In 2008 a friend of me gave me an innocently looking book called "1001 Film du skal se før du dør", also known by its English title 1001 movies you must see before you die. At the time I had no idea what this would grow into.
I started reading the book (yes, I suppose it is an OCS thing with me, I started reading the phone book as a child...) and was amazed at how few of the older movies I knew and much less seen. A standard evening in front of the television is like: zap, has seen... zap, not that one again... zap, no way I am going to see that one... And here was this throve of unseen gems!
A year later or so I saw the movie "Julie and Julia" where the protagonist decides to try every recipe in the grand old tome. I was fascinated by the concept and the idea took root to do something similar.
January 2010 I made the decision that I was going to do it! I want to see and get all the movies in the book starting with the earliest movies. I want to build up this grand collection and extend my horizon into uncharted territory. It does not really matter if I will not finish, at the current rate it will take me 20 years to complete. The point is that I force myself into seeing movies I would not otherwise have seen and thus get an experience I would not otherwise have gotten.
Two and a half years later I am 114 movies down the list and it has definitely been worth it.
My son was born when I started this so I basically saw the movies when I was giving him milk in the mornings and in the evenings, 2 x 15 minutes a day! Also actually buying the DVD's means that I am not really in any rush.
A year ago I found out that there are other people out there doing something similar and blogging about it. I had not really thought of doing that, I am in it for the movies, but I found myself wanting to comment on all these blogs (which I to some extend have) and that is certainly okay by most, why not make my own blog?
There are some really good pages out there. Squish at Filmsquish.com makes really cool reviews with a cool rating system. Steve J Honeywell at 1001plus reviews with a really deep insight that I could never match. In fact there are many excellent reviewers and critics out there in the blogosphere.
So I have decided that I am not really aiming at rating the movies. Nor advising whether to see the movie or not. You may even be disappointed if you expect to find summary of the story.
Instead what I am going to write is simply my own comments.
If you feel like commenting on that, be my guest.
On the associated List page you can find the grand list including all the entries added by different volumes of the book. This is the English version list. The Danish list have a few additions that I will add in the bottom as they appear. I have rudely snatched the list from SJHoneywell without even asking (apologies).
I will be following two tracks: 1. commenting on the movies I am currently watching and 2. going back to review what I have been watching the past two and a half year.
Finally I would like to apologize for my crude language. As you may have guessed I am not a native English speaker.
Enjoy.
Thomas Sørensen
I started going through "1001 Movies" back in 2006, and for years, I felt very alone in my film journey. As such, I eventually languished and set aside the book for a year or two. The past six months, I've found so many people online who are also going through this book, it's been rejuvenating. Like you, I've also been going through "1001 Movies" chronologically. Like you, I also just started my blog here! Here's wishing you well in your journey!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much! Finding people doing the same thing and witing about it made me start my blog, though it took some convincing to be 100+ down the list and only then start to write about it. Some of those older movies can be a bit difficult to remember in detail.
DeleteDid you not have another blog before this one?
OK, try being 800+ down the list and only then start seriously writing about it! I am looking back at all the fantastic movies from this book that I've seen but haven't written about! It's scary!!!!
DeleteI did have another blog on another site, but for archival reasons, I decided to move my stuff over here. The other site had a nonexistent organizational system, and as the reviews started to pile up, I grew more unhappy with it. Plus it didn't allow people from other sites to comment; at least, not easily. So now, you'll see a lot of posts from me because I'm just copying and pasting my old reviews over to this site.
800! wow, I figure I will get there in lets see, 18 years!
DeleteI found that site and was looking in vain for a way to comment on the posts. I will look forward to finding them on the new site.
Good luck with this effort. I actually picked the book up the first year it came out, but I never actively tried to see the movies from it. Instead, I would go through it a few times a year checking off the ones I had now seen.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until another blogger pointed me towards the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Blog Club that I starting turning my attention to it. As it turns out, I had already seen 500 or so films from the book.
Starting in February of this year I actually put together a tracking sheet of all the films, their availability, and which ones I had seen. Since then I've been deliberately picking films from the list to watch, along with viewing regular films. I also review them periodically at my blog, although unlike SJHoneywell and Siochembio it is not focused only on films from that book. I use a "Movies - 1001 Movies" Label to specifically indicate those.
Thank you. I read some of the stuff on your blog, it is good stuff. With so many excellent blogs around it is daunting to make my own.
DeleteI find that having to write something about a movie changes the viewing experience. I pay a lot more attention to detail now and so get more out of the movie. That I think is reward in itself, even if my comments turn crap.
Thank you.
DeleteAs you said, the writing of the reviews on a blog is sometimes more for yourself than it is for others.