StoneKeeper's Summer Movie Guessing Game: I recommend THIS Movie #1182 [The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) Winner: Allaby]

Ok, there's a bit to unpack here.

I haven't said you can't use The 1 Second Film. I guess I just didn't think it was that big a deal. Usually when we have a round and someone posts a guess on the wrong side of the 3500 line, the host just lets the player know, the player usually says “oops, my bad” and deletes the guess and the game goes on. I didn't think this would be any different. I was not deliberately ignoring/snubbing you. It's just that I didn't think that guess fit for this round, I let you know that, I didn't expect it would be a big deal, and people were posting guesses so I went ahead and started adding hints for them. This is how it usually goes. I hadn't expected we were going to have a big debate about it. But by the time I realized it was going to be an issue, I had already posted two or three hints and we were clearly well beyond the range at which The 1-Second Film would fit in. At that point it was just too late to do anything about it.

About hownos and his guess, The Train, the difference there is that his guess didn't contradict anything about this round. Plus it's not against the rules to guess movies that have been used before. If it was, we would all have to check nyctc7's list thread before making each and every guess, and that's just not reasonable.

I'm sorry that I stepped on your toes; I honestly didn't mean to and didn't expect it was going to be a big deal at all. No offense intended.

"I would’ve appreciated a reply before you went with other guesses and wait for a reply from me, but that’s okay, it’s done."

I didn't want to hold up the game. If I had realized it was going to be a big deal, I might have tried to work with you on it, but again I just thought it would be another of those little things where someone posts something on the wrong side of the 3500 line, the host lets them know and the game goes on. In the meantime people were posting guesses and I didn't want to hold them up over something I didn't expect was going to be a problem. By the time I realized it would be a problem, it was too late. And I guess I also thought you would meet me halfway here; I didn’t think you would be so committed to this one particular guess.

Now, about The 1 Second Film itself. Ok, so I’m looking at its IMDb page and trying to understand what this is about. Turns out it’s a production which hasn’t come out yet, which is why it has no date or votes. Several games back, TalkinPikchorBox guessed the movie Mulan (2020) and I ruled it inadmissible on the grounds that it hasn’t come out yet. But I guess this isn’t a hard and fast rule. It’s a bit of an oddity, but technically there’s no actual rule against it. I guess if someone really wants to use it, there’s nothing wrong with that.

So if you want to use it, go ahead and use it. I don’t have a problem with that in itself.

But it is a bit difficult sometimes. I use a very wide range of movies. And some movies I’ve used fit with nothing here, unless I go with, like, “Made on Earth”. I can’t always say USA, because the majority of films I’ve used aren’t from the USA. I’ve used 75 films so far, I keep a list, and only 23 of those were from the USA. I can’t always say they’re in English, because they aren’t always. Maybe half, maybe a bit less than half of my movies have been in English. Sometimes they’re Japanese, or Russian, or Spanish, or Hindi, etc. I can’t always say the director has a writing credit, because they don’t always. I can’t always say color, because I often use black and white movies.

I’m not saying this movie is an illegitimate choice, or a bad one, but I think it reflects a view which thinks “easy hint: USA/English” and the like which presupposes a relatively narrow range of movies. Not everyone is American, in fact the US is only 5% of the world’s population, and some people have wider horizons. There are a few members here (you aren’t one of them, as far as I know, so don’t take this as a criticism of you) who seem to think that the edges of civilization are the east and west coasts of the United States, and anything beyond that is inherently obscure, boring and not worth seeing and only a “snob” would want to see it (someone here called me that recently and I’m still irritated over it; that I’m supposedly a “snob” because I don’t hold to the narrow-minded colonial attitude that the world ends at the American coastlines and the Rio Grande, and beyond that is just terra incognita and “here there be dragons”). If I use a black and white movie from Japan, which I have several times, it doesn’t fit into these “easy hints: USA, English, color” parameters. I’m not even thrilled with the use of the word “foreign”, because it seems to posit that MovieChat is part of American territory rather than part of the global internet where someone could just as well be posting from Sweden, Nigeria or Indonesia.

Well, I didn’t mean to go on and on. Sorry, I got annoyed all over again at the “snob” thing. Not your fault, you’re not the one who called me that.

Anyway, to sum up, I’m not inherently against you using The 1 Second Film; the reason I ruled it out this time was because this was a 3500 round, and the reason I moved along after that was because I didn’t expect it to be a big deal. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding and for stepping on your toes and making you feel snubbed; it honestly wasn’t my intention. I thought it was all just par for the course.