2013-01-03 00:49:07

Hello there. I did a search on the forum but couldn't find a topic like this. If there is and I missed it, it would be ok for me if the link is posted here and this topic is closed.

So anyway, I'm curious. What are your favorite movies and why? Maybe even more interesting, what kind of movies do you generally like? Love stories, thriller or even horror? Do you prefer light entertainment or more intelligent and complicated plots?

For me it's kind of complicated to say because I am a big overall movie fan. I usually watch about 4 to 7 new movies a week and have done so for years. I like almost everything from blockbusters to small independent films. The only thing I don't watch are comedic movies. At least not the common ones because I usually just don't think they are funny. Probably because I have a messed up sense of humor. I really like dark and/or dramatic humor. Sarcasm, irony, cynicism and sardonic stuff are to my liking and you usually won't find that in movies that are labeled as "comedies".

2013-01-03 12:19:06 (edited by AlexN94 2013-01-03 12:25:25)

I never really watch any movies, I'm more into audio dramas and audio books. Though I have quite a lot of movies with audio description I don't watch them. big_smile But my favorite genres are sci-fi, fnatasy, horror, and any kind of mix between those. Guess I better stay out of this topic, from now on, don't have much to participate with, so... big_smile Heh.

EDIT: A movie I liked quite a bit was The Matrix, watched that one back in november when I got my last eye removed... Or, I watched afterwards.... big_smile

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2013-01-03 15:07:45

i like some with some  good action.  if it has some sort of investigative aspects thats cool too.  i also, like movie that are books too like the harry potter movies.

I don’t believe in fighting unnecessarily.  But if something is worth fighting for, then its always a fight worth winning.
check me out on Twitter and on GitHub

2013-01-03 15:30:36

Do you have any examples of movies that work well even without an audio description? It seems hard to think of one.

2013-01-03 15:51:00

Umm... Dunno. But why? Audio description doesn't ruin the movie in any way I can think of. big_smile

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2013-01-04 06:06:32

Actually, many movies work well without audio description. For years, I avoided audio description, considering it more of a nuisance than a help. I didn't like how they would fade the background music, which was something I would use for cues on what was happening, as well as the fact that some of the narrators sound quite annoying. Having said that, my opinion has softened over the years. I now watch most movies that I want to see with description when available, but if there's something I really want to see that hasn't been described, I'll still watch it. Then, if there are huge plot holes, I'll go to either Wikipedia or IMDB and look up a plot summary. Both sources usually contain very detailed descriptions of the plot, so I'm hardly ever lost on what went on in a movie.
As for genres, I mostly watch horror, comedy, or movies which paint a picture of different time periods' social and cultural differences. I suppose you could label these dramas, but that's much too broad a description. An example of what I'm talking about was a movie I watched recently, called Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It was a fairly popular and controversial movie, so I'm going to guess most people have heard of it. If not, the barest plot description I can give is that it's about an interracial couple in the 60's, and how they're going to get married. First, their parents have to meet each other, and much to the astonishment of the couple, who were quite foolish in my honest opinion, since they were totally floored that they didn't receive a positive reaction, even considering the time period. Anyway, they do eventually come around, which makes the movie all the more unrealistic. But even considering that the plot of the movie was ruined by Hollywood perfection, that's the kind of stuff I often go for.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2013-01-05 22:09:32

Hopefully I'm not too late to the party?  smile

I found that back in the 90's and perhaps a bit before that movies were quite easy enough to get into without any description.  Jurassic Park has got to be among my favorite series of all time, along with the Leprechaun, Home Alone, Nightmare ON elm Street, and oh yes, and Child's Play.

As you can probably tell by this already wordy post, I was never too picky about what I watched ten, fifteen years ago.  Congo, Dante's Peak What's Eating Gilbert Grape, the Lion King is an all time favorite pretty much wherever I go, so I must have gotten around to that at least a thousand times by now along with Aladdin, The Fox and the Hound, Toy Story, older movies like the Wizard of Ozz, and so on.

As time progressed, I found that so did the aims of video, and with good reason; video is meant to cater to the sighted audience.  Sound cues and dialogue took a backseat to better graphics and more dazzling things to keep the viewer entertained, so I haven't been much of a movie person since about o5/o6 or there abouts.  I don't mind engaging in a bit of watching at all though, and more so if I can figure out what is going on; this seems to be easiest with Animated films more than anything else really, though I dind't mind watching Saw one bit, and the movie Taken was just awesome.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2013-01-06 03:14:01

Maybe a little bit of additional explanation is needed for me to understand. Take for example horror movies. Saw is a good example. Extremely sparse dialogue, almost no plot, typical visual torture poorn. Not unlike so many modern horror movies. How can they be enjoyable without the visual aspect that actually is the main reason why this movie was made in the first place? I like those movies and I even have seen one of them completely on mute and I didn't miss a thing. This kind of proves to me, that the sound is completely obsolete in those movies and the picture is all that matters.

2013-01-06 04:11:28

That is correct in essentials, though you are overlooking the real sound effects, which is pretty much how we do anything TV related.  Go back and pay close atention to the sounds in the first Saw movie; listen to the way the saws sound on the chains, and later, the legs.  Hear the screams of anguish?  the sound of truth?  Listen to the tussle that is Zep and Allyson, the sound of Adam being shot with a gun, Zep coming into the bathroom and being beaten to death with a heavy something or other...
While I did go back and watch Saw 1, 2, and 3 with descriptions later and discover that the something or other was a toilet tank cover, I found that I had just a bit more fun without the narration because my mind went beyond the scope of the movies and into imaginative mode.  As is the case with just about any art, limitless and without any true barrier save the artist's imagination, sound designing has no true barriers accept what you can't hear.  Blood splatter?  Bone crunching?  Flesh hacking and tearing?  We can hear that, and sound designers are out to make that sound as gross as possible in movies.  Want a good example of sound designing?  Wear nothing but earphones when watching The Hills Have Eyes; forget the visuals, and watch through sound.  The Music is always good for atmospherics and ambience as well.  Mash all of that together and you get a mindtwisting mass of matter to work with that goes almost as far as reading, which for me, at least, will always beat out movies. 

Video will only let you see what's on the screen.  Sound is a different experience that involves creativity to help put together a picture that can be anything.  While we've all probably heard the sound of a lawnmower, we haven't all heard the sound of dying on a battlefield.  Perhaps the most intense sound scene I can think of comes from an older movie, Saving Private Ryan; 40 or so minutes of different rapid bangs, booms, grunts, groans, screams, splashes, crackles, crunches, and all of that translates to simply chaos if that's all you want it to translate to, or you can zoom in on particular details in the cacophony and imagine troops running to meet a strong force of German adversaries that won't budge, someone being blasted open by explosive force and their entrails hanging out of them while they seek escape from the horror and shock of what they are experiencing, listen to men burst into flames and jump into the waters at Omaha beach trying to save themselves from such a fate, only to be drowned in their confusion.  with a bit of logic and research, we can imagine the bunkers, the mortar pits, antitank weaponry, rocket launching sites, a mass of machine guns and turrets, thousands of casualties.  If I'm wrong on any count or you simply wish to educate me further, do feel free to let me know.  I'm am totaly blind, after all. :d

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2013-01-06 05:15:12

I fully agree with you. This is precisely why I used to scoff at audio description. I enjoyed forming my own pictures of things, and they were often more vivid, and therefore more real to me, than anything a describer would tell me. I'm the same way with books. I can't stand audio books, because when I read, I like to picture what's going on in each scene, what the characters sound like, etc., and I've found that narrators just can't cut it when it comes to stuff like that. I often have a very different idea of what a character should sound like, and then, when I hear how they're interpreted in a movie or audio book, I cringe. While Jim Dale was a notable exception, I normally can't stand male narrators who try to impersonate female characters, and vice versa. I don't like the fakeness of it one bit. I know they don't really have much choice in the matter, so I'm not trying to insult anyone, but it's just something that's like nails on a chalkboard to me. My opinion on described movies may have changed, since they're so readily available nowadays, but I damn well won't change my mind about audio books. I'll continue to use my Web Braille and Bookshare memberships faithfully.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2013-01-06 05:20:48

As I don't have a braille display and could care less for synthesised reading, I unfortunately deal with audio books.  If I could have it any other way though, I honestly would.  Braille has always been something I value tremendously, though I suppose that may be partly do to the pride I felt when I was told at age 7 that there was nothing else left for me to learn.  I started at an early age that I honestly don't remember, but I kept going and ended up where i am now.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2013-01-06 05:32:03

Braille displays certainly aren't cheap, that's for sure. I consider myself lucky that I do have a Braille Note. to be honest, if anything happened to it, I would probably just not read any books until I could get it repaired. Actually, I'm very much considering selling it to get the new Braille Plus 18, which runs Android, and can not only be used as a phone, but a powerful Braille display and note-taker as well. It would kill 2 birds with one stone--I would get my Braille fix, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting a stupid touch screen for quite awhile. Like you, synthesized speech doesn't do anything for me, and audio books may not be as bad as that, but I really don't care for them, either.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2013-01-06 06:33:05

Heh, I'm not reading anything else than audio books (and sometimes using a reader). Not because I can't read braille, more because it's damned annoying to read when you connect every letter/number with colors... big_smile Stupid grapheme synesthesia... I guess it's called... Lol!
Oh yeah, The Hills Have Eyes is ... Eeeewww!!! Only watched the second one, and that was enough! Lol!

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2013-01-06 14:27:17

AT Nocturnus
Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense and I didn't consider that imagination plays such a huge part. Very interesting. I was entirely to much focused on the exact representation of the visuals through audio but it makes perfect sense that this actually isn't important.

2013-01-06 22:03:50

@blackBird:

No problem.  Truly educating the sighted community has always been somewhat of a thrill, particularly since I never really saw myself as different during any part of my life; I just did things differently.  I hung out with sighted people throughout highschool and college.  Sometime between then and there I atended a center dedicated to the blind in hopes of learning a bit more about assisstive technology, and what I discovered there as far as people go was quite remarkable, and sad.  There wre quite a bit of blind and visualy impaired individuals who were just out of schools for the blind that had this belief that the world was ready for them, that technology would be handed to them whenever and wherever they needed it, and that employers wouldl take it upon themselves to help them every step of the way, but I suppose I'm getting way of topic here, so we'll leave that one for another day.@blackBird:

No problem.  Truly educating the sighted community has always been somewhat of a thrill, particularly since I never really saw myself as different during any part of my life; I just did things differently.  I hung out with sighted people throughout highschool and college.  Sometime between then and there I atended a center dedicated to the blind in hopes of learning a bit more about assisstive technology, and what I discovered there as far as people go was quite remarkable, and sad.  There wre quite a bit of blind and visualy impaired individuals who were just out of schools for the blind that had this belief that the world was ready for them, that technology would be handed to them whenever and wherever they needed it, and that employers wouldl take it upon themselves to help them every step of the way, but I suppose I'm getting way of topic here, so we'll leave that one for another day.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.