365 Films A Year!

Welcome, one and all to the “365 Films A Year!” project.

The big idea: I will watch a movie I have never seen before every day in 2006. And I will comment on them here, allowing anyone interested to follow my progress, read my thoughts and contribute their own.

The genesis of this concept comes from four major factors. First, I had been looking for a writing project that would be a bit more personal and specific to me and my tastes than the work I do for theLogBook.com. (Not that the work I do there doesn’t reflect my tastes, just that it only reflects a portion of them.) Secondly, I have recently become interested in Asian Cinema. At first, I thought that a weekly review of one of the films in my rapidly growing collection was the way to go. But then the third factor sprang up: visitors for the holidays. This required me to basically straighten up the place. It was while I was cleaning and re-organizing my DVD collection that I came face to face with the issue of how many freakin’ movies I owned that I had never bothered to see. (And this was before I got my latest batch of 16 Asian movies in the mail!) I counted sixty-three films in DVDs alone. (I’m frightened to check out the VHS tapes.) The last factor that led to the Blog as it now stands is the demise of the Media Play store chain. That led to me adding even more movies to my collection than I already had.

So, I decided I needed to march my way through these unwatched films. And the only way to make sure I kept at it was to give it a structure. So I combined my need to watch my unseen films with the idea of a film Blog and “365 Films A Year!” was born.

Now, the rules. Movies only, not TV show episodes. However, TV movies do count, so a TV show pilot that was shot as a TV movie (like The Incredible Hulk) could get in. I’m also being realistic about my ability to watch full-length films every day, so I’m including shorts (either theatrical shorts or stuff like Atom films).

All manner of films are fair game. I’ve got Sci-Fi, comedy, anime, documentaries and even some “Skinemax”-type films. (Shhhhhh!) Nothing is out of bounds. I’ll even borrow films from my mother that she’s wanted me to watch for years.

The most important part is that I haven’t seen the films before. A clip or two or a couple of minutes caught on TV wouldn’t be a disqualifier, but if I’ve seen practically every part of a film without ever sitting down to watch it straight through (which is the case for me with Troy, for instance), it’s out.

And given the vagueries of the Internet, I’m not promising to post every day, but I will comment on every film I see.

It all kicks off later today with the viewing of my “great unwatched film”: Unbreakable (2000). I’ve owned it practically since it came out on DVD and many people have said I’ll like it, but it just sits there. It’s even become something of an in-joke with my brother, who will occasionally just ask “Seen Unbreakable yet?”. So that’s the first one I’ll put to bed.

I haven’t yet come up with a formula for deciding what film to watch next, so I’ll just grab one at random for a while and see what happens.

I think this will be an interesting project. I hope others find it at least minorly entertaining.

Join me, won’t you?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2006 at 4:43 pm and is filed under 365 Films. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.