The Challenge Part 1

One day, I'm going to die. So are you. I was reminded of this at Christmas, when I was given the latest edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I love making lists of films to watch, tracking them down and crossing them off gives me the kind of pleasure most people only experience in bed, bungee jumping or finding out they have superpowers. But, as this book clearly points out in the title, I'm going to die. There is a finite amount of time I have left to watch these films, films that I must watch before I die, else my life be not deemed worthy of the cinematic Gods.


Now, this would mean nothing to most people. Yes, we're all going to die, but there's not a whole lot we can do about that. Look around you, if you can't see twenty things that could kill you, you're dead already. But, and this is where I ask you to bear with me for a moment, when I was younger, I had a dream. In this dream, I was told I would die when I was 28. I'm 23 now, meaning I have at most 5 1/2 years to live, and therefore 5 1/2 years to watch all of the films on the list that I have yet to see, not counting those in the editions as yet unpublished. I don't normally believe in the whole dreams and destinies thing, but dammit I want to watch the films, and this gives me some kind of a goal, something which, my girlfriend will agree, is missing from my life.


So, I'm setting up a plan to watch all those films left in the book I've yet to watch. Without counting, I'd guess I've seen about 200, leaving 800-ish, but I have other similar books too. On top of this pile I'm going to add the Total Film Top 100 Movies of All Time, Empire Magazine's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time and Empire's 5-Star 500 (2010). I have no idea how many this is going to make without counting, as I'm sure an awful lot will be duplicated. But as soon as I know, I'm gonna start watching.


The deadline is set, February 1st, 2016, every film mentioned in those books will have been watched, else my life, as deemed by those that know films better than I, will not have been worth living.