Every film nerd out there wants to have his or her theories about movies saved for everyone to see. The internet teems with amateur reviewers voicing opinions on cinema. I’m one of those people. I’ve left comments and reviews on various sites, thinking I could do the reviewer’s job as well as anyone. After some pitches and ideas, I came up with the idea to watch 500 films in one year, filling up my Netflix queue on January 1 and then emptying it by December 31. Even for someone with obsessive behavior, I soon experienced the difficulty in executing my ideas. I had to learn the rhythms of Netflix’s shipping and receiving days in order to get the films at home in time. If I missed even a day, I fell behind in the pace to finish on time.
Out in the real world, I missed bands I wanted to see and parties I wanted to attend in order to finish on time. I never really noticed how much time I could spend in front of the TV as I did this year. At first, it didn’t seem like much: 10 movies a week for a year. But the reality was much more grinding. My social life took a serious hit as I had to go home early to watch some DVD so I could get it in the mail the next day and have it replaced by the weekend. Many Sundays were spent in four DVD marathons trying to finish a batch.
All totaled, I spent over a month in front of the tube, one movie at a time. Considering I also spent eight months sleeping and being at work, this was one fourth of my personal time. I’ll probably still watch around 200 films next year, a much more reasonable pace of 4 DVDs per week, but I’m looking forward to the end of the project and moving on to new things next year.
What’s next for me? Santa brought me the Grand Theft Auto box set for Christmas. My PS2 has been little more than a DVD player all year long. I played very few videogames all year. I need a little geek time for myself.
The other aspect of my life that changed greatly was that I all but quit reading books this year. In 2005, I went through two or three books per month. This year, I read only five or six books total. While I’m not going to do something so radical as a Read 100 type project, I do hope to read a book a week for the year.