The "Put Your Phone in Another Room" Challenge
An embarrassing confession is made. Plus: A handpicked selection of bargains from our favorite boutique labels’ annual Spring sales.
Welcome to Tracking Noise. We had to take a week off to take care of some work stuff but now we’re back… and we have something shameful to confess. But first —
If you’ve been with us since Day One, you know we love ranting about how physical media can literally change the way you experience a work of art. For example, there are classic albums we’ve tried listening to on Spotify that we didn’t quite “get” until we listened to them on vinyl. And while we’re deeply aware that the type of guy who says things like “you haven’t really experienced an album until you’ve listened to it on vinyl” has become an embarrassing cliche, there’s also a degree of truth to it. Putting on a record (or popping a VHS tape into a VCR) demands something from the listener (or viewer) beyond merely clicking a button or tapping a screen. There’s an intention behind it and a ritualistic aspect to it that engages you on a deeper level, creating a tangible connection with the art you’re consuming that digital distribution methods simply cannot compete with.
The key word is intention. It’s one of those New Age Millennial buzzwords that — like our friend Cringe Vinyl Guy — has acquired some negative cultural baggage over the years. But as St. Augustine once said, “Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.” Maybe our hunger for things like “intentionality” is actually just an inverse reaction to the passive consumerism that’s been foisted upon us by the Digital Age. We’re constantly being “served up” or “spoon-fed” content by algorithms that decide for us what we ought to be looking at, so it can feel like a minor act of rebellion when we actually choose what we want to watch.
But even though we’re consciously aware of this fact, there’s still the issue of what to do about our phones. Though it pains us to admit it, resisting the urge to look at them while we’re watching a movie at home — even for true-blue cinephiles like ourselves — is easier said than done. Plenty of times we’ve sat down with the full intention of watching a cinematic masterpiece we’ve never seen before, and within 20 minutes we’re Googling the film’s Wikipedia page or IMDb-ing some random character actor we recognized, only to look up and realize we’ve missed a huge chunk of the actual movie. Humiliating, we know. And clearly we’re not the only ones who struggle with this. It’s impossible to go to a theater these days without some torched Boomer whipping out their phone to check their text messages mid-movie with their screen set to maximum brightness.
Unfortunately, the problem of phone usage in movie theaters is beyond our control, and it may be here to stay if the footage from The Minecraft Movie’s opening weekend screenings is any indication. But real change begins with us, and what we do with our phones in the privacy of our homes is a different story. So we’d like to pose a challenge to ourselves — as well as to you, the reader — that might help liberate us from the urge to glance at our phones while watching a movie, and it goes something like this…
The next time you’re about to watch a movie, before you press play, set your phone to “do not disturb” and simply… put it in another room. Ideally, it should be far enough away that you’re not tempted to get up and check it halfway through the movie. The goal is to make it through an entire film without looking at it once.
We tried this technique recently while working our way through Radiance’s Shinobi box set — which we’d highly recommend to anyone who enjoyed FX’s Shōgun miniseries from last year — and the experience was eye-opening to say the least. Untethering ourselves in this way felt terrifying and unnatural at first. Our brain started playing tricks on us with thoughts like: “But what if a friend or loved one gets into a horrible car accident and needs me to rush them to the hospital but I don’t see the texts because I’m watching an old Japanese ninja movie?” But these were simply the deranged thoughts of a dopamine-addicted mind resisting the urge to be present. Not only did our friends and loved ones survive the experience unscathed, but we enjoyed those films way more than we would have if we’d been on our phones the entire time.
Studies have shown that even the mere presence of a smartphone is enough to affect your brain’s cognitive capacity, so the easiest way to break the spell is to place them far enough out of reach that our inherent laziness and unwillingness to get up off the couch outweighs our desire to look at them. And while this news may shock you, this technique doesn’t only apply to watching movies. We’ve tried it while listening to music, writing, exercising, even going for a walk around the neighborhood (which was by far the most challenging)… and the results were the same. Once you get over that initial feeling of FOMO, what awaits you on the other side is a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that’s hard to come by in our always-connected world.
The only activity this challenge does not apply to is watching TV. This may seem hypocritical, but in our minds, TV has always been a passive medium that was meant to be consumed while performing other household activities, like folding laundry or eating dinner. Therefore, we think it’s totally fine to be on your phone while you’re watching The Traitors UK: Season Two on Peacock (which we also highly recommend).
But movies are, and always have been, a different beast. At their best, they should feel transportive, more like dreams than reality. And you wouldn’t blink twice if someone told you not to sleep with your phone in the bedroom, would you? So even if you’re sick of reading think piece after think piece about how harmful our smartphones are and how they’ve destroyed our attention spans and blah blah blah… just give it a try this one time. For us. We guarantee you won’t regret it. And who knows? Maybe you’ll even make it a regular part of your physical media-enjoying routine.
Speaking of physical media, a few of our favorite boutique labels are having their annual Spring sales this week and we’ve combed through their extensive catalogs to handpick some of the best deals for you. Get ‘em while they’re hot!
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— Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol and Twisting the Knife: Four Films by Claude Chabrol ($25 each, Blu-ray)
We’ve had our eyes on these box sets for a while now, and at this price it’s finally time to pull the trigger. Claude Chabrol is one of the French New Wave filmmakers we’re least familiar with, but he was known for using genre films to explore the dark side of human nature which sounds right up our alley.
— The Stuff ($17, Blu-ray)
Larry Cohen’s 80s B-movie satire about capitalism, diet culture, processed foods, and how the things we consume may actually be consuming us. A silly-but-fun movie with some cool practical VFX that feels alarmingly prescient considering that invisible microplastics have been quietly infiltrating our food supply for decades.
— The Day of the Locust ($20, Blu-ray)
We’ve never seen this one, but it’s been on our watchlist for a while now considering that A) it’s set during Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” and B) the character played by Donald Sutherland is literally named Homer Simpson. It was directed by John Schlesinger (Marathon Man) who re-teamed with screenwriter Waldo Salt, his collaborator on Midnight Cowboy, to adapt the classic novel by Nathanael West and features cinematography by legendary DP Conrad Hall.
KINO LORBER
— Play Misty For Me ($17.99, 4K UHD + Blu-ray)
A precursor to films like Fatal Attraction, this was Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut and he stars alongside a young Jessica Walter (aka the mom from Arrested Development) as the psychotic ex-girlfriend who terrorizes him and everyone in his life after he tries to break things off.
— Sea of Love ($17.99, 4K UHD + Blu-ray)
A precursor to films like Basic Instinct, this lesser-known entry in the 80s erotic thriller genre stars Al Pacino as a serial killer-tracking cop who gets involved with a female suspect (played by Ellen Barkin), despite the fact that there is hard evidence linking her to the murders.
— Odds Against Tomorrow ($9.99, Blu-ray)
The first film noir to feature a black protagonist, this big-heist-gone-wrong film stars Harry Belafonte (singer of “Jump in the Line,” otherwise known as the song from the end of Beetlejuice) and deals with race in a way that still packs a mean punch nearly 70 years after it was made.
— Dawson City: Frozen Time ($9.99, Blu-ray)
One of our favorite documentaries of all time, it uses footage from silent films that had been buried underground for years and recently unearthed to tell the story of a small town that sprang up and flourished during the Gold Rush and then, much like the films themselves, gradually faded from memory. Hauntingly beautiful.
INDICATOR / POWERHOUSE
Technically, this is a UK label, so even though their films are on sale, many of them are Region B, meaning they can’t be played in the U.S. That said, a handful of their releases are Region Free, and since they’re offering a “4 for £20” deal, we did the work for you and highlighted our four favorites. If you buy all four together, it comes out to around $6 a movie, which is almost too good to pass up.
An 80s Hitchcock homage and one of our favorite Brian De Palma movies, and as we learned in our interview with Alex Ross Perry, it also features the first footage of a video store to appear in a major motion picture.
One of our favorite rom-coms that also features some of the most hilariously honest depictions of post-break-up male behavior ever captured on film.
One of Hal Ashby’s best movies, with one of Robert Towne’s greatest screenplays and one of Jack Nicholson’s finest performances. When people talk about their favorite movies from the 70s, this is usually at or near the top of the list. An all-timer.
— Hardcore
A film about one of the worst things that could happen to a dad in the 80s: finding out your daughter had sex. Featuring a powerful performance from George C. Scott, a trippy score by Jack Nitzsche, and one of the greatest taglines ever — “Oh my God, that’s my daughter.”
That’s all for this week. See you next time.
— MS