August 31, 2004
The Big Summer Movie Project
As you all probably know by now, this summer bore witness to a large-scale project which involved kicking back in the nearest piece of comfortable furniture and watching loads and loads of movies, keeping a detailed record and carefully calculating an appropriate rating for each and every one of them. And now it's time for the old statistics game to come into play.
I have watched 137 different movies this summer (there have probably been at least a dozen repeats).
-6 of these movies were rated G.
-38 were rated PG.
-30 were rated PG-13.
-43 were rated R.
-20 were UnRated.
This was pretty much the focus of the summer . . . The amount of time spent (counting reruns) boils down to nearly two weeks of solid 24/7 movie watching (approximately one and a quarter movies per day at almost exactly two hours per movie).
In addition to this, I did manage to squeeze in a full-time job, a two-week summer course worth three credit hours, and a couple dozen books plus two visits to West Texas and copious amounts of quality time with our much esteemed "HNRS" SC Seniors during this, their final summer of college life. I remember sleeping, too. Definitely plenty of sleeping.
(Brief sidenote: As to that next-to-last item, I was particularly glad to be able to spend the extra time with the all-too-soon-to-be graduates. Just thought I'd mention that.)
Anyway, I contemplated listing the worst movies I saw this summer, but there seemed to be very little point. There were exactly ten movies that got 50% or less on the rating scale, but that was because I chose to watch good movies fairly consistently . . . plus I didn't necessarily loathe the experience of watching most of these and the following listing seems much more relevant.
The Top Ten Movies I Saw This Summer (in order as watched):
Only four of those were first-time views for me, but I have watched an additional four of them for the first time within the last year . . . Only "Rear Window" and "Road to Perdition" are (relatively) long-time favorites.
The movielist isn't going away, but due to the sudden and particularly uninvited arrival of the fall semester the summer project is forced to draw to a close. I'll be sad to see it, and the summer in general, go . . . But I look forward to just about everything that comes with the beginning of a new semester. I won't be watching quite so many movies now (or maybe I will), but the record-keeping and attempts at quality selection will continue.
After all, if I continue at anything like the present rate I'll have caught up with Roger Ebert in a mere 20 years . . .
Posted by Jared at August 31, 2004 12:14 PM | TrackBack