100 movies

The AFI has compiled several lists of "100 Best" films. In 1997 they published their list of "100 Best Movies", then in 2007 they updated that list with a 10th anniversary edition. David & I found out about this list because his mom had it on her refrigerator when we visited. As we went through the list, we had seen several of the movies, but probably not as many as we should have. We decided when we got home to start watching the movies on this list, from #100 all the way to #1. We plan to watch the movies we've already seen again, together. If we watch one movie a week, it will take us about 2 years to see the entire list. There will be weeks we miss, like when we're on vacation or visiting family, but hopefully we can complete the list in about 2 years. I'll try to do a weekly post documenting our progress.

If you'd like to check out the list, you can register on the AFI site and download the list, or you can go here. What I like about the AFI site is that they have other lists too, and you can access those as well. Let's say you like animated films, or science fiction, you can look at a least specifically for that genre. I think we'll venture into other lists provided by the AFI once we've viewed the top 100.

Last night, we watched Ben Hur. Neither of us had seen it before and we both enjoyed it. I am known in my family to be the one that can't stay awake, no matter how good a movie is, and last night I finally pulled out my knitting to work on while I watched. I promise, my falling asleep is NO indication of the quality of a movie, I fall asleep easily, and while I hoped to watch the movie without doing another task, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Knitting keeps me awake, so I fell back on that. The movie really was great. Charlton Heston was an amazing actor; the chariot race was great. Film has come a long way in 50 years, but there were things that just seemed a lot better in this film. To think that everything had to be acted out, or done with miniatures, is pretty impressive. In our days of computer graphics, to think of some of the amazing scenes in this film being accomplished without the technology is just - WOW!

Up next: Toy Story