Ok, folks. Let's talk about movies. We used to have the glory days of The Screening Room, a forum where like-minded movie fans got together to watch a film, goof around in the chat and generally have a gay old time. However, for those of us in incompatible time zones it was more of a matter of caffeine and endurance to stay up for these things, great fun though they were.
In a noble attempt to resurrect the good times, Sparklykiss started up The Screening Room Withdrawl Group on a Sunday and good times were had by all. Me discovering the utter delight and charm of The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking, among them. The problem was that in order to chat we had agreed to meet on the Screened Community chatroom on Steam. Not everyone is a Steam user, or wants to be. And, of course, real life got in the way. Work commitments, early mornings, being on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAMN WORLD AS EACH OTHER has its own set of problems.
After watching the surreal horror of Howard The Duck together, myself and the sublime Christina hatched a plan that the current state of affairs is simply unacceptable. We need ourselves a Screening Room. It's that simple. We need a regular hang-out where movie folks gather to watch a movie together and chat. This is site about movies and TV. It has a rich community of film lovers. I hope you agree that this would be a VERY GOOD THING to have.
So here is a proposal. Or rather, a series of proposals.
1: The Screening Room v2.0 meets together on a suitable day of the week. Sunday seems a likely canditate as most people won't have work or school on that day. The time would have to be suitable for everyone, regardless of time zone. Our suggestion is 8pm GMT (12pm PST, 3pm EST). Unfortunately, for our friends in Australia this would be 7am. Sorry!. Any other alternatives are welcome!
2: The movie (or even TV show) is available on streaming via Netflix or LOVEFiLM or is at least easily available to the majority of participants. The weirder, the better. Ideally, it would be something that none of us have seen before. In my experience, a really shitty movie is much more fun to watch communally than a bona-fide classic.
3: We need a service in which to chat. Out there somewhere there has to be a free, easy to use chatroom that doesn't require registration. Just turn up, pick a username and get chatting. Anyone out there have any ideas?
4: This thing needs to be a THING. Something with a name. My suggestion of "The Sunday Screening Room" is, well... crap. We need YOU to conjure up something better!
5: A proposal that PEOPLE ACTUALLY TURN UP THIS TIME. The Withdrawl Group was great, but the number of people on there could easily have been counted on the fingers on one hand. Not cool, people. Not cool. Of course, it goes without saying that this shouldn't just be open to Screened users, but all users across the whole Whiskey Media family of sites.
So, there it is. What do you think? Are you interested? Please throw in any thoughts or ideas below and let's make this happen!
