Friday, July 18, 2008

Film Ignorance Roundup: Month #1

Film Ignorance Entries: 9 (7 Regular, 1 Addendum, 1 Guest Blogger)
Ratings Break Down:
Best. Film. Ever.: 3
Yep, It's a Classic: 2
A Good Movie: 1
Meh: 1
But...This Movie Sucks: 1
Highest Ignorance Rating: It's a Wonderful Life (100%)
Lowest Ignorance Rating: Laura (18%)
Favorite Movie: It's a Wonderful Life
Least Favorite Movie: Way Out West
Milestones Reached: None

I've been doing this Film Ignorance thing for about a month now, so I thought I'd do a breakdown of what's happened so far, if any of you are tagging along. The goal was to watch one film a week, and I got 7 entries from my list in, in addition to one Addendum (Our Man in Havana) and a guest entry (Film for the Soul weighed in on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid).

I do have a slight confession: I've actually done considerably more than seven entries, but posting more than 2 a week would just be white noise on the site, and I know I won't keep up this pace, so I'm stockpiling entries for when the semester starts and I have to teach, study and take exams.

The selection was actually pretty good for this month - you can see that of my 8 entries, 5 of them received Yep, It's a Classic or Best. Film. Ever. If this keeps up, I will enjoy this project more than I had originally imagined.

My main goal with this post was to let you guys know what this all is moving towards. My original goal was simply to watch a great deal of movies and improve my cred, but now I've decided I'm moving towards the creation of three lists.

The first will be my Top 100 films of all time. By the time the project is over, I will have watched approximately 2000 movies, and so the creation of my list will involve choosing the top 5% of all the films I've seen. And I have a much harder job than the AFI: while they ignore both foreign language films and anything made since 1980, I'll have to consider and The Seventh SealChildren of Men right alongside Citizen Kane and The Godfather. Hard.

The second two lists are some lists I was already working on, but decided I wasn't qualified to make. I'm working on a Top 20 Hollywood/American Directors (which includes Americans who worked in America, but not in the Hollywood system) and a Top 20 International Directors. A director can only appear on a single list - Orson Welles is probably in the Top 20 for both Hollywood and International directors, but I'll only let him on one list. But I've got a very long way to go before I can make these lists. I'm almost entirely ignorant about major directors like Truffaut, Bertolucci, Antonioni, Griffith, Murnau, Demille, and others. When I'm done with the project, I'll know at least a few films by all of those directors.

Finally, I'd love some feedback. Are you enjoying these entries? Is there something I should change? Is there a film on the list you'd like me to watch? And, most importantly, would you like to do a guest entry? I'd love to hear from you. I hope you're enjoying Film Ignorance.

3 comments:

Ric Burke said...

I'm enjoying it immensely.

It's great being introduced to all these great films and directors isn't it?

I can sense your passion to learn so please just keep doing what you're doing.

whitney said...

I'm sorry, I'm jumping into the game late, but is this 2000 movies you've watched since you started the project, or have you been keeping tracking of the number of films you've watched before the project as well? And are you rewatching films or just judging by initial response? Just curious.

-Whitney
dearjesus.wordpress.com

Graham said...

2000 total! But it really could end up being much more; basically, I will have rated around 2000 films on netflix if I mostly just watch the 300 I need to watch for my project. I think I will probably watch more.

As to rewatching, well, we're just gonna have to see about that.