30 Days 30 Films: An Introduction

I'll admit right off the bat that this project is kind of stupid and totally pointless. My goal is to watch 30 films during the 30 days of September. I realize this is not a major task. There are plenty of movie buffs out there who watch dozens of movies a week. I assume that these movie buffs don't have children. I do. Now that they are back in school, I'm devoting my stay-at-home parent time into getting our house ready to put back on the market. So while I do have more time on my hands than the average working Joe, finding the time every day to watch a movie is not always an easy thing to do.

Obviously to watch 30 movies in 30 days I need to average one movie a day. As soon as I miss a day, I become backed up and then have at least one day where I need to watch two movies. If several days go by, I can get back logged very easily. Last year I kept track of all the films I had seen. When all was said and done I had watched 204 movies throughout 2011. That's an average of 17 movies a month. I've got some stuff on the calendar for the month of September, including a week where I have something pretty fun planned for almost every night of the week, so it's won't all be a piece of cake!

Before you say to yourself, "Why doesn't he do something useful with his time?" let me just add that besides the fact that I love movies, I don't watch/follow sports and I don't watch much television. Most days, I don't turn the TV on for my own benefit until 9 or 10 o'clock at night, and that's usually to watch a movie. I'm not a big fan of running the TV for background noise nor do I ever flip channels and just watch "whatever is on." When I sit down to watch television (be it a show or movie) I usually watch something from beginning to end. After a day of chasing around two kids, arguing with them and listening to a nonstop barrage of noise and yelling, I look forward to a quite 90 minutes to two hours in front of a good movie at the end of my day.

There's no rhyme or reason as to what movies will be viewed in these 30 days. It could be anything from a new release to an old favorite I've seen a thousand times.

The main purpose of this project is not to watch 30 movies. I'm hoping this silly little endeavor will provide me with a writing challenge and project. Not only will it give me something to write about but it will give me the drive to work on writing about film. It will also give the dominant creative side of my brain something to think about while I'm cleaning out the garage and packing boxes of stuff. Hopefully along the way there will be some good news to share about the sale of our house.

Thanks for reading!