Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Nine-Year Project Complete
Nine years ago, I got the 2002 Video Movie Guide. It's a thick book with a review of every movie available on video or DVD. So, essentially, every movie you've ever heard of and thousands more. For some reason, I decided to start at the beginning, go through every single movie from A to Z (the cover boasts over 18,000 titles), and mark with a "J" the ones I'd seen. Ones I'd seen in the theater would get a little "t" next to the J.
I got almost halfway through, but during one of my moves in the last decade, the book went into a box where it stayed until a few months ago. At that point, I picked up where I'd left off marking it, and just tonight, I reached the end of the book. Zvenigora! (1928--I have not seen it.)
Of course, any new movie I've seen since 2002 is not in the book. Those I've been writing down in the last few pages as I think of them. I've written down over a hundred (and space is running out!).
There's also the issue of my having seen a movie that starts with, say, the letter A, since I completed going through the A section. So my next step is to start again and go through A through around L and mark any that I've seen since.
So the work isn't quite done, but technically I went through all 18,000, so I got that goin' for me, which is, as they say, nice.
I also started wondering about updated versions of the guide. I see that it went right up through 2007 (and started including "DVD" in the title), but its run was finally ended. Here's someone else's blog post about it from 2008--comments go right up to this month from people wanting it back.
Something interesting about the book--it lists TV series that were available on video/DVD back in 2002. There were hardly any. I'm sure by the 2007 edition, they'd either scrapped that idea or the book about "movies" is overrun with TV shows. For my official marking purposes, I put a "Jtv" next to any of those I've seen at least a few episodes of. I could get into more of the official marking rules but I've given you enough information you'll never use already.
I got almost halfway through, but during one of my moves in the last decade, the book went into a box where it stayed until a few months ago. At that point, I picked up where I'd left off marking it, and just tonight, I reached the end of the book. Zvenigora! (1928--I have not seen it.)
Of course, any new movie I've seen since 2002 is not in the book. Those I've been writing down in the last few pages as I think of them. I've written down over a hundred (and space is running out!).
There's also the issue of my having seen a movie that starts with, say, the letter A, since I completed going through the A section. So my next step is to start again and go through A through around L and mark any that I've seen since.
So the work isn't quite done, but technically I went through all 18,000, so I got that goin' for me, which is, as they say, nice.
I also started wondering about updated versions of the guide. I see that it went right up through 2007 (and started including "DVD" in the title), but its run was finally ended. Here's someone else's blog post about it from 2008--comments go right up to this month from people wanting it back.
Something interesting about the book--it lists TV series that were available on video/DVD back in 2002. There were hardly any. I'm sure by the 2007 edition, they'd either scrapped that idea or the book about "movies" is overrun with TV shows. For my official marking purposes, I put a "Jtv" next to any of those I've seen at least a few episodes of. I could get into more of the official marking rules but I've given you enough information you'll never use already.
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7.5 years later, I'm working on digitizing my list. I've entered ALL post-2002 movies onto a spreadsheet, and am on C of the book getting those in there. My digital list includes when I saw the movie, with whom, and where. And whether I saw it in the theater, or have the ticket stub....
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