One more year-end wrap-up on The Audient, but the difference is, I'm not writing this one. For more on Don Handsome's incredible feat, here's Don:
Am I right in assuming that all Film Nuts have their own Number?
I posit that our Numbers equal the maximum amount of time we
can physically sacrifice to the gods of the cinema as represented by the number
of newly seen films (repeat viewings should not count toward Numbers, as these
represent a very different style of viewing) divided by a relevant unit of
time. A Film Nut’s Number is stated regularly in
conversation about the movies, as in: "I try to see one-a-day," or "I’m doing three-per-week,"
or "I can't feel good about myself if I’m not seeing at least ten-each-month." We wear our Numbers on our sleeves, but they
are not out in the open to be judged. In
the unspoken code of the Film Nut, it is understood that none of us would ever
short change the movies, and so our Numbers are just facts about us that break
the ice and bridge conversations. But
our Numbers DO mean a lot to each of us as they represent our time doing
something we love to do.
My Number is 250 Films Per Year. I’m proud of this Number - it's all I can do
for something I love. For me, 250 is comfortable:
I’m seeing about 150 new releases and another 100 non-new releases for the
first time each year and it just feels right.
I’ve been with this Number for about six years now, and with it I
never feel like I shortchange the medium or that I’m cheating my personal life.
This is
the story of how I threw my Number under the bus for no good reason.
Because readers of The Audient don’t know me, I feel as if I
need to provide some context. While I’m
not as rigorous a list-maker as our friend Vance, I do believe in tracking what
I see and I certainly take some pride in having seen a ton of flicks in my
time. I am not a professional but I am a
film geek, a snob, and an obsessive. I
pride myself on cultivating a deep film vocabulary. I am
an honest fan and a reliable dabbler. In
short: I am a Film Nut. And because I have
been friends with Vance since we were three, we’ve developed much of our
nutiness in tandem. We’ve been sharing
our film lists on Oscar nomination day with each other for about 15 years now –
since a time when both of our Numbers were probably about 100 per year. Nowadays, I think our Numbers are generally
in the same ballpark and while I usually see more new releases each year, Vance
edges me out in older films seen for the first time. But I think he was taken aback when I
announced to him that I was going to try to set a personal record 200 new releases
in 2012 – effectively increasing my number by 50.
SPOILER ALERT – I made it. I more than made it, actually. I SMASHED IT.
I saw 212 new releases in 2012, and since I saw 121 (love
that symmetry) older movies for the first time, my Number for 2012 was at 333. It was a big step up. It’s the most films
and the most new releases I’ve ever seen in one year. It's more moves than either Vance or I have
ever seen in one year. So a few months
ago Vance asked that I commit to documenting this run for The Audient and I
happily obliged.
Before I continue, here’s the product - all 212 films I saw
in 2012, from best to worst:
1 Silver
Lining Playbook
2 Zero
Dark Thirty
3 Looper
4 Moonrise
Kingdom
5 Oslo,
August 31st
6 Newlyweds
7 The
Cabin In The Woods
8 Sleepless
Night
9 Holy
Motors
10 Bernie
11 Damsels in Distress
12 Rust
and Bone
13 Killer
Joe
14 Fat
Kid Rules The World
15 Beasts
of the Southern Wild
16 Waiting
for Lightning
17 Sound of My Voice
18 Django
Unchained
19 Girl
Walk // All Day
20 The
Imposter
21 Alps
22 Compliance
23 The
Loved Ones
24 Killing
Them Softly
25 The
Deep Blue Sea
26 Prometheus
27 Wreck-It Ralph
28 The
Bay
29 Jesus
Henry Christ
30 V/H/S
31 Deadfall
32 The
Dark Knight Rises
33 Fitzgerald
Family Christmas
34 Shut
Up and Play the Hits
35 Red
Hook Summer
36 Klown
37 Your
Sister's Sister
38 Lawless
39 Bones
Brigade: An Autobiography
40 Once
Upon a Time in Anatolia
41 Sinister
42 Ruby
Sparks
43 Marley
44 Jeff,
Who Lives At Home
45 Beyond the Black Rainbow
46 A Cat
in Paris
47 The
Amazing Spiderman
48 Turn
Me On, Dammit!
49 Cure
for Pain
50 The
Queen of Versailles
51 Magic
Mike
52 Coriolanus
53 Kill
List
54 Tonight
You're Mine
55 Knuckleball!
56 The
Hunger Games
57 Friends
With Kids
58 Celeste
and Jesse Forever
59 The
Perks of Being a Wallflower
60 The
Kid With a Bike
61 The
Five-Year Engagement
62 The
Hole
63 Argo
64 The
Loneliest Planet
65 The
Perfect Family
66 Headhunters
67 Pitch
Perfect
68 Goon
69 The
Secret World of Arrietty
70 The
Pact
71 Lola
Versus
72 Take
This Waltz
73 Chimpanzee
74 Extraterrestrial
75 The
Master
76 Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
77 Seeking
a Friend for the End of the World
78 Ted
79 Head
Games
80 Footnote
81 Premium
Rush
82 The
Avengers
83 The
Do-Deca-Pentathalon
84 Lay the Favorite
85 Liberal
Arts
86 Paranorman
87 21
Jump Street
88 Get the Gringo
89 The
Corridor
90 Safety
Not Guaranteed
91 Hope
Springs
92 Anna
Karenina
93 This
Is 40
94 Irving
Welsh's Ecstasy
95 Something
From Nothing: The Art of Rap
96 Dark
Shadows
97 Gerhard
Richter Painting
98 Bachelorette
99 The
Vow
100 The
Campaign
101 The
Comedy
102 Take
Me Home
103 Vamps
104 Lincoln
105 Contraband
106 Jack
Reacher
107 One
for the Money
108 Flight
109 2 Days
in New York
110 From
Rome With Love
111 Trouble
With the Curve
112 Butter
113 The
Grey
114 The
Good Doctor
115 The
Hobbit
116 The
Words
117 Wanderlust
118 Dark
Horse
119 Safe
House
120 360
121 Norwegian
Wood
122 Casa de Mi Padre
123 Men in
Black 3
124 For a
Good Time Call…
125 Arbitrage
126 Hitchcock
127 Skyfall
128 Salmon
Fishing in the Yemen
129 Mirror
Mirror
130 Total
Recall
131 Jiro
Dreams of Sushi
132 Cosmopolis
133 Life
of Pi
134 Savages
135 Price
Check
136 (Rec)3
Genesis
137 The
Watch
138 Red
Lights
139 God
Bless America
140 Les Miserables
141 Sleepwalk
With Me
142 Snow
White and the Huntsman
143 Man on
a Ledge
144 The
Details
145 The
Innkeepers
146 American
Reunion
147 Cloud
Atlas
148 The
Snowtown Murders
149 Battleship
150 The Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel
151 Katy
Perry: Part of Me
152 Chronicle
153 Hotel
Transylvania
154 Good
Deeds
155 Tim
and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
156 Lockout
157 The
Odd Life of Timothy Green
158 Detachment
159 The
Raid: Redemption
160 This
Means War
161 The
Hunter
162 Giant
Mechanical Man
163 The
Bourne Legacy
164 The
Impossible
165 Chasing
Mavericks
166 The
Color Wheel
167 Brave
168 Union
Square
169 Apartment
143 [Emergo]
170 Safe
171 Silent
House
172 Indie
Game: The Movie
173 The
Pirates! Band of Misfits
174 Ice
Age: Continental Drift
175 L!fe
Happens
176 The
Letter
177 Beneath the Darkness
178 The
Woman in Black
179 Haywire
180 The
Man With the Iron Fists
181 The
Raven
182 Hysteria
183 Snow on tha Bluff
184 The
Devil Inside
185 Act
of Valor
186 Fun
Size
187 Stolen
188 Paranormal
Activity 4
189 Sparkle
190 Rock
of Ages
191 The
Three Stooges
192 The
Chernobyl Diaries
193 The
Babymakers
194 Journey
2: The Mysterious Island
195 Step
Up Revolution
196 Project
X
197 The
Dictator
198 John
Carter
199 Red
Tails
200 Piranha
DD
201 Red
Dawn
202 That's
My Boy
203 Wrath
of the Titans
204 The
Lorax
205 Gone
206 Hit
and Run
207 Madagascar
3: Europe's Most Wanted
208 The
Expendables 2
209 The
Apparition
210 Rise
of The Guardians
211 Branded
212 The
Collection
I don’t know that I want to editorialize about these films
beyond the editorializing that the order does for me. This post is not directly about what I liked
and didn’t like (and I’m frankly still exhausted by this run) but I will say
that even though I am ABSOLUTELY positive that my top films are the ones
that I most treasure from 2012, I am disappointed that they aren’t
unconventional choices. This is not how
I identify as a film fan. Typically I
like movies that non-Film Nuts have never heard of. But we can’t all pick the Ruby Sparkses each and every year.
Lesson #1 from 2012 is the more new releases one sees,
the more the element of surprise is eliminated from the ranking equation. I have a firm scoring system (to be
discussed) that is designed to remove all the mystery from why one movie ranked higher than the other. The problem
with seeing so much is that you begin to lose definition on the fringe, and
though you still appreciate small innovative films, they tend to lose out to
all the noise. Thus I found that I’ve been
gravitating towards films that leave a lasting impression on the whole instead
of movies that may have made a significant stride towards advancing the medium,
and I’m not sure this is a good thing.
Why
Would I Want to Mess with My Number?
The short answer is that I did it because I could. Or maybe I did it because I’ve always wanted to just let it rip and see how many films I could see in a year. But there was no real driving reason behind it. While I argue that 2012 was a fine year for film, I wouldn’t say that it was an exceptional year. But nonetheless at some point in the year I made a choice that 2012 was the year I was going to really push myself. It was one of those organic-but-arbitrary decisions that is probably a result of deep psychosis, but because I believe that there has to be a tangible explanation for everything, I’ve come up with the following excuses:
·
The Slow Start – I saw my first film (Norwegian Wood) right about when I
normally start seeing new releases – in late January. But then the next movie I saw was Chronicle nearly a month later in mid-February. And then I wasn’t on the board again until I
saw Goon on March 6th. By the end of March I was at only five movies
for the year and that made me freak out. I remember giving myself a pep talk
around tax day, in which I vowed to turn this around before it got out of
control. I guess I listened to myself,
because by the beginning of July I had seen 50 films;
·
Chasing The
Cabin In The Woods - On April 20th I saw and adored The Cabin in the Woods. It was so clearly the best movie I had seen at
that point in the year, that I wondered if it would actually top my year-end
list. There is something so intoxicating
about seeing a film that captures your imagination that you can’t help but
chase more of the same; and
·
The Holy Ranking System - Prior to 2011,
I ranked the films I saw in the year by piecing together a list. I would find relative positions by deciding
that one film was better than one but worse than another and with enough
tweaking throughout the year, I would eventually end up with an order. It was never perfect and I never liked this
method because it always insulted my empirical sensibilities. I would actively target movies that I felt
were too high or too low, but would ignore others that didn’t jump out at me
and I was always nagged by the possibility that I could be inflating the actual
quality of films that I wanted to like above films that might be superior
achievements.
Surely top ten lists and year-end
rankings are understood to be models of personal finesse and taste, but I was
bothered enough by this that in 2011 I developed a scoring system to do away
with much of the guessing. My system is
based on a ten-point score with movies gaining points based on categories such
as "gut reaction," "style," "look," "editing," "story," "performance," "sound"
and "wow factor." I won't go into much
detail, but please understand that I have clear parameters set for each
category (except wow factor, where I allow up to one point for just being
sucked into a movie's aura) and I believe that they work really well at
approximating the very things I watch films for and the very qualities I want
to be scoring. I ran a test of the
system in 2011, and I really liked the results I got – they both felt true to my
impulses AND were defensible. I liked
the results so much, that I grew a little infatuated with my system and I couldn’t
wait to see how well it would work for me in 2012 – the more films the merrier. Of the three excuses I’ve provided, I
think this had the most influence on my record-setting run in 2012.
How
Exactly Does One Raise Their Number?
While I believe in the purity of the theater experience, and prefer the theater in all circumstances, I don’t hold myself to seeing everything in the theaters. Like all of us Film Nuts, I feed my Number by going to the theater, renting movies from the store (and sadly, my beloved neighborhood video store closed this past fall, becoming another Dunkin Donuts that I won’t patronize), utilizing Netflix, visiting a Redbox or two, and watching through iTunes, OnDemand or Amazon. But Lesson #2 of 2012 is that you just have to embrace the many different watching options that are out there, and appropriately I embraced some new-to-me "delivery mechanisms" that are primarily responsible for getting me up and over my goal:
·
I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas in 2011
– I’m not too much of tech guy, and I never thought that I’d venture into the
tablet world. But the Fire really works
for me. It's not overly complicated, but
I can read books on it and I can rent new movies cheaply from Amazon, download
them onto my device and watch half while sitting on the bus on the way to work
and half while sitting on the bus on the way back from work. I did this approximately 18 times in 2012;
·
Mastery of the Business Trip Cram Session
- I have a job that takes me out of town every month or so. I travel for meetings and workshops that take
place all over the southern part of my state during the daylight hours, but
since I generally travel on my own, my nights on the road are generally mine. Years ago I embraced seeing one movie while
travelling, either in the theater or via hotel pay-per-view rentals, but in
2012 I truly familiarized myself with the theaters of downstate Illinois. With no obligation to be home with my kids
for dinner, I found I could start watching films at around 5PM and not stop until
I’d seen three, sometimes four, movies;
·
I discovered Drive-In theaters. I’ve long been obsessed with the
Drive-In. This is an offshoot of an obsession
I have with California, which is not where I live. I associate Drive-Ins with quintessential
Route 66-style Americana that is so evident in southern California. As I discovered this year, drive-in movie
theaters are actually part of the lore of Route 66 all along that old road - which just so happens to have historically begun
in Chicago, where I live. So this year I
really pushed the Drive-Ins, seeing as many movies as I possibly could
there. Around here, the Drive-Ins are
only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day and none of them are less than an hour
away from where I live, but I still managed to see eight movies at the Drive-In:
§
The
Amazing Spiderman (End of the year ranking: 47/212);
§
The
Avengers (82/212);
§
The Bourne
Legacy (163/212);
§
Madagascar
3: Europe's Most Wanted (202 / 212);
§
Prometheus
(26/212)
§ Snow White
and The Huntsman (142/212);
§
Ted
(78/212)
§
21 Jump
Street (87/212)
On the whole, it doesn’t appear that the Drive-In yielded too many gems –
most of the above films are middling at best, but only three of the above were
films I planned on seeing anyway (The
Avengers, The Bourne Legacy and Prometheus),
so it could be argued that the Drive-In helped give me an edge this year. Incidentally, it could also be argued that
there is a profound “Drive-In Effect” on these films. Nearly all of them are actually higher than
maybe they need to be (Prometheus especially)
- maybe that ranking system of mine needs some tweaking.
·
We Dumped Cable - Last December, my wife
and I decided that we would like to save over $100 per month by swapping cable
for a Roku Box and a Hulu subscription. This has its drawbacks (I felt incredibly disconnected from a healthy
baseball obsession that I have) but it had a measurable effect on my film
totals in 2012. With this life change we
never ended up adding new television shows to our repertoire in 2012, and in
fact we jettisoned two sitcoms and one procedural from our watching rotation. This action saved us roughly two-hours a week
for 22 weeks throughout year – that’s time for about 22 movies, if you’re
counting at home.
·
Let Time Be the Decider - In April I decided
that I wouldn’t let desirability drive my film choices. Instead, in some cases, I would adopt the
philosophy that a movie starting NOW is as good as any and whenever I had the
chance, I simply would walk into a theater and get a ticket to see the next
unseen film starting at that theater regardless if I wanted to see it or
not. Utilizing this methodology, I saw
the following films:
§
Branded (211/212);
Branded (211/212);
§
The Collection (212/212);
§ Fun Size (186/212);
§
Hit and Run (206/212);
§
Red Dawn (201/212); and
§
The Watch (137/212)
Lesson
#3 of 2012 is that this methodology
is junk. I may have added several films
to my Number using it, but nearly all of them are bottom feeders. Clearly, this is not a worthwhile strategy
and I will never engage it again.
More
Lessons Learned
I have
always maintained a working list of the films that I want to see in a given
year. Typically, I only add films to
this list about which I hear or see something that peaks my interest. My theory is that I am my own best resource
and that films I recommend to myself are generally the films that hit best with
me. Admittedly, I do a lot of talking
about movies that I want to see at home, at bars, with Vance, and around the
office, so I am aware that discussing my watch-list may bias me towards them
and incite a self-fulfilling
prophecy. But with the establishment of
a working scoring system, I thought that I might be finally able to see if "The
List" really works.
Lesson #4
from 2012 is that The List really works. As 2012 started I had four films on my anticipated film list to start
the year (The Cabin in the Woods, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper and Django Unchained). Throughout the year I added 12 more. With the exception of Gangster Squad, which didn’t open in 2012, I saw all of them. Here is how they performed:
§
Bernie (10/212);
§ Bones Brigade: An Autobiography (39/212);
§
The Cabin in the Woods (7/212);
§
Cloud
Atlas (147/212);
§
The Dark
Knight Rises (32/212);
§
Django
Unchained (18/212);
§
Killing
Them Softly (24/212);
§
Lincoln
(104/212);
§
Looper (3/212);
§
The Master
(75/212);
§
Prometheus
(26/212);
§
Rust and
Bone (12/212);
§
Silver
Linings Playbook (1/212);
§
The Sound
of My Voice (17/212); and
§
Zero Dark
Thirty (2/212)
There is a
pretty excellent track record here. Five
of The List movies were in my Top Ten for the Year (in fact, my entire top
three comes from the list), an additional other four of them are in my top
25. The List isn’t perfect -- I didn’t
really see the charm of the intentionally vague The Master, and I didn’t like the minutia of Lincoln set against Speilbergian pomposity -- but even those two are
in my top half for the year. The lowest
ranked of all of these is Cloud Atlas
which I almost missed seeing because, even though it was on The List, it kept feeling
like a chore (it was). Still I think
that the success rate here speaks for itself.
Lesson #5 for 2012 is that regrets are OK. I did, at some point, come to terms with the
fact that I couldn’t see every film in 2012.
There are regrets here. I clearly
wish I had never seen The Collection,
and I have a hard time justifying that I saw that vile film, but didn’t see Seven Psychopaths, Amour (I actually couldn’t see this without traveling to New York
or LA), Promised Land (apparently my
Gus Van Sant obsession no longer applies to films he’s directing for other
people), Not Fade Away (I’ll make it
up to you, David Chase), Room 237, How To Survive a Plague, The Paperboy and Samsara. These are my
biggest regrets for the year, but I’ve come to realize that we need to save
things for later. New Releases are only
part of my Number and I look forward to the above list filling in some of my
2013 Number and beyond.
Lesson #6 for 2012 is that you should always stay true to
your Number. So my new Number is 333
per year, right? Absolutely not. I’ve alluded to this in the above, but let me
come right out and say it – pushing myself in this way was not fun. I’m tired.
I spent more money on movies than I have in any other year, and I
stressed myself out numerous times throughout the year. I shirked some friendship responsibilities
and in the end, I found that I didn’t even enjoy watching the movies
anymore. It was an awful
experience. So my Number stays at
250. As I said, 250 is comfortable and I
owe it to the movies to enjoy seeing them.
What’s 2013 Look Like?
In order to keep my number at 250, I’m obviously never walking in to a theater to see the next available movie again. This was a fruitless exercise. And I think I’m going to eliminate the Kindle Fire from the methods that I use to watch films – there are plenty of books to read on the bus. But I do vow to expand The List in an effort to get back to what’s most important about being a Film Nut: Loving The Movies.
So what’s going to be first in 2013? Like Vance, I think I’ll see Gangster Squad first -- it’s the only
movie currently on The List. But I won't see it for a couple weeks -- not until I spend some time at home researching
what is on tap for 2013 and not until I recharge my battery by indulging in
some rewatches of tried and true classics (Blue
Velvet, I’m looking at you). Oh
yeah, I’m also going to finish the complete series rewatch of The Sopranos that I started last night (David
Chase, I told you that I’d make amends).
What can I say? I
come heavy or not at all.
