travis betz » fight to the death http://travisbetz.com where the chicken tastes like people! Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:23:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Heroin for cinepiles http://travisbetz.com/heroin-for-cinepiles/ http://travisbetz.com/heroin-for-cinepiles/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:00:02 +0000 travis http://travisbetz.com/?p=664 Here’s what I didn’t need in my insanely busy and productive life right now; FlickChart! I spent (no fucking joke) 8 straight hours on this thing the other day. The creators of this site are genius. The idea is simple enough. They present you with two movies, for example, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Reservoir Dogs . Your job is to decide which is better. There is no SKIP button. You are forced to make  the call before they present you with two new options. The site then begins to chart the films, putting them in order. Every vote alters the order of your films, creating an amazing way to keep a BEST OF list.

That’s the site in a nutshell, but allow me to expand on why I really think this site is brilliant for cinephiles. As I was playing around on it, a few of my co-workers began looking over my shoulder. Before long they were just as involved as I was, blurting out who they would vote for. I realized that this was a fun game for all. Yes, good clean fun. And then it happened. The site decided to play an insanely cruel trick on us and flipped over Jaws vs Alien . Our jaws (I swear the pun was not intended) hit the ground so hard that it rattled our skulls and forced our eyeballs to hang off our faces at nose level. Jaws vs Alien? How does one even begin to place one on a higher pedestal. Both are near-perfect (if not perfect) movies and both mean the world to me. We sat around for over 25 minutes discussing both movies in detail, and that’s when it hit me. This amazing site actually encourages and inspires conversations about film. It forces you to re-examine movies and what actually made them great. The opposing movies will inspire new insight to each other and get you thinking about themes, dialog, characters and story. Suddenly it was no longer a good way to waste time, but a educational way to deconstruct films.

Here’s some of the harder battles I have had to pick so far:

Raiders of the Lost Ark vs Back to the Future

A Nightmare on Elm Street vs Gremlins

The Shining vs Brazil

Raging Bull vs Network

The site has not officially launched and it is still in BETA testing form. To sign up and play go HERE. They will send you an invitation to join. Don’t get discouraged though. It took over a week before I got my invitation after I signed up. It’s well worth the wait.

Much love

Travis

]]> http://travisbetz.com/heroin-for-cinepiles/feed/ 3