JurassicGriffin Presents: Movie Talk On Sunday

Alright guys and girls.  It’s Tuesday, my time.  That means I have to get this thing up.  Movie Talk On Sunday.  That’s right.  After all of this time where I tried to coax other people into hosting just so that they would do the theme of teenage sex comedies, I have gotten the chance to host.  What’s my topic?  It’s not teenage sex comedies, I’ll tell you that much right now.  I’ll get to the topic in a few minutes.  I’m going to need to go over a few things about this whole hootenanny first.

The history behind Movie Talk On Sundays (abbreviated MTOS and using the hashtag #MTOS) is really not that long, but it does have its ups and downs.  Two users of the website Twitter (@askimrach and @raghavmodi) decided that there wasn’t enough movie talk on Twitter.  We all know that isn’t true, but that’s not the point now, is it?  Their Twitter accounts fornicated and bred the hashtag mentioned above (#MTOS).  Movie Talk On Sundays, as it would come to be called, was an hour and a half on Sunday where people would give their opinions on a set topic, based around ten set questions.  It is simple as that.  Very soon following the initial run of #MTOS, they began recruiting hosts.  These hosts would make the questions and bring them to the Twitter community.  The topics varied by week and host.  Friends and enemies were made through this weekly event, but #MTOS has lived on, and the hosting torch has been handed to me.

Let me summarize how #MTOS works, which I think everyone has been copying and pasting.  I’m not going to copy and paste.  I want to present the overview my way.  I’ll probably get some flak from the creators over not copying and pasting, but I think this will work just as well.  Here we go.

Starting at 20:00 GMT, which translates to 8pm for you non-military people out there, or 3 Eastern Time for us North Americans, questions will start going up for this week’s topic.  The questions will pop up once every ten minutes.  Each question will be relevant to the topic at hand.  There will be a total of ten questions, of my choosing, and the last question should be up at 21:30 GMT, 4:30 Eastern.  That’s math.  Oh, this is all happening on Sunday, if you couldn’t tell by the name of this whole thing being Movie Talk On Sundays.  Speaking of which...

The hashtag #MTOS is to be used in your response to the questions, if you choose to respond.  There is a thing called free will.  I can try and get a response, but I, myself, cannot guarantee that you will respond.  Toss the hashtag at the beginning or at the end.  It doesn’t matter.  Just get the hashtag in there.  You might seem strange if you put it in the middle of a sentence, but hey, that’s your prerogative.  Basically, the hashtag is used to let people find your contributions and respond to your responses.  You are also asked to put the hashtag in any subsequent replies to people that are still related to the topic.  Or you can do it if they’re unrelated.  It’s up to your discretion on that.

The creators of #MTOS also encourage people to write blogs or articles or graffiti about the week’s topic to get everyone in the mood.  Maybe forget the graffiti part.  Nobody should be endorsing you writing on a bathroom stall wall that people should be getting interested in the topics.  If you do that, we did not encourage you to and we are not liable to any form of lawsuit.  You did it yourself; you are to take the consequences.  You are encouraged to write blog entries though.  Have at it.

Finally, the questions are supposed to give way to discussions, conversations, and other online mingling.  If they don’t, feel free to chastise me.  I will not have done my job properly if you people don’t talk to each other.  It will make me feel really bad and I might resign to being a hermit for the rest of my life.  It will be a sad, sad existence.  The hashtag helps to brew discussion.  Hopefully it only makes for friendly debates and discussion, and not anything slanderous.  Slander is bad.  Don’t be bad.

Oh yeah, one more thing about that before I get to my topic and the questions.  This is basically going to reiterate what I have said throughout this.  Act civilized.  Don’t insult one another.  Be courteous.  This isn’t about hate-trolling people.  This is about talking to people about things you like or dislike.  Also, try not to use profanity, especially the harsher portions of the profanity scale.  Keep it at least PG-13, language wise.  I don’t want to hear that my hosting made a bunch of three year olds swear at their parents for their first words.

Finally we are at the moment you’ve been waiting for.  This is also the spot right before where most people scrolled down to.  I know people.  Most of this was “Too long; didn’t read.”  They want the topic.  They want the questions.  Well, here we go.

The topic of this week’s installment of Movie Talk On Sundays (#MTOS) is: News In The Movies.

This is a fairly simple topic to understand.  News happens all around us.  It is always happening.  And it can influence movies, how they’re made, and what the subject matter is.  This week, the ten questions will be about movies featuring news.  Mostly it is about the reporting aspect of the news.  Many movies feature reporting so this should give you a lot of options with answers.  Blow me away, guys.

Here are the questions:

1.            What is your favorite movie about the news reporting?

2.            There are many different ways to report the news.  Which form of reporting the news in a movie captivates you the most?

3.            Research is a difficult thing to make exciting on film. Which movie do you think best represents the research aspect of news reporting?

4.            Most television news reporters have sign-offs.  What are some of the best sign-offs used in movies?

5.            The people who deliver the news are as important as those who report it. What is the best representation of a paperboy in a movie?

6.            Does using real news broadcasts, whether re-enacted or shown with archive footage, take away or add to a movie?

7.            What is your favorite news broadcast in a movie that isn’t about the news?

8.            Lots of movies feature newspaper headlines whether important to the story or not.  What are some of your favorites?

9.            Reporters tend to get in the way in many movies.  In which movie would you say that reporters cause the most harm to the situation?

10.          If you were to replace one song in any movie with a Huey Lewis and the News song, which movie, which song, and why?

I hope these questions satisfy the participants.  This should be a fun week and I’m hoping that I don’t let you guys down and you don’t let me down.  It’s a give and take.  I can only do so much by providing the questions.  I need you guys to pick up the slack and give some good answers.

I’ll see all of you on Sunday evening (afternoon for me) as we take this trip into the newsroom and provide some concrete facts about what we like: movies.

P.S. If there are any grammar or spelling problems in here, it was either intentional, or I didn’t notice because it’s 3am right now.