Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Year in Review -- Movies

Since keeping stats on the games I'd played in 2005 had proven somewhat interesting (to me, anyway), I decided in 2006 to also track the movies I watched. After all, I know I see a lot of movies, but I wanted to find out how much was "a lot."

I didn't count movies made originally for television or DVD. I didn't count any movies I didn't actually sit down and watch; for example, I'll often turn on the commentary track to a DVD and leave it running as I do other stuff about the apartment.

I was a little surprised to find out I didn't see as many movies in a year as I might have guessed. At 54 total, I barely topped a one-a-week average. I won't inflict the list itself on you, since it turns out you could nearly build that list yourself -- I reviewed most of the movies I saw right here on my blog. But there were a few interesting stats I uncovered.

I didn't see a single movie more than once all year long. Every one of the 54 was a one-time-only affair.

I go out to the movie theater far more than I watch movies on DVD at home (or at other people's homes) -- all but 10 of the films were out at the theater. From this, I conclude two things: 1) I'm apparently not really as pissed-off at the rudeness of other people and the general movie-going experience as I claim to be; 2) When I watch DVDs at home, I'm usually watching TV shows on DVD, not movies.

And one more thing I learned: reviewing one's personal top 100 movie list is a pretty serious proposition. Over the last year, as I've had occasions to work some new films onto the list (like The Prestige and Little Miss Sunshine), I've found a few areas on my Top 100 list where I've thought, "gee, that's not quite right." And for a while, I thought to myself, "you know, I'd really just like to watch every movie on this list again and get a fresh feel for if I've ranked it in the right place." But now I'm thinking, "damn, that's 100 movies. And I barely watched half that in all of 2006." So who knows if that project will get done any time soon?

But one thing's for sure. I now understand even less what people could be the target of that old slogan "If You See Only One Movie This Year..." Who the hell could that possibly be?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I, too, recently noticed that most of my DVD purchases are for TV series box sets.

and I think the "one movie a year" thing is supposed to be like "if you are going to see a movie in the theatre only once a year" which I always thought was a pretty pompous/arrogant/jerky thing to add to the advertising. like they are calling you a cheap-o or insulting you for not seeing enough movies. makes me feel like the geico caveman.

the mole