This Blog's Maiden Voyage

The title is a reference to Robert Frost's influential poem The Road Not Taken, and from this alone you can most probably work out a few things about me. If you can't, then let me clear up a few things for you:

• I love poetry
• I study English Literature at University

That is all you could really pick up from the opening gambit, so here are some other nuggets of information:

• My name is Lewis
• I am 22 years old (don't you just hate it when people say "years young")

I think that is enough for the moment. Let me tell you why I started this blog off, and hopefully carry on until I have finished the task in hand. No need to groan, I know every second blog that pops up online at the moment is a life changing task, one which sees people eat every different type of potato, or have a milkshake from every single McDonald's restaurant. Well, if I am going to be honest, this task is not going to change my life and it certainly will not influence my life in anyway.

I have always been a movie fan, I love the idea of movies, I love the publicity around movies, I love the process that movie makers go through, I love the award seasons that reward the movies, I even love the idea of finding that one movie which can be called "the one", but the only thing I seem to have a problem with is actually watching movies. I would say, that on average, I watch a film or two a month, and they are normally very new films or one I have seen a lot of times before.

This leads me then onto the task. Around three or four years ago a book was released, 1001 Movies To Watch Before You Die, and these books always fascinate me, as people buy them and then just ignore them. They flick through, commenting that they have seen that one, and then it ends up on a book shelf with tatty copies of the Highway Code and Martina Cole novels. Well I want to change this, I want to watch all of the 1001 movies. I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but I feel it will be enjoyable. Unlike many different task-blogs, I will not be setting a time limit, as I haven't got the time or money to set limits, but I will make a promise that I shall not go over 10 years. This sounds like a long time, but this works out roughly at 2 movies a week, which is a massive leap for somebody who does not watch many movies.

Now I want to watch all the movies, and this means that I will also watch any movies added to subsequent editions of the book, so altogether 1068 movies. There is a link to the list of movies at this site: http://www.listology.com/flogged/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-you-die, which I will be working from, as well as from the original book. Now the official start date of this mega movie marathon 10 year task will be Friday 26th March, the start of my Easter holiday at Uni and also the due date of my last essay.

If you are wondering how I will pick which movies to watch and in which order, then I shall be using a random number generator, which is available via http://www.random.org/. The number that is given will correspond to the list on the link I provided above.

I hope this explains the reasoning and the task in enough detail. And for anyone that may of read that, but I am not hopeful, the first movie I will be watching is number 984, which is The Piano Teacher, a French film which I have personally never heard of before.

Thank you again for reading!