A few days before we begin...

A while ago, a friend of mine decided to walk across the United States. When I asked him why, he had a number of reasons, but one that stood out to me was that he wanted to do something grand in his lifetime, preferably before he turned 40.

I have passed that particular milestone year, but can't really think of anything that grand that I've done. Oh, I've published a book or two (or three dozen), ran a magazine for a bit, got a black belt...but I haven't really done something unique, special, or noteworthy. In short, I haven't left a mark.

This is the beginning of that. It's time to do something grand, something that I can look back at and say, "Yeah, dammit, I did something."

In this case, the particular grand statement is tied to one of my loves: movies. I love films. I geek out about them. I celebrate them, live them, study them, and enjoy the hell out of them. So I'm going to watch a lot of them, somewhere north of 1000 of them, in fact. And, if my progress holds as I want it to, I'll be doing it in about two years.

There's a series of books that have been published for a few years. Each volume suggests 1,001 somethings you must do before you die: places to visit, albums to listen to, or as is important here, movies to see. There have been five volumes of this work, each slightly different from the last, updated with newer films as the years roll on. I imagine a sixth version is due out soon, and it will include films from 2008, paring off a few of the week links from years previous.

Since it's difficult to call any list definitive, I'm going to use all of them, and I'm going to watch all of the movies on all of the lists. At current, that total stands at 1058 films. As things currently stand, I've seen about 300 of these films, but you have only my word on that. So rather than just watch the stuff I haven't seen, I'm going to watch them all again, even if I've seen them a few dozen times.

I start January 1. I don't know when I'll finish, but I'm going to see everything, and I'll report on it here.

Wish me luck.