New poll who dis? (Patreon)

(Quick thank-you to everyone who's arrived here since my previous group hug and might not have scrolled down to find that post. Your support means the world to me.)

So my original plan, when putting together the tiers and rewards, was to watch and review one patron-requested film every month, with a handful of folks submitting the requests and a larger group voting for their favorite of the bunch. This assumed that very few people would spring for the $10+ tiers—I anticipated maybe half a dozen suggestions. Right now it looks as if it could be as many as 23 in the first month alone. Which is fantastic—I love you all—but one request per month would clearly leave a lot of people dissatisfied. So I've decided instead to do one per week, schedule permitting. (May not be possible during major holidays, when I'm out of town at film festivals, if I'm ostensibly fumigating my house to cover for a mobile meth lab, etc.) And it occurs to me that if I'm gonna do it weekly rather than monthly, there's no reason not to get started now.

Here's how it'll work. Every Monday, I'll solicit requests from the $10+ crew. On Tuesday, those at $5+ will vote. And then I'll announce the winner to everyone on Wednesday (now Thursday, as I later split this into two polls and added a face-off between their winners), so that those who might want to watch/revisit the film in question can do so. Will generally try to get to it by Sunday, though it may depend on how readily accessible it is.

Are there ludicrously complicated rules regarding which films one can request? Naturellement! (This is just for the $10+ folks, but the rest of you may be curious. And you can always upgrade!) Three basic groups qualify:

1. Films that I have never seen. (Here's a complete alphabetical list of the films I have seen. Might wanna search the director's name, as some titles vary.)

2. Films that I've seen, but have not yet rated on the needlessly precise 100-point scale. There are a fuckton of these, though they'd all have premiered prior to 2002—everything I've seen since then, I've rated (and most of them I've already written about somewhere). Easiest way to determine whether or not I've rated something is to check my annual lists ("Top 10 Lists And Ratings By Year"), using whichever year the film has been assigned by the IMDb. (Titles listed under "conspicuously absent" I intend to revisit eventually anyway, whether or not anyone requests them, but you can certainly speed things along.) Or you can just ask me.

3. Notable films that I've both seen and rated, but haven't reviewed (whether professionally, on my site/blog, or on Letterboxd). For our purposes, let's say "notable" = appears on the They Shoot Pictures list. The idea here is that if I'm gonna revisit a film that I've seen fairly recently (relative to how long I've been a cinephile, at least), it should be significant enough to merit a second/third/nth look. As opposed to, I dunno, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or something. Odds are you'll have to ask me about these, as I don't really have any simple means of searching. (There is a list, but it's far from complete.)

UPDATE, AUGUST 2023: I've now opened this up to any film that I haven't seen in at least ten years, even if I've already reviewed it. Though if my previous review was on the lengthier side, and my opinion of the film doesn't substantively change, the new review may be briefer than usual; no point in finding new words to say what I've already said. So maybe stick with titles that you genuinely think I might reassess.)

Somebody asked me about short films, but for now, let's stick to your basic theatrical features (45+ mins; projected somewhere in a theatrical context)—no TV episodes, no miniseries(es), no straight-to-video/Netflix stand-up specials, etc. You know. Movies. Now more than ever!

In general, I'd prefer requests for older movies rather than 21st-century fare. If you're really itching to hear what I think about some recent film that I passed on, though, go ahead and submit it (especially if you think it has a decent shot at winning the vote). I'd also prefer that people not engage in harmless sadism by requesting blatantly terrible films à la Battlefield Earth or whatever, but will accept my fate if that's what the masses decree. And you'd be doing me a favor if you check to see whether there's some ready means of watching the film in question, preferably in decent resolution. (I subscribe to Netflix [streaming and by-mail], Amazon Prime, Hulu, the Criterion Channel, MUBI, and Disney+, + I have Kanopy access.) No point in requesting something that's all but impossible to get hold of.

That covers everything, I think. If you're in the relevant tier, you'll soon see a solicitation for requests and/or this week's poll. Everyone else, stay tuned for the winner. And thanks again to everyone. You're all winners as far as I'm concerned.

UPDATE THAT I VERY BELATEDLY REALIZED NEWCOMERS SHOULD SEE: I also pretty quickly instituted a monthly random drawing, which originally selected one request (whether active or not) from among all of those that have been appeared in at least four polls. Later upped it to two per month. The longer you stick with a request, the more entries it gets in the drawing—one per week. So even if you request a film so obscure that it's unlikely ever to win the popular vote, it can still be randomly selected.