About a potential next tournament

[mae]

Not at all. There is lots of interesting discussion on the difference between suspense and thriller: https://www.google.com/search?q=diff...e+and+thriller

It mainly boils down to the fact that thrillers are action-oriented and suspense or mystery movies are not. One particular article breaks it down thus: Suspense/Mystery is "why" and "who". Thriller is "how". Doesn't mean there can't be elements of each in one movie, like Alien is horror/sci-fi, but to me a suspense film and a thriller are different. But maybe that's just me...

[Mattrick]

So Gone Girl is action oriented? Thriller and Suspense are two sides of the same coin but the value of the coin is the same. Just two slightly different methods on achieving the same end. Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Science Fiction, are the genres of film: everything else is just subsets of these. Though things like Westerns are their own genre, I think Westerns and War films as a sub-genre of Action, and though this link disagrees with that, it does agree thriller-suspense are the same thing. Surprised with your Fincher examples you didn't say Se7en, which is his definitive thriller/suspense.

http://www.filmsite.org/filmgenres.html

[Tommy]

Well when you get right down to the nitty gritty, everything can be either a tragedy or a comedy, there's also the idea that there are only about five or six stories; success, failure, love, revenge, quest for meaning/god etc.

[mae]

Maybe Gone Girl isn't the best example, I agree. And most will just lump suspense and thrillers together. But then we'd have to call Hitch the Master of Thriller.

[pathoftheturtle]

I thought Michael Jackson was the Master of Thriller.

[Mattrick]

Maybe Gone Girl isn't the best example, I agree. And most will just lump suspense and thrillers together. But then we'd have to call Hitch the Master of Thriller.

His movies were Thrillers for the time period. Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, Vertigo, Rebecca...all thrillers, just some more methodical and latent in the thrills than others.

[fernandito]

So Gone Girl is action oriented? Thriller and Suspense are two sides of the same coin but the value of the coin is the same.

[mae]

Rear Window is the epitome of suspense. And most other Hitchcock films. Can you really call Rope a thriller? There's almost no action whatsoever.

[Tommy]

Rear Window is the epitome of suspense. And most other Hitchcock films. Can you really call Rope a thriller? There's almost no action whatsoever.

Plenty of talk about strangling chickens though

[mae]

Also, I always put suspense and mystery together, because often in a thriller there is no mystery. So to me the distinction is with suspense/mystery something happened or could happen, but you're not sure what, and in a thriller it happened or is happening in plain sight.

[Mattrick]

Haven't seen Rope. Suspense is just a tool for thrillers. I don't consider any film a suspense film. Suspense is just tension, and tension is used to build an eventual thrilling payoff, which Rear Window definitely has. Just because Hitchcock is the Master of Thrillers doesn't mean all his movies are thrillers. That's like saying because Stephen King can't be the Master of Horror because of Shawshank Redemption.

[mae]

There's suspense in everything, it's an essential part of drama. But a suspense/mystery film is not everything, it's a specific genre, I believe,

[Tommy]

He may have a point pablo, all the films mentioned here are classified as Thrillers on IMDB, even Rope, although most have other classifications such as crime, mystery, horror etc. but I haven't found any listed as suspense

edit: suspense is not a genre listed on IMDB but Thriller is

[mae]

RT lists Rope as: Drama, Mystery & Suspense.

[Tommy]

Genres listed on IMDB:

Action
Adventure
Animation
Biography
Comedy
Crime
Documentary
Drama
Family
Fantasy
Film-Noir
History
Horror
Music
Musical
Mystery
Romance
Sci-Fi
Sport
Thriller
War
Western

[mae]

IMDB is not the end-all of movie encyclopedias (it lists as genres things that aren't technically a genre, like Animation or Documentary). Though you could expand "Mystery" to be "Mystery/Suspense". Here's Paramount Pictures with their list: http://www.paramount.com/theatrical-...stery-suspense

[Tommy]

IMDB is not the end-all of movie encyclopedias

Never claimed it was but it is a large tool that we all use and shouldn't be dismissed, I do also agree with you about Mystery and Suspense but I have to ask myself, If you took the suspense part away and those movies are just listed as Mystery, would there be a very big difference?

[mae]

I think so. Take Rope as an example again. There's no mystery, we know whodunnit. There is suspense though, because we don't know how or if they'll get away with it.

[Tommy]

good point, but then it could be called a thriller and we are back where we started.

The original tagline for Rope was "It's his most nerve-stretching thriller!"

[Mattrick]

But still pablo, it's Mystery & Suspense, not Mystery, Suspense. That just means Suspense is a subgenre of mystery which is a subgenre of thriller and/or crime, which is a subgenre of action and/or drama. Suspense is a quality of a film, not the genre. If suspense is a genre than 90% of reality TV is considered suspense television.

[Iwritecode]

Next tourney should be best animated film.

[Mattrick]

Next tourney should be best animated film.

I could do this, but even animation is just a type of medium.

[fernandito]

Next tourney should be best animated film.

That sounds even better.

[Still Servant]

I'm fine with how we did the nominations last time, unless we do worst movie. Like I mentioned above, it will have to be tweaked for that.

How would you guys feel about smaller tournaments to bridge the gap between the larger ones? I'm thinking along the lines of specific sub-genres like best war movie, best prison movie, best heist movie, best disaster movie and there are tons more that are interesting, but wouldn't take long to do.

I know not everybody is into sports, but I'd love to do a best sports movie tournament.

[Merlin1958]

This is way way too early, but I'm really looking forward to doing a suspense/mystery tournament and a thriller tournament. Because these two genres often overlap, it will be a pretty fascinating and contentious (hopefully in a good way) process that could be real fun. But to make things easy maybe the next one should be action.

Idk... grouping those two separately will be splitting hairs. Shit, we had a hard enough time separating Horror and Sci-Fi, it might be next to impossible to extract these two.

Well, that's the fun part! For me, suspense is more cerebral, less actiony. Like Rear Window, probably the best suspense/mystery film. On the other hand, movies like Fight Club or Gone Girl are thrillers, in my view. So the discussions will be meaningful.

Thriller/Suspense are the same genre.

This tournament will probably take us into May anyway so no worries. And any new tournament wouldn't be held right away. As far as tweaking the nominating process, I'm all for that, but I think it worked pretty well this time around, no?

Well when you get right down to the nitty gritty, everything can be either a tragedy or a comedy, there's also the idea that there are only about five or six stories; success, failure, love, revenge, quest for meaning/god etc.

Look, I am fully aware that my opinion carries little weight in this neck of the woods (or the site for that matter), but some of the above banter is exactly my point. I get that some of you enjoy the back and forth quite a bit, but I feel it gets to an extreme. IMHO you should really tighten the definition of each individual genre and then have the nomination process strictly adhere to it. If I recall, BTTF was up for best comedy and Sci-Fi!!! Pick one!! Sure it's a comedy utilizing a Sci-Fi premise, but if you're going to include it in a "Best of" contest you need to firmly decide which one it truly qualifies as an entry. Otherwise, your voting, as much fun and enjoyment as may you get out of it, is totally worthless with regard to any true gauge of the films competing. JMHO and FWIW to consider going forward.

Also, as in most sports, it is very difficult to truly gauge a "Best of all time film & category". Just as in sports, the times, technology and evolution make a lot of comparison's unfair. Take Sci-Fi for instance, you cannot even begin to account for advances in movie making in Avatar as compared to say, Forbidden Planet. Therefore, it may be best to have the films compete somewhat "Generationally" so to speak, that way you pit them fairly against their peers at the time. Maybe every 20 or 25 years? for instance.

Again, just food for thought. I'm not telling anyone how to run the show just making some suggestions, IMHO on how to improve the process.