Ansen's list (8000 and counting)
Newsweek critic David Ansen began compiling his list of every movie he saw when he was 12. It is now 146 handwritten pages with almost 8000 movies. The essay is a little list-y but fun to read, a sort of time-lapse photography of the last five decades.
6 comments:
Geez, and I thought my list of 1,781 and counting was impressive!
I used to cut out pictures from movie mags and tv guide and paste them in my journal, but I certainly don't have all of them! I do, however, have them all in an Access DB :)
Believe me, Shannon, 1781 is very impressive! I've never kept a list, but I used to go through the Matlin book and circle the ones I'd seen.
On a timely note, I have Ed Naha's book "From Screen to Scream" an encyclopedic compilation of close to 1,000 horror/sci fi flicks made prior to its publication in 1975.
Every time I see one of the movies listed, I put a gold star next to the entry in the book. So far, I'm up to about 230. It's not classic movie-making, but I see a lot of famous actors early in their careers. Like Roy Scheider in Curse of the Living Corpse or Joan Crawford in the silent The Unknown with Lon Chaney (she was hot back then!)
Comforting to hear someone else has a list. Since I started mine in 1998, it's on an Excel spreadsheet. I think the notebook is much more romantic. Thanks for the link!
I do hold onto my notebooks with my completely illegible notes on the movies I review. It isn't for any historic purpose; I guess that's my version of a list.
Post a Comment