GrogHeads Forum

Here's Take Two at the first 16-movie bracket I'm attempting, and hopefully am doing it correctly this time!

1980 was a brutal year when it comes to movies. I put this list together from the top films of that year (top-grossing, that is), and while there are plenty of awesome flicks in the top 16 or so of them, I skipped a few as I didn't think they'd make much of a case for themselves (e.g., 9 to 5 is a terrific film, but there's others in 1980 that would probably make y'all more interested). After compiling the list, I put them into the bracket format, and found some of the match-ups to be...unfortunate. :)

And to be completely honest, I don't see a result to this that won't end up with The Empire Strikes Back on top. But, it might be a surprise, who knows; plus, the results as this progresses would be very interesting to see.

Thanks to MetalDog for helping with some pointers, and for letting me unashamedly copy his format. I figure not only does that make things easier for me, but those of you voting in these will find it very familiar.

Q&A
Q: "Why did you choose X film? Y was much better! You suck!"

A: Eat me, make your own bracket then.  O:-)

So without further ado, here is the list of films.

BRACKET ONE: 1 versus 16

1. The Empire Strikes Back



16. The Final Countdown



BRACKET TWO: 8 versus 9

8. Caddyshack



9. Friday the 13th



BRACKET THREE: 5 versus 12

5. The Blues Brothers



12. Raging Bull



BRACKET FOUR: 4 versus 13

4. Smokey and the Bandit II



13. Fame



BRACKET FIVE: 6 versus 11

6. The Shining



11. Flash Gordon



BRACKET SIX: 3 versus 14

3. Airplane!



14. Altered States



BRACKET SEVEN: 7 versus 10

7. Seems Like Old Times



10. Brubaker



BRACKET EIGHT: 2 versus 15

2. Stir Crazy



15. The Octagon

Cue Brant to start bitching about matchups and films not in the bracket.

Quote from: mirth on February 16, 2018, 10:25:16 AM
Cue Brant to start bitching about matchups and films not in the bracket.

And I'm fine with that. Refer to the Q&A, above. :)

nah...  more like "put the numbers with the movie titles in the poll options, like MD does" :)

^hahahaha!

Was I meant to be able to do this?

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4603/25430178017_4f094be274.jpg)

Quote from: bayonetbrant on February 16, 2018, 10:34:24 AM
nah...  more like "put the numbers with the movie titles in the poll options, like MD does" :)

Done. Thank you for the helpful and amazing feedback!  O0

Quote from: JudgeDredd on February 16, 2018, 10:40:35 AM
Was I meant to be able to do this?

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4603/25430178017_4f094be274.jpg)

You're not supposed to do that...I mean, you can do that in MD's polls but they shouldn't be selected. I added numbers to the front of each movie to make them easier to spot. I totally missed doing that. Hopefully that's the last mess-up but I doubt it somehow.

Quote from: JudgeDredd on February 16, 2018, 10:40:35 AM
Was I meant to be able to do this?

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4603/25430178017_4f094be274.jpg)

You picked the labels, didn't you?  ;D

Unfortunately that is a limitation of the forum poll feature.

You're going to piss BC off right out of the gate.  :bd:

Yep, there's an option to be allowed to change your vote. I can't recall what the default selection is.

JD, if you can change your vote, that would be great, but if not, I'll remember to mention this moving forward.

Quote from: mirth on February 16, 2018, 10:44:32 AM
You're going to piss BC off right out of the gate.  :bd:

If that's the worst thing to happen out of the gate, so be it. I'm not worried about it. But I'm guessing, JD, that you didn't vote in MD's music polls?

In any case, shite happens. Unless he did it on purpose, of course. LOL

Quote from: BanzaiCat on February 16, 2018, 10:49:06 AM
Unless he did it on purpose, of course. LOL

That'll be me :P

Normally, in MD's polls, we don't get to see the results until the poll closes... not right after we vote.... might affect the out comes... if we can go back and change our votes....
Not that I'm complaining or anything...  8)

Quote from: Barthheart on February 16, 2018, 11:06:09 AM
Normally, in MD's polls, we don't get to see the results until the poll closes... not right after we vote.... might affect the out comes... if we can go back and change our votes....
Not that I'm complaining or anything...  8)

Yep, this is just going swimmingly. There's an option to lock it until after voting expires. I could have sworn I selected it but somehow not. And of course post-posting, it's not possible to switch it over.

I can, however, change it to not show results until after polling...for the moment. I'll be sure to do that moving forward.

I'd like to be able to change my vote. Gives me a greater opportunity to piss Brant off.

The label for the 2-15 match has more votes than The Octagon movie itself. Go label!

Thanks for pinning, whomever you are.  O0

The pinning fairy.

Still need to watch that

Quote from: mirth on February 16, 2018, 06:20:35 PM
Still need to watch that

And I still don't get the hate it's received...I thought it was a great movie.

Quote from: BanzaiCat on February 16, 2018, 10:49:06 AM

Quote from: mirth on February 16, 2018, 10:44:32 AM
You're going to piss BC off right out of the gate.  :bd:

If that's the worst thing to happen out of the gate, so be it. I'm not worried about it. But I'm guessing, JD, that you didn't vote in MD's music polls?

In any case, shite happens. Unless he did it on purpose, of course. LOL

I did. But I knew you could do that, I saw you getting a bit of stick so being an adult, I thought I'd join in.

Sorry  ;D

Quote from: JudgeDredd on February 16, 2018, 07:10:06 PM
I did. But I knew you could do that, I saw you getting a bit of stick so being an adult, I thought I'd join in.

Sorry  ;D

No worries, mate. You were consistent in your choices, so you didn't skew any of the voting, LOL.  :2funny:

Quote from: BanzaiCat on February 16, 2018, 06:21:54 PM

Quote from: mirth on February 16, 2018, 06:20:35 PM
Still need to watch that

And I still don't get the hate it's received...I thought it was a great movie.

I wouldn't say it's a great movie...but it was inventive and a new IP.

I liked it and would be more than willing to support stuff like this rather than the piles and piles of sequels that now permeate Hollywood.

Or reboots.

I'm going to try to stay away from reboots, except in a few rare circumstances. For example, 1982's bracket WILL have The Thing, though it's a remake of the 1951 movie of the same(ish) name (The Thing, or The Thing From Another World).

I've dug a bit more into MD's advice well and will figure out a regular schedule from which to post these. I should have made this a 2-day poll like he does with his brackets, running them Sunday through Saturday. I'll probably kick another one off tomorrow and will run this one concurrently.

I'm having a LOT of fun looking these movies up, finding the trailers, re-watching them, figuring out what I want to put in the brackets and which ones should face off against each other in the first round. I've seen all of these movies, in some cases multiple times, though many of them I haven't watched in years, so the trailers are a nice bit of nostalgia.

Quote from: BanzaiCat on February 17, 2018, 11:37:56 AM

I'm going to try to stay away from reboots, except in a few rare circumstances. For example, 1982's bracket WILL have The Thing, though it's a remake of the 1951 movie of the same(ish) name (The Thing, or The Thing From Another World).

Are you go to put up polls for best movie for every year, starting way back with silent films?  Is this going to culminate in the Grog's opinion of the all-time best movie ever made? 

That's a GREAT idea!

I've thought about that, trailrunner, yes. I'll have to dig pretty deep though to find reliable resources that go back that far.

I thought 1960 might be too far back. I say that because I can't say I've watched a lot of the movies that are considered 'top' for, say, 1960.

It would be good research to watch them, of course. I'll just have to put in some extra time to check all that out.

Quote from: trailrunner on February 17, 2018, 12:00:29 PM
Is this going to culminate in the Grog's opinion of the all-time best movie ever made? 

Yes, it certainly can.

I can see this going the same way MD did his - a winner for each year, then each decade, then overall.

I think MD did the math to make his contest last over 52 weeks, and he timed it to end around the March madness.  You could do something like 40 or 50 years for feeders, but you have to account for championships rounds.  I think MD filled it in with wild cards to make the numbers right.  You could do something similar starting in 1965 or 1970 and ending in 2010, or whatever time period seems right to you.  You'd probably have to sit down with a calendar and sort it out, but it shouldn't be too hard.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. :)

I just went in and for the hell of it started looking at 1900 in film. I had two concerns: one, that there wouldn't be enough info on any particular year way back then, and two, there would be no footage of it, because likely none of us were alive back then to see it (with one or two exceptions  ^-^ ).

Anyway, boy was I surprised. Wiki provides a pretty comprehensive list of movies from any particular year, and YouTube has, so far, had every film I've looked for in 1900 (mostly all short, silent stuff, of course). So this is do-able.

MD said he was doing one year per week, not including championships, and going back to 1900 would be a LOT of voting and polls and research and writing. For me, checking out some of these 1900 movies and the brief info on them is fascinating, so as a matter of course, I think a brief description would need to be included with anything before 1950 or so, as a preliminary guess. I'm not quite sure yet where to draw that line but I'll figure it out as I go.

That's easily two years, at least, of voting right there. Not included in that guess are me needing to travel for business (right now it looks like at least 3 weeks' worth of that, perhaps 5 weeks, all before the end of May or so). Plus vacations.

It'll take a helluva lot of organization; I'd definitely need to do that suggestion and plan things out in a calendar, otherwise I'll get busy with work, forget, or otherwise just not feel like it.

I think, for now, I'm going to focus on more 'modern' times (circa 1960 or so onwards), but with an eye on going back to 1900. I know film goes back further than that, but I need to draw THAT line somewhere, and I'm comfortable with making 1900 the earliest.

I'm glad this is meeting with enthusiasm and interest, because I'm having a lot more fun doing this than a 'worst song' list. This is coming easier to me than the other one, so that might have to wait a bit. :)

Thanks, all.

I was half-joking when I asked if you are going back to 1900.  Based on the demographics of our group, I'd suggest starting around 1965 or 1970.  There might be some worthy contenders before then, so maybe have a catch-all category for all the movies before your starting date.  This is just a suggestion -- it's your contest, so do it however you want.

Quote from: trailrunner on February 17, 2018, 05:41:01 PM
I was half-joking when I asked if you are going back to 1900.  Based on the demographics of our group, I'd suggest starting around 1965 or 1970.  There might be some worthy contenders before then, so maybe have a catch-all category for all the movies before your starting date.  This is just a suggestion -- it's your contest, so do it however you want.

I figured you and MD were joking. But both you meatheads got me thinking and I went and looked into it, just for the hell of it.

If I do it, it'll be well down the road. I think I need to stick with films in most of our lifetimes, though. ;D

Also: thing is, there were a LOT of great films made during the WWII era, and the Korean War. If we don't go back to 1900, then probably back to at least the 30s or so.

Alright, I think I'm getting the hang of it.

I planned out the next few weeks and set reminders to pop up.

As voting ends for this 1980 first round bracket on Tuesday the 20th, I'll start a 1990 bracket tomorrow, and set up the 1980 Elite 8 of Film on Tuesday - same day as the Elite 8 for 1990. So, both years will run concurrently during the week.

This will be the only time I will do that, though. I'm going to stick with one per week like MD is doing so I don't get overwhelmed.

1960, 1970, and 2000 are all in the pipeline, planned out and ready to go.  O0

Quote from: BanzaiCat on February 17, 2018, 05:46:01 PM
I figured you and MD were joking. But both you meatheads...

You would be correct, sir  O0

Voting will close tomorrow and future movie polls will NOT be set to last this long.  O0