A Movie Smörgåsbord, If You Will.

I watch a lot crapload of movies.  Now, some of you might be wondering, "What qualifies as a crapload?"

My IMDb.com vote history lists 3,561 films.  That doesn't seem like much to me.  Frankly, I imagined a number closer to 5,000.  Granted, I haven't necessarily voted on every movie I've seen (at least before 1999).  In January of 1999, I began keeping track of every film I would watch.  My "Movie Notebook" tally comes to 3,050 as of right this instant.  So, I've averaged 277 movies a year for the last 11 years, or 23 per month.  Up until October of last year, my high watermark was 100 (June 1999).  Those of you who keep track of my exploits on Facebook know that I exceeded that record by three back in October.  By the time 2009 was up, I had viewed 394 flicks (a far cry from 1999's 515).

While in college I had enlisted a website to take over for the notebook.  I wanted it to be a place where people could check out what I had seen and how I had rated it.  Needless to say, it wasn't very well-organized, and I got caught up more in the watching than in the writing.  Plus, the only hits I got were from a handful of friends, and there was never really any feedback.  It was a valiant effort, but it failed rather miserably.

Despite only having seven pages left in the current notebook, this blog will not replace the hard copy.  The notebook is a mainstay.  I would still like to try to reach a bigger audience with what I do -- watching and criticizing movies.  I'm not going to profess that I have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to being a film critic.  Five or six college film courses don't make you the next Roger Ebert.  I'm just an Average Joe.  Well, an Average Joe who watches what equates to almost a movie a day.

There won't be a particular focus as far as genre or director.  I watch anything (although I've sworn I'll never watch TWILIGHT or its sequels).  There's no rhyme or reason to my selections.  Of the 32 movies I watched in January, seven were foreign films and five were documentaries.  I have Blockbuster Total Access and the most recent movie they mailed out to me was the 2003 version of FREAKY FRIDAY (next up is Jean-Pierre Melville's ARMY OF SHADOWS).  So, yeah, there's no method to the madness.

As for the blog itself, I do have a theme in mind.  After deciding to finally sit down and create a blog, it took a few days to come up with a good, clever title -- The Film Consumer.  Basically, the idea is that I devour mass quantities of movies.  So, it's a film criticism blog with a food-related theme, which makes sense because, as my friends and family know, I can pack away mass quantities of food as well.  The idea looks really good on paper, but I'm not too sure how it will look here in cyberspace.  I know nothing about HTML.  I think I might have been the only guy NOT to have taken a C++ class in college (or any computer-related course for that matter).  Since I'm a perfectionist, it might be slowgoing at first, but don't lose faith.

The basic structure for each entry will be: Title, Film info, DVD info, Review and Rating.  Personally, I use 1-10 rating scale, but most film critics seem to use 1-4 or 1-5.  I'm going to settle with a 1-5 scale since it's similar to a star-rating for restaurant reviews (1 = Poor, 2 = Fair, 3 = Good, 4 = Excellent, 5 = Extraordinary), but I'll throw in half-points, e.g., 4.5.

Hopefully, that covers everything.  Once it gets going, I'm sure it will be self-explanatory.  Feel free to comment on any reviews or even suggest a movie for me to watch.

Enjoy.