Thursday, March 5, 2015

AFI Top 100: Maintenance Post

While in the throes of my A-Z Movie Project, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my next movie project would be once it was over. I briefly considered doing all the best foreign picture winners. While I still think that would be a really cool project, it’s simply too difficult to get my hands on most of those winners, so I had to shelve that idea.

I also considered an “also ran” watching project, viewing all of the other nominees for best picture, the ones that didn’t win. That project is still in the running. I think it would be really fun. However, I also think it would be a huge time commitment - multiple years at the very least. I’m not ready to make that commitment yet.

Another possible project - one still in the running - is about remakes. In that project, I would watch both the original and the remake of various movies, compare them, and decide which one I liked best. I’ll most likely do this one eventually, but at this point I feel too lazy to come up with a decent list of movie remakes.

And so, I ended up deciding to go with the American Film Institute’s Top 100. I thought this would be a nice project due to its length. A lot of them are best picture winners, so I’ve already seen them, which cuts the list nearly in half for me. I also like that there are a lot of classic films on this list that I haven’t seen (including #1). I feel like I’m finally catching up on all the “trivia question” movies!

AFI released their first Top 100 list in 1998. That’s the list I’m working off of. I’m ignoring the later, updated list they released, and also the “themed” lists they’ve subsequently released. As with my Best Picture project, if it’s a movie I’ve seen before, but haven’t seen in a while, I will re-watch so that I can review it fairly. Since I’ve seen all of the Best Pictures so recently, and reviewed them all on this blog, I won’t be watching them again. For continuity’s sake, each of those movies will receive a post in this project. That post will include “The Verdict,” the score, and a link to the previous review. I will be watching this list from the bottom up, or if you rather, from 100 to 1. As with my other movie projects, I will post a master list of scores and review links when the project is finished. 

I already checked my first AFI movie out of the library, so look for the review here soon!

2 comments:

Patricia said...

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy! A Yankee Doodle Do or Die!

It's an Independence Day movie favorite! And was a favorite of mine when I was younger. Today? I have no idea.

I'm quite excited for your project. When they released this list, I typed everything up on my typewriter and checked off all the ones I'd seen. I shared it with some people at work and mostly the conversation was various versions of "You haven't seen X?" in incredulous voices. I watched various things on the list for a few years, but wandered away from that project before it was done. Just like so many other projects.

So I'm looking forward to your quest!

Also, I just looked to see how long my longest streak (run of movies seen) was and it was five movies long. I haven't seen a lot of those films.

balyien said...

I've actually seen quite a lot of these, I think an extra 30 or so on top of the Oscar winners, but since I haven't seen most in a long time, I'll be re-watching. Most of the ones I haven't seen ever are toward the bottom of the list, including "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

And I'm excited too! This should be fun.

By the way, I hope you don't feel like you have to comment on the ones that are Oscar winners, since you already commented on them. Not that you ever have to comment on anything, haha.