New year, new prize concepts and holiday movies

So, its a new year coming up and I think I know how I’m going to change things. First, we don’t deal in movie ideas anymore. Well, we do but the Research team wants to focus on blurbs. A blurb is like, a sentence, maybe two. They advised using the word blurb instead of movie description. Apparently research showed people have enough time to come up with blurbs, but movie descriptions take up more time. So this is the year of the blurb.

So you come here, contribute a blurb about movies and get in the running for a free movie ticket. Every month I will give away two movie tickets. What is a blurb? Well, a blurb looks like this: I thought Grey Honeybee was too long. Or you could say: Beeman should have to fight three villains at once. Or you could contribute an idea for a movie(in blurb form, of course):  I want to see a movie with a good hitchhiker. The whole goal of this blurb thing is to make this blog a free research department for the movie industry.

Second, if you contribute a blurb about an original movie idea within the first four months your idea will be up for a vote. Readers will make a comment voting yes or no about your idea. After four months ideas are welcome, but they don’t get voted on. (We gotta cut it off at some point.) The winner will receive an super duper prize package of stuff. I’m going to have coupons to all sorts of businesses and whatever else I can rustle up. So post your movie idea blurb then get all your friends to come and vote on them.

Finally, if you come and make a comment, any comment you will be in the running to win one of two DVDs each month. The Research Department is not happy with this, but I insisted. So anyone who makes any relevant comment will be eligible to win a prize.

Well, that’s it for now. Before I go I wanted to ask what you thought of Hollywood’s new Holiday Movie idea. Apparently they discovered they don’t have to launch a Christmas movie to sell tickets, so they’re abandoning the idea, pretty much. Instead they’re launching stuff like Jack Black’s Gulliver’s Travels around the end of the year. What do you think about this? Would you prefer Christmas movies. Or are you happy with the new arrangement? Let me and the world know.

Finally, I apologize for the time its taking me to get the prize notifications out. Asheville just had about a foot of snow dumped on it. Between that and the holiday rush I’m running behind a bit. I promise the notifications will get sent out. Also I promise I will post prizes for December, but maybe not before December is over. Putting together this OurMoviePrize system is alot more complicated than I thought.

The end of the year, Thor and Transformers and next year’s movies

Well, its about two or three weeks until the New Year. This blog has been up for about ten months and I want to thank all those who read it, all who commented and all who won prizes. With the New year comes new opportunities. This week I want to take an opportunity to share my vision of this blog’s future and get your input.

If you are reading this you are the lifeblood of this blog. It is my responsibility to get you to come here, come back and make comments. And that is what I intend to do for the foreseeable future. To this purpose within the past month I assembled a Research Department. This makes ourmovie.wordpress.com one of the few blogs(that I know of) that have their own research department. It is an extra bit of work , but if it brings you the reader a better online experience its worth it.

My experts were particularly concerned about the rate of unclaimed prizes. Of 15 prizes won only two or three have been claimed. They also expressed concern about prize entry rollover. To tackle this I had them develop  OurMoviePrize, a proprietary system to manage prize entries and awards. If I can get it on line by January it will track all comments and make sure they are rolled over until they win a prize.

The second area of concern identified were movie ideas As the name of the blog suggest this is about generating movie ideas for use by the movie industry. This blog should become a free research department for filmmakers. However, I rejected the idea of requiring you, the reader, to have to generate an idea to get a prize. We’re still working on a solution but I assure you that on this blog any relevant comment will put you in the running for a prize.

I need you, the reader, to tell me the direction this blog should go. I want you to visit it every week. I want your comments every week. In fact nothing would thrill me more than if you visited it and posted comments several times a week. So please let me know what you want . I can’t promise to get it but I assure  I will try. We will discuss this more as the end of the year approaches.

Well, as we approach the end of the year the anticipation is building for next year’s films. I popped over to wikipedia.org and looked up 2011 movies. There are some movies here I recognize as big events and some I don’t. Of course I didn’t really anticipate Inception until I saw a trailer in the theater. So what I’ll go over here is just what caught my eye. I’m going to suggest you look up the list yourself because I may miss something you’d like. But here goes.

In January we get the Green Hornet and Season of the Witch. In March we get Apollo 18 which is a sci-fi film about why we’ve really never been back to the moon. Mars Needs Moms(Disney, March 11) appears to be a G rated take on the “Mars needs women” themes of the 50s and 60s. Battle: Los Angeles looks interesting. On May 20 we get the next Pirates of the Caribbean.  Then there’s XMen, Harry Potter, Green Lantern, Super 8, Transformers, Cars 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Smurfs, Darkest Hour, Spy Kids 4, Conan, Mr. Popper’s Penguins(oooh, with Jim Carrey, Carla Gugino and Angela Lansbury), Captain America, Three Musketeers, Contagion, Project X, Sherlock Holmes 2, MI:4, TinTin(with Daniel Craig and Andy Serkis), Alvin and the Chipmunks, another Dragon Tattoo Girl movie, one called Arthur Christmas which has aliens, and a Puss in Boots movie based on Shrek.  Whewwww! This looks like maybe the best movie year ever!

So which one are you looking forward to. Let me know and tell everybody which ones to go see.

Wow!

 

A Movie About a Town

So what kind of movie would it be if the title was the name of your town. What kind of movie would Asheville be? how about Memphis. Or maybe D.C.?

I’ve lived in Asheville for a long time and I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for the town. Asheville would be the story of a family. The father would be laid off from a factory, working two jobs. The mother would work at a local nursing home. They would have two children, both going to a local technical school. The boy would be taking criminal justice and the daughter radiology. The family would be a church going family, but not too strict. Contrary to what the Chamber of Commerce says most people in Asheville are relatively religious. Lots of Baptists and Methodists.

Of course there has to be a crisis and I like thrillers. So we’ll have the mother be told a secret at a death bed. The daughter of the dying woman was the mistress to a powerful politician/mob boss/etc. who was killed. The identity of the killer and location of a key piece of evidence are passed on. The bad guys aren’t taking any chances so they kidnap the mother to find out what she knows. The son in the criminal justice program must chase them down and rescue his mom.

The chase would involve some of the landmarks in the area. The nursing home could be set in the Grove Park Inn. We can have a foot chase through down town. Some body can fall off the BB&T building. Somebody can fall off  Town Hall. Somebody can fall off of Mission Hospital. Somebody can fall off the Grove Park Inn. Somebody can fall off Helen’s Bridge. Shoot, we can even have somebody fall off the Indian in front of Harry’s Cadillac.

So that’s my idea. If you’re from Asheville let me know what kind of movie you think this town should be. If you’re not from Asheville tell me about your town. And as always all comments are registered for prizes.

PRIZE WINNERS FOR NOVEMBER

Okay, so its that time again. I went to random.org and I selected a min of 1 and a max of ten. Then I clicked the random number generator a few items to clear it.  There were ten comments during November so I clicked it ten times and these are the results. Once one of the comments had won I disregarded it when it popped up. Since I had ten prizes, EVERYONE IS A WINNER. (However you do have to wait in line while I ask each of you which prize you want.) So, here’s the list of prize winners.

10,7,6,4,5,9,3,1,2,8

Congratulations. Now things get a bit more complicated. I will email you soon and give you a choice of prizes and asking if you are eighteen or older. You will have to send me two e-mails. The first is a e-mail informing me of your age. PLEASE tell me the truth. If you are not eighteen I will make it up to you. Please trust me on this one and tell the truth. The second one will be an e-mail telling me your age. I’ll need two e-mails because I must save the age verification. If you just send one and put an age verification AND address on it, I WILL save it. Sorry, that’s the way it works. So send two e-mail. Its quick, its easy and its my law.

Unfortunately right now I am busier than I have been in a while. So I may not get December’s prizes posted right away. But I will send out the prize verifications As Soon As I Can. Please respond As Soon As You Can so I can pass the list on to someone else. You have one week to respond before the next person gets notified and offered their choice.

Also, all the winning comments now are not eligible for a prize. So post new ones.