The Life Vs. Film Manifesto

Hello everyone, I'm back from a short hiatus of blogging. I've spent some time sorting some stuff out, predominantly in my head, and am now ready and able to watch films and write about them, hopefully in a slightly more concise and coherent way than I used to.

I've also given a bit of thought as to the nature of this here blog, as I've found myself regularly writing about things I don't necessarily want to write about, mainly because they're on the 1001 List. Now, in order to stop myself from needing to take a break again soon, I'm planning to continue watching the films from the lit, but I'm eschewing the 5 year deadline I'd previously assigned myself. It's still going to be done as soon as possible, hell maybe even within the 5 years, but this is no longer something I'm going to try and do. Hopefully I'll stop stressing about it quite so much.

To make up the place of the reduced pace, I'll be watching and reviewing more films that I actually want to see (a novel concept, I know), and I'll soon be starting a new feature called Guaranteed Happiness, in which I look at a film that never fails to make me smile, starting in the coming week with Wall-E. This is a film I've reviewed before, however I've recently had a look at some of my earlier posts, and found them both embarrassing, and almost disrespectful of the films they were for. My review of Sideways, for example, is 2 lines long, yet I really liked that film. My excuse is that it was near the start of my blogging escapades, and before this site I'd never written anything about film before, apart from a university essay on why Blu-Ray defeated HD. So, you can also expect to see some re-visits to formerly reviewed films in the future.

There's also some film makers that I like more than others, so I intend to celebrate these people by watching every film they've been involved with. I've decided to initially start with a classic director, contemporary director, leading actor, character actor and a choice by my girlfriend, as it's a bit unfair on her that we only seem to watch 'my' films. The initial line-up is as follows:

Classic director: Alfred Hitchcock

Contemporary director: Coen Brothers

Classic actor: Steve McQueen

Contemporary actor: George Clooney

Aisha's choice: Kate Winslet

There's nothing shocking about the selections, but they're all film-makers that I admire, and some of the them have some gaping holes in my viewing history. Again, these have no deadlines, and though I'll try to work through their resumes in chronological order, there may be some skipping around. If I've already reviewed a film they've done to a degree that I consider good enough, then I'll consider that film crossed off. You can check my progress on the 'Film-Makers' tab up the top there. The quest will begin tomorrow, with George Clooney's latest starring role in The Descendants. (Oh, and Aisha doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to make her sit through Kenneth Branagh's 4-hour version of Hamlet that Kate Winslet appears in. She brought it on herself for making me see The Holiday again.)

Does anyone have any other ideas for directions I could take this blog in? I was considering looking at every film ever nominated for any Oscar, but I think those might get mopped up with the Lists and actors/directors anyway. Also, please feel free to make any suggestions for actors/directors/writers etc. that I can complete in the future, although I've already got a pretty extensive list to go through!