From the sign up thread:

Here is a sample entry containing well known movies so that everyone understands how the genres work.

I'll have the movie name and the genres listed on IMDb and the bolded genre will be the one I am selecting for each round:

The Godfather - Crime Drama
Titanic - Drama Romance
Star Wars - Action Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi
Bowling for Columbine - Documentary Crime Drama
Avatar - Action Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi
Citizen Kane - Drama Mystery
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Western
Jaws - Adventure Drama Thriller
Reservoir Dogs - Crime Drama Thriller
Spaceballs - Adventure Comedy Sci-Fi

Hopefully everyone's crystal clear on how the genre system works. If not then ask

Drafters

xander biscuits
mrbaseball
Shuffle
Phat Mack
revots33
eleanor60
aaronk56
Dominic

I will rand this list in a minute and we'll get things underway.

Snake Draft: ABCDEFGHHGFEDCBA...

If someone wants to join while people are still picking for Round 1 then they are welcome to join the end of the draft.

There were 8 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

eleanor60
Shuffle
Phat Mack
revots33
Dominic
mrbaseball
aaronk56
xander biscuits

There will be 10 rounds

We'll give people 4 hours during 8am and 10pm EST for each pick.
After this time we'll move onto the next player to keep things moving but you can obviously catch back up at any time if you were skipped.
I don't see this being a problem this game because there shouldn't be too much sniping.

Please PM the next in line after you've made your pick.

eleanor60 can pick whenever he wants but no one is getting skipped until tomorrow morning as this is starting at an unscheduled time.

Here's the Spreadsheet for recording your results as well as your posts in the thread: SPREADSHEET

The minimum of an IMDb link and a sentence about why you're picking it should be posted

eleanor60 PMd

Wow, hate going first as too many to chose from, and whilst this will never get drafted, I think it's a fun one to start with!!!

This crazy film was regarded too violent and gory upon it's original release.

You may have heard of this Director before, more so for his big budget movies. This may be the only movie he made with less than 50k ratings on IMDB???

We are going to kick this off with PETER JACKSON'S iconic.....




Let's file this under Sci-Fi

nice

This is working out just how I wanted it to

2 movies I've not seen and 1 of them I've not even heard of

Only thing I'm going to have to insist upon is that you categorise Raise the Red Lantern as either a Romance or a Drama since Horror is not listed under the IMDb genres and we're rigidly sticking with them for consistency's sake.

Round 1. Category: Noir. Phantom Lady

1944

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036260/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Lady_(film)

Great but lesser known film, notable for several reasons. Firstly, it has a female protagonist. It is very unusual to have a woman hero in 1940s Noir, in fact I'm not even sure it was intended -- the nominal hero is framed for murder, and it is his secretary who jumps into action in order to clear him.

Secondly, it has Elisha Cook, Jr., one of my all time favorites, playing a hopped up jazz drummer. He gets to deliver the immortal line, "Do you jive?"

Scene with Secretary (dressed for seduction) and Elisha Cook, Jr.:

Round 1: category: Drama Local Hero

Well this is my all-time favorite movie so I may as well pick it first. It is honestly really a comedy more so than a drama imo, however IMDB lists it as both so I will go with drama for this pick.



Local Hero was written and directed by the Scottish director Bill Forsyth. It is about a Houston oil-company executive who is sent to a remote Scottish village, to negotiate the purchase of the entire town and surrounding land, to build an oil refinery.

This is a small-scale, quiet movie that slowly pulls you under its spell, in much the same way the lead character falls under the spell of the idyllic fishing village. Peter Riegert is fantastic as "Mac" MacIntyre, the hot-shot oil exec sent to Scotland to seal the deal. By far the best performance of his career imo. Burt Lancaster is hilarious as his boss, the oil tycoon who seems to be more interested in watching the stars and planets, than in building a refinery. Denis Lawson is also great as the local village lawyer (who also serves as the town's bartender, innkeeper, plus a few more random jobs).

The cinematography of the Scottish coastline is beautiful, and it also has one of the all-time great movie scores by Mark Knopfler.

It also includes what, imho, is one of the greatest and most satisfying final scenes in movie history. No spoilers except to say that it involves a long-distance phone call.

goddammit, Revots. That's what I was picking first. Local Hero will always be in my top 3 favorite movies of all time

Fat City, John Huston, 1972

category: drama



I doubt anyone here has even heard of this film, much less seen it. It's one of John Huston's "little masterpieces," and it belongs up there with Raging Bull as one of the greatest boxing movies ever made. Hell, I think it's better!

Except...it's not really about boxing. Sure, it's about two boxers - Stacy Keach's has-been desperately looking for one last shot at glory; Jeff Bridges excitable newcomer who hasn't been pummled by life yet, or even too many hard rights to the temple - but it's really about the mood and psychology of losers in a society that only values the winners.




Keach has never been better than he was here; Drunken, beaten by life, torn between using Bridges as a stepping stone and truly helping the kid out. They both box in the little farm towns of northern California, ekeing out a living, using the only thing nature has given them so that can survive: their fists.

This is a depressing, sad movie about not-very-pleasant characters - but you can't take your eyes of of it. John Huston is perhaps the greatest American filmmaker ever; he was certainly the one who was the most distinctly American, in his themes and style and stories of trying to grab the brass ring. His films, especially this one, ring true. We see ourselves in Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges, even if we have never laced up a glove in our lives. We see the promise of the future give way to the regret of the past, and knowing that there is nothing to be done about either one anymore. Which inevitably leads us to the cynicism of the present.



See this film because it is a true American masterpiece. It'll remind you of John Steinbeck's novels; of that other masterpiece about losers: Barfly. It boasts incredible performances by Keach and a very young Bridges, as well as an Oscar-nominated turn by Susan Tyrell.

If you like stories of heart and grit and true American desperation, seek out John Huston's Fat City.

Round 1

Mister Roberts

category: drama 13572 IMDB ratings





IMDB sets a pretty low bar for "lesser known" as pretty much anything older will qualify. I promise I will try to make future picks more obscure. But this being one of my absolute all time favorites I try to promote it whenever I can. Fonda, Cagney, Powell and Lemmon are all fantastic in this. Lemmon won the Oscar for best supporting actor. I never fail to cry like a little girl at the ending as it always rips me up with the conflicting emotions of sadness and happiness.

This could also qualify in the comedy category but using it in drama where it qualifies as well. Great movie and if you haven't seen it or seen in a while take a shot!

I've seen it.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Ok I'm gonna skip aaronk56 since he's been on the clock for more than 4 hours (I assume he was PMd)

He can catch up at any point

My pics incoming...

yes I pm'ed him right after my pick

Round 1 - Film Noir - Ace in the Hole (1951)

IMDb Page


This has 22,401 ratings and it's surprising that number is so low.

Great great movie and I thought a fairly popular one too. It's Kirk Douglas at his best and a Billy Wilder movie to boot. A great watch.

Fun Fact: The Simpsons episode "Radio Bart" where a media circus is started once Bart first fakes and then actually falls down a well is based on this movie.

Round 2 - Fantasy - Ordet (1955)

IMDb Page


This has 11,285 ratings and it deserves more.

Carl Theyedor Dreyer movie which will require subtitles unless you speak Danish. One of my all time favourite movies that perhaps started a little slow but always had my interest. The latter half of the movie had me totally gripped and I was floored by the end of it.

Fun Fact: 34th Greatest Movie of all time according to TSPDT

Round 2

Vibes

category: adventure IMDB ratings 2921





I really enjoy this movie! It's one of those movies I have to stop on when channel surfing. I chose adventure but it also qualifies for romance and comedy.

Cyndi Lauper steals the show here and is really funny in every scene. She also had and interesting chemistry with Jeff Goldblum. Her acting career never really took off though.

The gist of the story is that Peter Falk is searching for some lost city of Gold and he hires a bunch of people with psychic powers to help him beat a rival treasure hunter who is also searching for the lost city.

This is a fun movie if you have never seen before.

so far:

Mister Roberts (drama)
Vibes (adventure)

that looks like the sort of movie I could easily convince my wife to watch with me

Xander,

Those are two great picks. Ordet is #1 on the Arts and Faith Top 100, which is a very solid list of films with religious and spiritual significance.

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Sorry I'm away for a couple of days.

No write-up but the first movie I thought when I saw this draft was Repo Man as a comedy.

In the Horror category I'll take The Other 1972.

My crime pick:

WHITE MISCHIEF , Michael Radford, 1987



This is a perfectly nasty movie; mean and beautiful, scary and sexy.

It's about a group of ex-patriot Brits living in Kenya on the eve of WWII. They're all rich, or live as if they are, and they all exist in an area called "Happy Valley," drinking, doing drugs, wife-swapping and being bored with their empty lives.



An elderly English gentleman is married to a very young beauty, and becomes quite jealous when his young bride actually falls in love with a cad of a bon vivant that she has slept with. After agreeing amicably to separate, the young cad is discovered dead, and the older Brit put on trial for his murder.

Not that it matters, but the story is true.

As far as plot, that's about it. But this film is all about the style, the characters, the pure decadence these people are living while the rest of the world is bracing for a devastating war.




Writer/director Radford gets the casual apathy these ex-pats felt for their African hosts just right. They don't like where they are but they don't dislike it, either. They just...exist. And to help pass the time, they have sex, do heroin, and have formal paries, night after night. You can't help but see the desperation these people sweat; for the most part, we're not told why they can't go back to
England, but it is understood that they are all trapped in a sort of limbo that they cannot escape.

The cast is exemplary. Joss Ackland, Gretta Scacci and the great Charles Dance play the three principals, but the supporting cast is equally amazing: Sarah Miles, Geraldine Chaplin, John Hurt, Murray Head, John Rees, Trevor Howard, and a young Hugh Grant shimmer and shine like empty baubles and links in a gold-plated but worthless chain.

Ackland is one of those actors Americans mostly know from playing the villain in movies like Lethal Weapon 2 and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but he is superb in the role of a man with a trophy wife who does not know what to do with his prize - or how to keep it - once he has won it.

I've never understood how someone as clearly beautiful and talented as Greta Scacci never became a big star. She is simply luminous, and one can certainly see how men could easily kill over her.

Charles Dance is also a bit of an enigma; it seemed as if his star was rising with big roles in such films as Goldeneye, Last Action Hero and Aliens 3, but except for the occasional supporting role (Gosford Park, Swimming Pool) he seems to have settle nicely into playing upper crust sorts in British television. But I always thought he had an incredible screen presence, as he does here. But it was great to see him in Game of Thrones.

The movie's look is gorgeous; cinematographer Roger Deakins expertly captures the brilliant emptiness of the Kenyan plains, making it a worthy allusion to the characters' souls.

As Alice (Sarah Miles) says upon walking outside: "Oh god, not another bloody beautiful day."



***

My picks:

Drama - Fat City
Crime - White Mischief