Breadline Optimists: A Film Podcast

Four of us, Nick, Scott, I (Dennis) and my wife Vanessa played at game of the popular collaborative podcast Screen Drafts to determine the top 18 camp horror films. We are a bit different than Screen Drafts only in that we have more vetoes and overrides and generally watch thirty or so films before each game to prep. Our friend Mario provided trivia to determine placements, and we all had a nice dinner and a few hours of solid film discussion.   18. Thirteen Ghosts (2001) Nick won position A (picks 18, 14, 9, 6 and 1: it comes with one veto and he had an override that carried over from the last time we all played.).  Mostly, he felt he liked the film and the designs of the ghost and the house very much. He thought the deaths were creative and did not like any of the characters. He came in hot with stuff he didn't like about the film, and we called him out on often not loving the first picks he puts on a list. We did not veto it, but no one loved it. 17. The Gruesome Twoso...

  It was my turn to pick a topic for the newest game. We had four players (I and my wife Vanessa, Scott and Nick). I usually pick games based on what I want to watch, and lately I have been wanting to watch The Crow franchise. I had at the time only seen the first and second of the films; there are five!!  I bought them and used that as inspiration to pick them for my game. But five films is not enough; four players require at least 16 films in play because it's not worth getting out of bed if you have less than four picks. And if 16 are in play, no one really has pick number one because it's decided at number two. So I needed at least 17 films. I noticed the Friday the 13th franchise had 12 (if we include the remake and vs Freddy), so two franchises about revenge and resurrection.  I did not want a ton of vetoes or overrides in the game. I thought since every title is in play (unlike the last game High School Horror where there were hundreds of possible picks), limit it ...

My wife V chose this topic (with these restrictions: must have several scenes in school, must be about school in some way, no specialty schools allowed) and we made a top thirteen list (instead of the usual top 18) because 3 players took part (V, me and our friend Scott). Nick, who normally plays and will be back playing for the next game (ranking all The Crow and Jason films), was kind enough to provide trivia and play host for this game. He opened with a delightful intro that ended this way: "Good or bad, anyone who has set foot in a public high school can relate to many of the things the protagonists are going through. How many of us would have rather run from Ghostface than set foot in a gym class? Or hoped for death rather than taking an un-studied for biology test? Growing up is scary enough. Adding something supernatural to the mix just makes it a whole lot worse. Now, teacher leave those kids alone!!” Trivia questions related to Idle Hands, It Follows, Jennifer's Body,...

Screen Drafts is a game based on a popular podcast where players (in this case Scott, Nick, Vanessa and I) work towards making a hopefully collaborative film list based on a given topic. The game generally contains vetoes and veto overrides. The amount of those is determined by trivia (provided by our friend Rene) as well as the spots each player has on this list. A more detailed examination of the game can be found in previous write-ups on this blog. I am doing a short version of the set up  here because no vetoes or overrides were deployed just positive vibes. This was Scott's turn to pick a topic, and he asked each of us to come up with a top 16 horror film list in no particular order. Once the lists were finished, we could not play our own and were sort of proxy for another player. It was nice seeing what everyone's favorites were.  Scott had my list. Vanessa had Nick's. I had Vanessa's and Nick had Scott's. We each had 4 picks to place on a list of 16.  In addi...