200 Movie Challenge: Summer Update

Six months ago, the challenge began.  Could I watch 200 movies in 365 days?  It averages out to about 4 movies a week, or 16 movies a month.  Here we find ourselves at the halfway point, and one question is looming:

Why do hot-dogs come in packages of 10 while buns come in packages of 8?

Once we realize that the answer to that question has more to do with shelf-space and convenience of packaging, we can move on to this more meaty issue:

Will I make it to 200 movies before year-end?

That’s a very good question.  If I continue at my current pace, there’s no way.  If, however, I make some changes, my goal is still quite reachable.

I find myself, on this balmy June day contemplating why I’ve only watched 20-something movies so far this year.  Before I outline my new plan, allow me to point out some things that you may or may not already know.

First, it’s a lot of work writing reviews–If you haven’t noticed, I try quite vigorously to make the tone of my reviews match or at least compliment the film I am reviewing.  I’ve set some fairly unrealistic expectations on myself and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to motivate myself to reach those standards.

Secondly, it’s a lot of work tracking down decent movie posters, especially for the less mainstream movies that I do so enjoy watching.  Yeah, I hear ya, just use google images and pull up the first one that comes up, right?  Well, it’s not always that easy.  There are a lot of really bad quality scans of movie posters hanging around out there, and finding one that isn’t watermarked or of low quality can take some time.

Thirdly, images don’t edit themselves.  There’s no doubt that you have noticed the “hidden” eggs in the screenshots from each movie I’ve reviewed to date.  Admittedly, my skills as an image editor are by no means of professional quality; my edits are often quite noticeable, but they do take time.  I have to find a usable image from the movie, think of some connection, then paint in elements from either other found pictures or from elements created from scratch.

When I look at my stats, I see that each review brings in somewhere around, at most, 6 hits.  Of those 6 people visiting my reviews, one person has consistently left comments–usually pointing out the “egg.”  That all adds up to a great deal of effort for very little payoff.  While appreciate those of you who do regularly check my blog, I just don’t feel like I’m getting my work’s worth out of posting such detailed reviews.  I end up dreading the process of writing the reviews, so I put off watching the movies.  As you read this, I am thinking about the last two movies I watched –2 weeks ago.  I still haven’t written any reviews for them, because I just don’t have the energy.

There are some other factors also contributing to my unproductive movie watching.  Namely, DSL.  Starting in February, I got high-speed internet for the first time in my house.  Surfing the web has seriously been eating into my movie watching time, and I’m going to have to make myself cut back.

Another factor that you might not know about is that since all the television networks switched over to digital signals, we’ve acquired a channel that specializes in catering to my soft-spot–cheesy old movies.  Wait!?!  But watching old movies should fit right into the challenge! Right?!?  If only I were that sensible.  Early on, I decided that my challenge would only include movies I could watch without commercial interruption.  In reality, I’ve watched many more movies this year than what my blog reflects.  I don’t plan on dropping that criterion.

Are you still reading?  Wow, thanks for your devotion!

So, what’s going to change?  I’ve developed a system that I believe will help to rate the movies I watch in a way that will give you, the reader/watcher, the information you need to decide if the movie I watched is something you might be interested in.  Because of the nature of many of the movies I watch, a simple “star” system just won’t do the job.  I’m going to rate movies based on these criteria:

Audience (1=Mainstream 10=”Cult”):

Tone(1=Drama 10=Comedy):

Kid safe? (Yes or No)

Reminds me of: name of other movie

Did I like it? (0=”Not at all” 10=”I want it to have my children”)

I’m going to try to make it a habit to watch several movies a week, and post a summary post once a week listing the movies I watched and displaying the above notes on them.  I may adjust the criteria slightly until I get everything worked out fully, but that’s the basic plan.  Hopefully, these changes will help me along my way to meeting my self-imposed challenge.  Wish me luck!