Movie Challenge

Before I met Antoine, when I was a single gal, I was known for being a bit of a movie freak. It was not uncommon for me to watch 4 to 6 movies a week. Hell, before I had two jobs I'd walk out of the public library with a stack of 8 to 10 movies. And then I would spend my weekend glued to the tv, watching said movies. For Christmas and my birthday, there were always movies on my wishlist. My movie selection became so vast that friends started to refer to me as their own personal Blockbuster. And that made me strangely happy! I liked being the girl that watched movies all the time...it was my thing!

Fast forward to a couple years later, now I'm blissfully in love and working the hours away at two jobs. Love and work takes up a great deal of time, but add in a house, three cats and a puppy and you're looking at very little free time. Nowadays our great collection of movies only collects dust. We're much more prone to watch tv series since they're quicker and generally require less focus, especially when we watch Friends or Seinfeld; tv shows that we've watched a million times and can practically recite. And while I like this (watching tv series) I've been feeling like our dvd collection is being neglected.

Then, some time ago I was reading one of the blogs I stalk and I saw this. What a genius idea! Like the grumbles family we do not have cable, nor do we have netflix. Instead we survive on illegal downloading and a hoard of tv series box sets. And instead of a movie closet we have a built-in movie shelf.

Our built-in shelving. Notice, how we cannot fit anymore movies in if we wanted...the thing is packed!

Immediately, after reading the grumbles' post I thought, "This would be a great way to reconnect with film". And a great way for Antoine to see all the movies that I love and all the ones that I say, "You've NEVER seen that?!?" to when I ask if he's seen a movie!

Other pluses to a movie challenge:

• It's free entertainment...it gives us something to do that costs zero money and requires zero thought or effort.
• I'll get to see some movies I've never seen (i.e. some of Antoine's movies), and ones I haven't seen in a while.
  
• Antoine will get to see a ton of movies he's never seen, some of which are my absolute favorites.
• We can weed out any movies that both of us cannot stand. Some of the dvds Antoine bought before we were together and he's never even watched them.
• I get to watch (and laugh) as Antoine suffers through a slew of musicals, foreign films and animated cult classics, including my childhood favorite...My Little Pony: the Movie!!!!!

Facts behind the clusterf#@k movie challenge:

• There are 366 movies on 363 dvds (I have a couple of those dvds with two movies on them)
• This only includes our dvd collection, not our tv series, blue-ray, or vhs collections (which are housed on separate shelving)
• The dvds are arranged alphabetically (starting with numbers) and are not subdivided by genre
• The movies must be watched in order.
• No movies can be skipped, even if we have recently watched them (hehehe, I don't think Antoine's looking forward to watching the first five Harry Potters in a row, again!!).
  
• 75 to 90% of the movies were originally mine

Along the way I'll post random thoughts about the movie challenge and keep you posted with our progress. I may even discuss a movie or two that inspires, intrigues, or nauseates me...who knows!

To view the complete list of films in our movie challenge check out the "Movie Challenge" tab just under the Wonderous Clusterf#@k header. I'll be crossing off movies as we watch them. Also, I've added a little thing-a-ma-bob near the top on the right hand side that lists the next 6 movies on the list.