so those who try to compare one movie’s rating to another’s are dropping the context of the overall purpose here. How could I give, for example, the movie Liar Liar an A while giving an A- to We Were Soldiers? Both are very different movies and in some ways I like We Were Soldiers better (click here to read my review of Were Were Soldiers).
But a rating is not meant to be used as a comparison tool to rank different movies and that is not its purpose. The rating pertains to the movie in question, and should indicate whether the movie was interesting, entertaining and/or fulfilling on its own terms. It is a teaser or overall summary of the reviewer’s evaluation and only that. A reviewer should expound the reasons for liking or disliking a movie in his review.
(As an aside, reviewers should only assign a rating after they’ve written their review, and make sure their rating matches what they actually say about the movie. Otherwise the reviewer could find himself trying to justify his initial rating rather than focus on what he has to communicate about the movie.)
So what is the best rating scale to use? While there are no hard and fast rules, I believe a scale of one to four to be ideal—whether stars or letter grades or some other method is used is not important. The lowest rating should be reserved for an “I hated it” or “very bad” evaluation; the second for a “mixed” review, and then two scales of positive: “liked it” or “pretty good” and “loved it” or “excellent.”
Just as the concept “big” gives an indication of something’s size, but is no substitute for its more precise measurement, so a movie rating give an indication of a reviewer’s evaluation of movie but is no substitute for reading the actual review.
Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3 is an extremely mixed movie, offering a very touching closing scene, but is preceded by what is mostly a horror movie and may be inappropriate for children.
In this installment of Toy Story, Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the whole cast of toys are faced with the inevitable: their owner, Andy, has grown up, and he is leaving the house to go off to college. Naturally, the toys are worried, since it seems they are destined for the attic—or worse.
An interesting moral conflict arrises among Andy’s toys. Woody, the leader of the group, asserts that their purpose is to be there for Andy when Andy needs them, while many of the other toys proclaim that they just want to be played with. Andy was a wonderful owner, and played with this toys with much imagination in his youth, but as he’s grown up and his need to play with his toys has waned.
At the core of this conflict is the question: What is the moral purpose of a toy? Should they, as Woody would have them, be sentenced to possibly decades in the attic so they can “be there” for Andy when needed, or should they seek the joy they once had by finding a new owner who will play with them again? Is their purpose to serve Andy, or to bring excitement, suspense and adventure to the imagination of young children, which is what makes the toys happy?
They face these questions after and while being donated to a child day care center. But this is where the story gets sidetracked and turns into more of a horror movie. At the day care center, they meet a whole host of new toys (and unimaginative, abusive children), including an evil, pink, strawberry scented stuffed bear named Lotso and a toy that looks more like Chucky than a baby play doll. The conflict switches from the internal one, to fighting for their lives in the face of this evil bear and his Gestapo of toys.
Still, there is fun to be had, and Toy Story 3 delivers some fun and laughs, including an imaginative sequence with Mr. Potato Head and hilarious scene when Ken and Barbie meet each other for the first time.
In one particularly stomach turning moment, however, Woody, Buzz Lightyear and their friends, as well as the evil bear Lotso, are faced with imminent destruction. They manage to nearly escape but Woody decides, in an obscene act of altruism, to save Lotso and put the survival of him and his friends in the hands of this monster. Needless to say, the evil bear does what evil bears do, and what follows is the movie’s most horrific scene in which the good toys must face their imminent deaths. Adults will be horrified, and children may be scarred, so proceed with caution.
Of course, this is a Disney movie, so expect a happy ending and a particularly touching and well crafted conclusion, where we finally get to experience a human connection with the toys. It may give you goosebumps or bring a tear to your eye, but the horror preceding it leaves a very uneasy feeling and one feels a sense of lost innocence by the time the credits begin to roll.
It is unfortunate, because the internal central conflict did not need to be needlessly complicated by such trite antics as a cliched evil villain nor was the horror employed for any rational purpose. If Woody and his friends had to truly face their budding moral conflict, the picture could have unfolded into a complex tale of the Good vs. the Good (or seeming good), but instead the filmmakers chose a lesser conflict to be the crux of the story.
It’s too bad, because all the pieces were there, just not fully assembled.