Lani and I talked last night and decided to keep on doing PopD after the historical survey is over (mid-Feb.) because we like it but mostly because we’re learning so much. We’re going to switch over to theme months and look at things besides American Romantic Comedy, but it’s still going to be us taking a story apart every Friday night. And since it’s going to be a permanent project, and we’re getting all serious about a book, this place has to evolve from our “Let’s put on a show in the barn” look, which means a complete redesign of the site. Which brings us to you.
You all are the ones who use this site the most, so you know the stuff that’s been making you crazy. We already know the Twitter stuff isn’t working, and Alastair has suggested a chat room that opens at 6:30 ET and closes when the movie’s over, so that’s one problem fixed unless you can think of a better idea. And there’ll be a home page that describes what this project is and how it works, and of course there’ll be this blog.
Now what else? What is there about this site that isn’t working, what else would you like to see here, how would you improve this place? Mollie needs all the feedback she can get as she starts to revamp PopD, so let her have it.
One other thing: Since we’re changing over the site, it’s also a good time to look at the time. PopD goes on in the middle of the afternoon on the West Coast which is not good on a Friday. Assuming we keep the time of the movie at 7PM ET, would it be better to move it to Saturday since that’ll help out the West Coast people (and all the time zones in between)? Or does Saturday night get in the way of your social life? How about Sunday, is Sunday good for you? There’s a poll to the right where you can express your opinion although we’re going to make the decision (it’s feedback, not a vote, folks).
And we thank you for your support.
34 responses to “And now for something kinda different . . .”
YEA! I am so happy you all are continuing.
How about a place where we can suggest titles we’d like you all to look at?
I, for one, would love to see your take on The Proposal because several of my friends loved it and I just didn’t see the romantic connection.
And Sunday night would be great!
Speaking of Ryan Reynolds, I was going to suggest Definitely, Maybe, but I wasn’t sure if it had been covered/ disqualified during the very first round of movie suggestions.
My schedule is kind of all over the place so no matter when you watch the movie, I’m unlikely to participate, so for me, it makes no difference. I just love listening the podcast, and I’m accustomed to it coming out on Monday. If you guys need to move things around, go for it, so long as the podcast itself comes out on a consistent date.
I’m looking forward to what categories of movies you’re going to do. Are you sticking with romance as a primary element, or going all over the place? No matter what you do, though … I’m in! I love this podcast.
Having an easier way to look at the entries for each category would be nice. It took me a while to figure how to do that when I was catching up (only found the site a couple months ago).
Aw, I like twitter. I’ve made new friends that way.
I like Friday nights, but then again, I’m happily married and in the Eastern time zone. Sunday would be my second choice.
As for the site, I find having the archives at the bottom a little annoying. Took me a while to find them. Also, the grey navigation is very very light grey and hard to see. More contrast would be appreciated. That goes for every place the contrast is extremely slight.
I like the idea of suggesting movies/themes. My hubby thinks “The Big Hit” is a romantic comedy just with some action/killing in it.
If you do a month of horror, I’ll miss you, but will come back when it is over.
That’s all I got for now. I’ll post again if I think of anything else.
Very, very exciting news about the book and the continuing of the fun! I’m more likely to chat instead of just reading along if it’s not on twitter. 🙂
I listened to your latest podcast whilst jogging, she said virtuously. (Hey, it was a dark and rainy day. Some virtuosity is allowed.) And all I could think was that I’d love to have you two sit down to watch Love, Actually and talk about structure.
Do you take
bribessuggestions for movies to review? 😉What if you moved it up to mid-afternoon on Saturday like 3-4 PM EST. I’ve always liked the idea of an afternoon matinee on the couch.
We want to do Love Actually and Miss Pettigrew, Merry, so we’ll probably be doing a British Rom Com month. I’ll put a post after Thanksgiving and we can brainstorm other categories. Another one Lani and I talked about was doing the first three episodes of a TV series to see how the writers set things up. Things like X-Files, Buffy, The West Wing, Burn Notice . . . series that really hit home with viewers. And we definitely want to try other genres. We talked for a good three hours after we watched Ironman 2 last night, and when Lani stays up after midnight talking because she’s so jazzed about the discussion, that’s a good discussion. She said later that it was probably one of the best analyses we’d ever done and we didn’t podcast it because it wasn’t romcom.
One of the things Mollie’s having me do is to rewrite the “About” page to try to nail down what this project is, and I can do that now that we’ve done so many of these. Lani and I are both a lot clearer about what we want from the project because we know what we’re getting from it. So I think everything will be a lot more focused now, and having short series on a variety of genres will help a lot.
But yes, we’ll take suggestions on what to watch next after Thanksgiving.
Kelly, The Big Hit is a romcom, I’m pretty sure. It’s the one Bob used to cite most often as a romcom that was in the vein of what we were doing in Agnes and the Hitman. I remember it as being pretty good, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.
Katie, one of the first things Mollie said was, “Those categories are awful.” She’s on it.
Annie (and all), once this historical survey is done, nothing is disqualified. We’ll just figure out what we want to study next, and then pick movies that will help us study that. Your example of Definitely, Maybe would be a good one for looking at a story that covers years, or a frame story. I think we’ll be looking at both Movies We Want To Watch and Craft We Want To Learn to determine the play list next time, and I don’t think we’ll ever do a series that’s longer than two months again. And we’ll keep adding one-offs, things we watch on impulse that aren’t part of the series and then slotting them in wherever they go. The organization is going to be a lot better since we’ll be tagging the posts/podcasts, too.
Courtney, I want to do the proposal the same week we do While You Were Sleeping, which I think is this week. Let me check with Lani.
Oh and we’re treating ourselves on Thanksgiving day with a Sherlock marathon from the BBC. Don’t know if we’ll podcast since the wine and food will be copious and we’ll be stretched out in LaZBoys admiring the view, but we might.
Annie, I love B-movies. My kind of stories.
oh, yeah!! there were some really good movies that were left on the blog-cutting room floor when the initial list was made. mostly because they weren’t american but some others because they just didn’t make the list or
‘there were too many….’ personally, i still think it’s strange that we’ve seen more movies with walter matthau than we have katharine hepburn 🙂
oh, and i love the idea of pulling in the TV shows. that’s brilliant. some of them just start out blazing and others are sparklers but it’s great to learn from.
and thirdly, thanks for the great reminder – you were the 3rd person to mention Sherlock – because that was fantastic. not what i was expecting and i’m so happy they did such a great job. i was worried but it was truly amazing. only problem is that now i have to be patient and wait for the next series. and i’m not a patient person AT ALL! thanks for more PopD to keep me occupied.
You’re welcome, Stephanie.
I have a post of possibilities for the future that you can all weigh in on coming up on Sunday (after the holiday and While You Were Sleeping), and we have lots of time to talk about it, but definitely start thinking of what you’d like to see in case we’ve missed something (and we always miss something).
Oooh, I’m excited for the TV episodes. And I have all of Remington Steele on DVD, too, so convenient. Really glad you guys are going to include stuff you watch on impulse; the Down With Love podcast was one of my favorites.
I really like the idea of the chat instead of Twitter. The only thing that makes me sad about the thought is that if I miss a PopD, I won’t be able to go back and follow along the next day. It would probably take up too much space to save chat transcripts for people to access later, huh?
Saturdays or Sundays are definitely better for me over here in Central time. 6 pm my time is just a bit tricky when it comes to balancing getting home and cooking dinner and all that.
Last suggestion/thought – at the top of the page, would it be possible to have a box or bar that says “This Week’s Movie” and then the upcoming title? That way we can check easily when shuffling our Netflix queues. 🙂
Please think about doing a podcast for Sherlock if you guys do the marathon. I’m pretty sure we’d all love it. 😀
Sierra, part of the reason for doing the chat room is so that we have permanent transcripts. I don’t know if we can make them available for the website, but if we can, we will.
As for podcasting Sherlock, maybe we can. If we watch four and a half hours of it, I doubt we’ll have the energy to do a podcast, too, but maybe I can talk Lucy into watching Episode One on Wednesday and the other two on Thursday afternoon and evening, and we can do short podcasts after each one. She selfishly insists on sleeping at night so I can’t ask her now, but I think it’s a distinct possibility. Assuming the DVD ever GETS here.
Also, I just rewrote the pages at the top, combing some of them and recasting the “what PopD is about” page. Feedback welcome there, too, please.
So glad you are going to keep going and I like the idea of mixing up the themes. Having transcript of the chat would be great as I miss one once in a while and like to go through the twitterchat as well as the podcast to catch up.
I just noticed the “Coming Soon” on the right. Is that a new addition? Or maybe I’m just a creature of habit and keep going to Now Playing at the top without looking at the rest of the site. Either way, it’s a great addition.
Since I just listen to the podcasts and read the comments, it doesn’t matter to me which night you choose to do live chat. I think you should pick the night that works best for you and let everyone else sort themselves out.
I’m so glad you’re continuing. I hope you will go back to some of the older movies as well as adding in more current ones. I’d like to hear your take on Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.
I add my “yay!” to the chorus. 🙂
I’m on the west coast so the 7p est/4p pst start time has been a total killer (I don’t get off work until 430/445). But what I do is listen to the podcast first then decide if I want to actually see the flick. 😉 It’s worked out so far.
I love the look of the current site and haven’t had any issues with nav but then again, I’m only auditing this course rather than signed up for credit right now. Maybe when I’m home on maternity leave I will have more of an opinion… who the hell am I kidding? My brain will be mush for 4-12 months. Ignore me. Although… a larger default font size would be heavenly.
And yes, I totally support that The Big Hit is a rom com. And FREAKING hilarious to boot.
i LOVE the re-ordering of the Now Playing page so that the current movie is at the top. That might be my favorite new feature. Thank you.
As for the other re-writes I noticed this on the About PopD page:
…recliners on on an old but still functioning Samsung flat screen using DVDs…
I think the second ‘on’ needs to be removed. I wouldn’t mention it but I know the English teacher in you would care.
Thank you for the catch on the double “on.” Alastair put up the Coming Soon box to the right and we love it. The Chat room is good to go for Friday night; there’ll be a Chat link in the top menu bar at 6:30 Friday and the room is really easy to use, HUGE improvement over Twitter, also Alastair’s idea. The guy rocks.
We’ll probably be switching to Sunday nights shortly, but I’ll put a post that announces all the changes later. For this week, it’s still on Friday and we’re chatting instead of tweeting.
Carry on.
I’m in the UK on GMT so I have no idea what time you’re all chatting at – I just catch up on the podcast. Keep the Coming Soon box and the itunes subscription takes care of the audio.
If you’re looking at Brit Rom Coms, perhaps its worth doing something a little more obscure? “I know where I’m going” from 1945 is an gorgeous film from Powell and Pressburger (the guys that did The Red Shoes). And though based on an English book, I’d regard Miss Pettigrew as nearly an American film. Good sense of place though.
Romney, I think you’re five hours ahead of us, so our 7PM is your midnight. I think.
We’ll take a look at “I Know Where I’m Going” definitely. Miss Pettigrew was filmed by a UK company or we’d have done it in the American rotation. I’m also pushing for The Assassination Bureau.
@Romney: I’m in the UK too, and Jenny’s right when she says that the conversation starts at midnight. For anyone in other timezones, simply click the name of the movie in the “Coming Soon” box, and you’ll see the starting and ending time for local time wherever you are.
West Coast ~ anytime good for you. I listen to the podcast, have learned a lot. Do not always watch the movie, go on memory. Amazing, I still remember most of the major scenes and plot lines. I do have a pile of “must watch” now. House Calls, Avanti. Loved How To Steal A Million. Had never seen it.
Love you are continuing, love there will be theme month/s, perhaps a few b&w movies again. Maybe the “best of” an actor, writer, or director. (EG: Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Sandra Bullock, so far) Whatever you all decide will be great.
You’re kidding, Alastair. You’ve fixed it so that it displays their local time?
Alastair has created the chat room, folks, and is revamping the site with Mollie. Everyday there’s something else amazing, like the Coming Soon box in the sidebar which is Alastair’s Christmas gift to you. And me. Go, Alastair.
Okay, I’m not a Twitter girl, so Chat works fine for me (yeah, lately we can be showing our age to within a few years depending on This Year’s Technology).
Even if I did have Twitter, I doubt I’d be up for Friday. I always just post at the blog. Sunday would be good, as the weekend winds down.
Re: Walter Matthau. Stephanie, you mean he’s the not first name that comes to mind when you think RomCom?
Alhough he’s perfect in IQ. He’s not the Guy, thank goodness. He’s Uncle Albert (Einstein). And to me, IQ is the quintessential Rom Com (yes, this is a suggestion).
Um, I’d like to have the option of reading the chat when its done – is there a way to do that? Sometimes I haven’t been in for PopD and when it was on Twitter, it was easy for me to pull up, read the comments and have a sense of how the movie was received.
I went out his evening and was disappointed not to be able to read the comments when I got home. I know it’s done on some sites (I read the chat transcript at Lainey Gossip because they often go on when I’m working) and I’d love to have that here.
Is that possible?
@KatrinaG: Yes, Jenny and Lucy plan on making a transcript of the chat conversation available with the show notes when the podcast goes up. You won’t miss a thing!
I can rarely make the 7 pm twitter discussion, but I always like reading it later. When I know a movie well, I can usually follow the plot by the comments.
Will you be posting a chat transcript, for latecomers like me?
OK, I see that the transcript suggestion has already been made.
How about this for a theme: Musicals that actually have a plot. First choice, Singing in the Rain