A "fun" game...

[Tyler Smith]

Here's a fun game that I just thought of.
Okay, maybe "fun" isn't the word, but I enjoy this kind of thing.
Go to your DVD shelves, close your eyes, extend three fingers of one hand, and thrust it out towards the shelf. Open your eyes. Take note of the movies that your fingers landed on.
Do this four times.
The resulting 12 titles should make for a fairly good portrait of your movie tastes.
For example:

FROZEN RIVER
THE FUGITIVE
GALAXY QUEST

OPEN RANGE
OPEN WATER
ORANGE COUNTY

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER
DIAMOND MEN
DICK TRACY

THE STAR WARS TRILOGY
STATE AND MAIN
THE STATION AGENT

See how fun that is? Not only did you learn that I enjoy character-driven, dialogue-heavy films (which you already know from the podcast), but you've learned that I love to methodically alphabetize my movies!
Now it's your turn! Enjoy!

[andyharwood]

synecdoche new york
desperate teenage lovedolls
infinity

unforgiven
the incredible hulk
not a photograph: the mission of burma story

The naked cosmos (a weird fake TV show that Gilbert Hernandez made which I haven't watched yet)
the foot fist way
Carl Sagan's cosmos (complete coincidence)

god hates cartoons
rocko's modern life volume 3
the ripping friends

[Tyler Smith]

See? Fun!

[Caribbean Captain]

Requiem for a Dream
Dawn of the Dead
Crimson Tide

Michael Clayton
Monster
Wayne's World

Forrest Gump
Layer Cake
Being John Malkovich

I am so glad that I ended up having respectable titles when doing this...

[jakehowell]

Tyler, I think the fact that you alphabetize your films says more about you than the movies themselves do.

[professoralan]

How else would you arrange your movies but alphabetically? He (and me, too) is not a savage!

[johnson27546]

While at work our computers went down, so I came up with another game: how many film directors can you name off the top of your head? You have to give the complete name (not just Miyazaki, for example) and you can't use the internet or look at your DVD collection for help.

I'm not the biggest film-buff, so I expected to come up with 20 or 25 myself, but after half an hour I had 74. It's a lot of fun scrambling for names through genres, decades, countries, etc. You eventually hit a wall where you're asking yourself, "Did Jim Henson direct 'The Muppet Movie?' Didn't Frank Oz direct something as well??? Agggh!!"

The next time you're stuck with some time, give this a try.

[johnson27546]

To add onto the post I just made, I think it would be fun to see who could have a bigger list, Tyler or David?

[Tyler Smith]

I would imagine David would have the bigger list, due to his having more general knowledge of foreign directors.

[nixmith]

This was fun!
I came up with:

The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Broken Embraces

Rashomon
Rear Window
The Red Shoes

Out of the Past
Out of Sight
Pan's Labyrinth

Groundhog Day
A Hard Day's Night
Hard Eight

Aside from the fact that I, too, enjoy alphabetizing, not sure what this list says about me.

[maarow]

Play was a bit different for me, since my DVDs are stuffed in a bin under my bed, but here's what I got:

The Undead: Vampire Collection (one of those "20 obscure movies for 5 bucks" compilations)
Animaniacs: Vol. 1
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Bram Stoker's Dracula
Attack of the 50 Ft. Monster Mania (TV doc. by AMC)
The Lost World (Silent), also includes The Giant Gila Monster

The Ring
Fight Club
The Evil Dead

Scrubs: The Complete Third Season
The Crow
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

May
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Hmm. My DVD collection doesn't really make my tastes appear all that diverse. I do like classics, indie films, and some foreign stuff. I swear.

EDIT: You also learned that I can't count.