You Think We’re in Ohio Yet? Road Movie Nominating/Voting Thread - VOTING CLOSES MIDNIGHT, MAY 15th

Added Aguirre, also a write-in vote that makes sense to me: No Country for Old Men.

Llewelyn: "Are we in a road movie right now?"
Anton: "Not in the sense that you mean."

Voted.

Thanks for the ballots so far--now up to...eight. I guess I'll keep the window open through the weekend. Short of 20, I don't know if it's worth tabulating everything. Just jot down 20 or 25 films; don't fuss over the order. You can't see everything--go for what you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN2i5G03P2c

I do kinda wanna vote for this but yeah compiling a film ballot takes me a lot longer than a songs ballot, for reasons that I would think are obvious

has this been nominated yet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_(2015_film)

Shakey, the nominations were in the previous thread and there's a link to the noms at the top. You don't have to start from scratch to put a ballot together.

I completely forgot about Entertainment -- I probably would have voted for it if I'd remembered.

I know I don't have to start from scratch, but it takes time to watch movies, and one of the things I like about these polls is discovering stuff. If I just vote for things I've already seen/have already been nominated it feels less worth it.

but I suppose if the preference is just for thrown together ballots sure I can do that to

too!

Ah, if you can keep it open over the weekend that would be great for me.

I feel like there's gotta be some great horror movies that qualify here but I'm blanking ("The Hitcher" is not really great imo)

working on pulling together a ballot, thanks for the extension. trying to watch some new stuff. watched Holy Motors (good, though left with a couple images I'd rather not keep) last night and started Detour (fair noir).

xp Never seen it but doesn't 'Jeepers Creepers' happen on a road trip,

Messidor is up on youtube and is good if people are interested.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre's kind of a road film, come to think of it.

YellowBrickRoad involves a road:

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/04/at-the-end-of-the-path-a-review-of-yellowbrickroad/

Enjoyed it when I saw it, sound design was very well done.

Yeah, I only ended up watching six films for this. Two of them made it into the bottom half of my list. The rest are just favorites that happen also to be road movies, mostly.

is fury road a road movie

^ I was just going to ask how come no-one listed any of the Mad Max/Road Warrior films. First thing I thought of.

Nevermind, I do see The Road Warrior listed. Didn't check the The's.

Wolf Creek maybe?

re: road horror: Carnival of Souls def on my ballot. Stopped at the current incarnation of the Saltair pier on a family road trip last year.

Oh, good shout!

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/reminder_zpsezt0xis9.jpg

I'll do my best to get something in to you by the end of the weekend. I love the idea of this poll and really wanna participate, but this week has turned out to be a shitshow in both expected and unexpected ways.

You know what'll clear your head? Get in the car and drive.

There are ten things I want to vote for but 25 is just too much. Will sit this one out.

No problem at all with a ballot of 10--take 100 points and split them up.

Because I suck so bad at math, I have to ask: how would I split up the points for a ballot of 15?

I've had a couple of 20 films/200-point ballots...For 15 films, I'd say 150?

If a 25-film ballot gets 200 points, a 15-film ballot (60% of 25) should get 60% of the points, or 120. Sorry not sorry to be a pedant, but it's worth doing the math to make sure that short ballots aren't disproportionately weighted.

Fair enough. I'll do 120 pts.

So 8 points per film in your list? Is there a maximum votes per film in a list? Like, could someone list 10 films, give 71 pts to one and 1 point each to the other 9? I thought I saw a 20-pt max per film early in the thread, though that may have just been an example.

Ok, I see 40 points max in the original post.

Driving Visions, that book I ordered, got here today. The key films from each chapter are highlighted upfront--these five weren't nominated, so I added them to the list.

The Wild One
The Wild Angels
Repo Man
Raising Arizona
Delusion

Haven't seen Repo Man in ages, but I don't remember it being a road movie myself.

From the first chapter ("Paving the Way"):

"The road movie appears a a dynamic manifestation of American society's fascination with the road. Comprised of an intricate matrix of cultural predilections, the genre of the road movie explores the 'borders' (the status quo conventions) of American society. Often from a culturally critical perspective, the road movie asks, What does it mean to exceed the boundaries, to transgress the limits, of American society?"

My brain doesn't really work that way--and "transgress" is something close to a red-flag word--but I guess that's an accurate enough description of the Bobby Dupeas and Willies and Stars who capture a kind of aimlessness I find very appealing (even if I don't live that out in real life--I do partly).

Just past halfway to 20 ballots. We're taking the Alvin Straight route.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fryGyqTJPU

Wtf Raising Arizona? No.

That seems pretty dubious too. I mean, I know there's stuff with choppers, but Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter don't really go anywhere, do they? Again, it's been a while for me.

Nobody goes anywhere!

They go to pick up some Huggies...

apologies for dallying, rather than posting my ballot, but two that I very much love and had overlooked: Coogan/Brydon's The Trip and The Trip to Italy.

Wait, what? Isn't that a TV series? Did they make a film too?

Hey, The Straight Story sits at #1,000 right now on TSPDT's big list:

http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.php

xp

yes, both series were edited and released as films. that's the way I saw them. loved them enough that I will eventually get around to watching the original episodes.

Just finished Stroszek, which I hadn't seen since '79 or '80. I remember that my university roommate and I thought it was pretty much the damnedest thing we'd ever seen. I'm sure that whatever print we saw wasn't nearly as beautiful as what I lifted off YouTube.

The bank guy reminded me a lot of Harold Ramis in the earliest SCTV episodes. Like some of the Wenders films from the same era, felt like a European attempt at one of the early '70s American attempts at a '60s European art film. Which probably sounds negative, but no, not at all--liked it a lot. The ending was like a perfect mix of Fassbinder and Five Easy Pieces. Was just reminded of the Ian Curtis connection.

Made me feel nostalgic for that first viewing. I would have 18 or 19--everything was new, everything was ahead.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_n35PfUpWyak/SeM4xSxyOdI/AAAAAAAANIw/NarqzAm1XSY/s1600-h/Stroszek+6.JPG

"would have been"

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/herzog_zpswhtxdaoo.jpg

It's a lovely film, but like Goin' Down The Road, one of those that doesn't feature quite enough road to qualify as a road movie for me. But then again, at this point, I gotta stop being so picky if I'm ever gonna get a ballot together.

Actual on-the-road footage probably totals two or three minutes. But I think emotionally it fits perfectly--unhappiness, leaving one bad situation and finding something just as bad or worse--and some of those road shots look incredible.

Completely fits the emotional character for me because Stroszek is permanently out of place. Even if most of the travel happens offscreen America seems to be arbitrarily moving around him and his 'family' and home are ultimately transitory. Also for me the most poignant scenes all happen on the road: driving out of New York, Eva leaving with the truckers, the house driven off, Stroszek's final drive.

Yeah, it definitely feels like a road movie. And the feel is honestly the most important factor to me.

(I am gonna try to get this done by tonight, I swear!)

It's definitely a matter of feel for me. A vague, amorphous definition of a vague, amorphous genre.

Goin' Down the Road comes and goes on YouTube. If you've got the capability of downloading it and watching it on a big screen, it's up there at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khvy2-Qxuzw