The Obligatory New Year's Post

Happy New Year! 2012 is officially over, so it's time to look forward to 2013. I've not been overly busy on the site for the past few weeks; Christmas is always a busy time for me (as for most people), and I've not had much time for film watching, and even less for discussing afterwards, so apologies for that. I intend to pick things up a little now though. My motivation for this also stems from my New Year's Resolution. You see, I'm something of a DVD collector. At the last count I'm up to 886 (not counting my girlfriend's, which would put the total at a little over 900). Now, as a film fan, I think that's acceptable, until you discover that of those 900+, I haven't actually seen 256 of them. That's well over a quarter of the films I own. This is far from acceptable. So, in an effort to stray ever further from my initial multi-List challenge, my aim for 2013 is not only to stop buying DVDs I haven't seen, but to watch all those that I already own. I don't intend to necessarily review them all, but if there's any that I feel particularly strong about then I may grace you with a review. About 100 or so are on the other lists I'm currently running through, so they'll be reviewed. And it's not just DVDs I do this with either, I've got 80 books I haven't read yet either, including the complete works of Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Jurassic Park and a book all about Lego. If these are any good, I'll let you know.


There's quite a variety of films on the Unseen list (which also has its own shiny new tab). Some were bought because they are on one of my other lists (Cinema Paradiso, It Happened One Night), some because I thought they were on a list but turned out to be wrong (A Bridge Too Far, Charade), some were gifts (Le Code A Change, The Skin I Live In), some recent ones because they've gotten good reviews (Kill List, Hunger) and some because they were cheap (The Man with the Golden Arm, Haywire). There's also a couple that I've started watching in the past but never actually finished (Network, I Am Sam), and quite a few that I have technically seen before, in that I've been in the same room whilst they've been played, but didn't pay enough attention that I can no longer remember anything about them (Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, The Motorcycle Diaries), so I added those to the list as well. Some I like the stars of (Barney's Version, Crazy Heart) or the director (Jackie Brown, The Game), some are supposedly classics (Gone With the Wind, Singin' in the Rain) and others are probably going to be terrible (Timecop, Outpost). Some are part of a boxset that I bought for another film (His Private Secretary, 3:10 to Yuma, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!), and there's quite a few that I'm really looking forward to watching (Drive, Moonrise Kingdom, Sling Blade, Troll Hunter, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Chronicle). Oh, and there's the one remaining film of my girlfriend's that I haven't watched yet (My Dog Skip).

This year will also see the long-awaited return of my Friday Top 5 lists, that stopped for no real reason other than laziness and poor time management. To make up for the hiatus, this Friday will see a bumper set of lists, all in review of 2012, with the week after taking a rather predictable look at my anticipation for the year ahead. You want a sneak preview? Giant-ass robots. That's what I'm talkin' about.

If that's not enough, you can also listen to me taking part in the latest Lambcast, a Lambpardy episode against current champion Dylan Fields of Man I Love Films and fellow challenger Nick Powell of The Cinematic Katzenjammer, and hosted by Kai Parker, also of Man I Love Films. And if you can wait another week, I'll be appearing on the next episode as well, all about Tom Hanks with Dylan again, Nick Jobe and Nolahn of brand new site Your Face and Todd Liebonow of Forgotten Films. See, there's a reason I only did six posts last month, I've been busy.