#12: Start a journal (wherein the author takes pleasure in small victories)

Okay, so this one is a bit of a 'gimme'...the original list only said 'START a journal', so after having completed two entries, I'm calling this one a success.

I have to thank my mother for making this one possible, because if she hadn't so serendipitously purchased me a journal for Christmas, this probably would have lingered for months in the 'Easy things that require very little effort to complete but somehow aren't getting crossed off' pile.

I was hesitant to add this 'thing' to the list, because my forays into personal journaling as a child were so painfully self-aware and self-impressed; I remember very clearly sitting on my bed at age 11, chronicling the very torrid events of my middle-schooler life in such a way that, if ever my diary were to be found by future generations, I would be remembered on-par with Anne Frank. I don't think anyone had really explained to me what actually happened during the Holocaust, or else I was just so wrapped up in the daily goings-on of play-ground romances that I thought they were of equal importance. Not sure which.

Anyway, this go-around has already has proved interesting; yesterday's entry was a summation of my thoughts about President Obama's innauguration. Again I found myself slipping into a style and metre that was way too self-conscious of who might be reading my 'prophetic prose' in some distant future, but I'm working on that.

#58: Watch all of AFI's Top 100 movies (wherein the author begins to doubt herself)

So, here it is, a few weeks after my first post, and I have completed a grand total of one 'thing'...which was making list and posting it. Hmmm...this may prove harder than I first imagined.

In light of my need to begin crossing things off my list, I started reviewing some of my 'things'. Luckily, there are many which I believe I can complete in the coming few weeks, although undoubtedly there are some that will take months, if not the 1001 days to complete.

One of the 'things' that I am most looking forward to is #58 'Watch all of AFI's Top 100 movies'. Some of you may know that I am an amateur-amateur-amateur film buff, and really enjoy watching movies and retaining the useless array of trivia associated with them. I consider myself to know a fair amount about mainstream American cinema (and a tiny bit about its non-mainstream and non-American counterparts), so I was surprised to find that I had only seen 26 of the top 100.

Here now is the list of top 100 films that I have not seen, arranged in alphabetical (ie. not ranked) order:


12 Angry Men
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
A Night at the Opera
All About Eve
All the President's Men
American Graffiti
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Ben-Hur
Blade Runner
Bringing Up Baby
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Casablanca
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City Lights
Do the Right Thing
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
Easy Rider
Goodfellas
High Noon
In the Heat of the Night
Intolerance
It Happened One Night
Jaws
King Kong
Lawrence of Arabia
M-A-S-H
Midnight Cowboy
Modern Times
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Nashville
Network
On the Waterfront
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Platoon
Psycho
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Rocky
Shane
Some Like It Hot
Sophie's Choice
Spartacus
Sullivan's Travels
Sunrise
Sunset Blvd.
Swing Time
Taxi Driver
The African Queen
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Deer Hunter
The French Connection
The General
The Gold Rush
The Graduate
The Grapes of Wrath
The Last Picture Show
The Maltese Falcon
The Philadelphia Story
The Searchers
The Silence of the Lambs
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Wild Bunch
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tootsie
Unforgiven
West Side Story
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

As I watch these films (and I have already set about my research assistant, Mr. Meneer, to downloading as many of these as possible), I'll post my thoughts and update the list of "seen/unseen". I'd love to hear comments from anyone who has seen any of these films and any recommendations as to which I should watch first.

For the full AFI Top 100 list, see here.