A New Mission

Back in 2010, I bought a book. It was a big book and I had no real purpose for buying such a large book, but there was a check list in the first few pages that I was desperate to put a pen to. I remember sitting on a sailing boat, pen in hand ticking as many boxes as I could but shortly became demoralised at how few that actually was. Disappointed, the book ended up on a shelf collecting dust. However, when I moved house last summer, it was rediscovered and much to my wife's frustration, a new mission came with it.

That book was, of course, '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die', the check list of all of the movies it contained which defeated me back in 2010 still bearing my few ticks and looking hauntingly incomplete. The book is frivolously and unnecessarily updated with a new edition every year with films being removed and added to the list, and as such, has actually hosted closer to 1200 films if we count all additions and removals. 

That is a lot of films to watch. In fact, if you had all of the films and watched one a day, it would take you close to three and a half years to get through them all. That being said, many have tried and then help one another in trying to complete the list. Me? I took the list of all films that have ever been on the list (the full 1211 at time of writing) and put them in a spreadsheet. A few colour coded rules later and my checklist has been upgraded from some sad pen marks in a book to a system that is mobile, pretty and, as basic as it is, keeps track of where films can be watched. 

While I want to complete the list, I'm not in any rush to work through it. I'm currently at 26% complete at 319 films, but some are harder to locate than others. But why tell you all of this? I'm planning to write something short about films of note, the ones that you may not have seen or even heard of, and hopefully encourage you to expand your cinematic horizon without having to work through 1200 films. I've made a page here where you can see anything I have already reviewed from the list and these new posts.

The first post is coming soon, but in the meantime, happy film watching!