INTRODUCTION
Friends, welcome to my mission:
I’m embarking on a journey. One could expect it to be filled with laughs, stress, maybe even some tears and lots of microwavable popcorn. A self-invoked challenge to watch the 100 Best Movies of All Time.
Let me clue you in on how the idea started cause I’m no movie aficionado. Would I like to think I’m a cut-above the Step Up quadrilogy? Sure, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that, as of now, my guilty pleasure movie is Girl Next Door (think Elisha Cutbert as Emile Hirsch’s love interest. Not Hugh Hefner’s series on E!)
Much to my surprise, I have one person in particular to thank for this idea... Donald Trump. i know, i know. Pity accepted; free drinks preferred. [This is the only time in my blog series I'll get political. Scout's Honor]. In response to a speech Trump made during his run for the GOP nomination, a colleague of mine had posted the famous speech from Charlie Chaplin's film "The Great Dictator" (1940) on Facebook. After watching that film clip, three times in a row no less, I realized then how my life was just a series of one bad Netflix movie after another, interjected by the occasional TV series love-affair (like my embarrassing 5-day binge of House of Cards, Season 3. Glad we got that out in the open). In fact on any given night, post yoga and dinner, you could find me scrolling through the various Roku services with the ambivalence to rival a twenty-something-year-old swiping through Tinder. Is that the analogy of our generation – god, I hope not. I was letting quality be sacrificed for convenience. And I desperately wanted to change that.
Still, I can’t say this is against the norm for me.
To know me in a nutshell is to understand I hate complacency. This is my vice. A weird characteristic I had to keep closeted while dating as long as possible. I’m a self-admitted challenge setter/seeker like it’s coded into my DNA or something. Let me give you an example: for “fun”, I committed the month of March to only parallel parking or combat/back-in parking (which I hadn’t attempted, no joke, since passing my driver’s test 8 years ago). THIS IS WHAT I DO FOR FUN and yet somehow I’m not single #miraclesdoexist
Relax, this blog isn’t taking a turn towards self-righteousness, juice-cleanse preach.
I’ve simply decided to cede to my internal Tracy Flick and cinematography is my Election...Chalk it up; that’s my first movie reference of the blog.
Anyways, back to the good stuff.
This journey is a marathon, not a sprint. I’m giving myself two years to watch 100 movies. Oh, yeah. Did I not mention that before?
[queue the eye rolls]
Hear me out though- 2 years, that is 730 days. We’re looking at essentially one movie a week. Since, I’d like to believe I have a life beyond a television screen and, without a doubt, a job with a busy season, 2 years is realistic. Besides, I can’t imagine my standing subscription services’ have a foreign section much more robust than Downtown Abbey and they probably categorize the original Bring It On as a classic. I am on the hunt to retrieve quality versions of all 100 films.
The Challenge will officially start this coming weekend and I’m talking a big game so here’s the 9 Commandments I’ll be living by:
Thou must watch movies without interruption (no fast forwarding, skipping, etc.)
In order to preserve the movie’s integrity, watching cannot be segmented. In other words, I cannot start a movie on Sunday night and finish it on Wednesday.
Movie watching-companionship is allowed so long as not distracting
All cellphones must be shut down for the duration of the film
Subtitles permitted
Whenever the opportunity allows it, movies will be watched from my projector set-up… if you saw my actual TV, this would make sense.
Movies must be watched on a worthy device. Cellphones or iPads not allowed; computers not preferred.
No specific movie order is required
So, I guess the only thing left to do at this point is say: welcome to my living room
…Just be happy to this isn’t a GoFundMe Page, am I right.
(Wanna see the list and hear the nitty-gritty details behind narrowing down the top 100? It wasn’t easy. Read about it Here.)