A YEAR OF MOVIES

If you follow me at all on Twitter, you might have noticed that lately I've talked about watching movies this year. I love movies. I've loved them ever since I was a kid. I started collecting VHS copies of movies years ago, and as time and technology advanced, I switched over to DVDs. I haven't gone over to Blu-ray (yet), but perhaps someday...

Anyways, back to "A Year of Movies".

My goal: to FINISH at least one movie every day for the entire year.

I say 'finish' because due to my odd work and sleep cycles, and my day-job as a Stay-at-Home Dad, it's hard to watch an entire movie start-to-finish in one day. However, I'm usually able to start a movie before I head off to bed for my first 'nap' before work, and finish the movie (the following day) after I'm home from work and awake from my second 'nap'. Occasionally, as you'll see, I am able to watch a second (or third) movie while I'm exercising or cleaning the house during the day (with DVD and VHS players in multiple rooms of the house it's quite easy to movie either the DVD or VHS movie around with me), but as I've said, I want to finish at least one movie every day from 1/1/2010 to 12/31/2010.

What's the point of watching all these movies? Besides the fact I love movies...?

Well, as I said, I own a lot of movies, and my wife suggested to me near the end of last year that if I were going to own a lot of movies, perhaps I should actually watch them. Good point!

Second, there are some movies I've meant to watch but for one reason or another I haven't and so I'm trying on a number of new directors, genres, etc in this pursuit of a Year of Movies. Also, my friends have from time to time suggested certain movies to me, and this year, I'm intent on trying to watch most of them.

Third, I don't watch a lot of general TV. I'm usually trying to sleep while prime-time TV is on and I don't watch much daytime TV--I'm not into daytime talk shows or soap operas--so having a movie on while I work around the house is my little entertainment.

Fourth, I'd love to write spec scripts and watching movies, lots of good movies, I think, is a good way to study movies. I have the rough draft of a low-budget indie script done for myself and a few of my friends who want to help me to make a movie later this year. As that develops, I'll discuss it here.

Finally, I just want to know if I can do it. There are some days when I really don't feel like watching another movie, but I stubbornly search out for a movie that changes my mind. After watching these movies, I make little notes about each--I'm not a film critic--rather, I generally look at whether the movie worked for me in the way it was intended. Was the comedy funny? Did the drama make me stop and think, then or later? Was I wowed by the action or scared by the horror? Also, I like being entertained.

In my next post, I'll start with the first week of 2010. As the year progresses, I'll attempt to catch up my posts to the current week. As of today, 3/2/2010, the 61st day of this year, I've watched 102 movies, finishing at least one per day.

Whew.