Browse: Home / I Haven’t Seen It, Because It Begins With “T”

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here
  • Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024
Once, a librarian knew a movie wasn't mine. Because it started with "B," and I was on "D" at the time.

I Haven’t Seen It, Because It Begins With “T”

Posted By Gillianren on September 24, 2014 in Short Articles | 8 Responses

I’ve talked a bit about my library project. Referenced it in passing. However, I haven’t talked about it much here, and I’m not sure I’ve ever explained it fully. At least, not to my readers. My friends, and the librarians, know about it, but I’m not sure even most of them know why I’m doing it. Then again, some days, I’m not sure myself.

What I am doing, in a nutshell, is watching my library’s entire DVD collection in alphabetical order, at least watching everything that looks interesting. If I’m reading my past reviews correctly, I wasn’t reviewing them very reliably at first. I seem to have started with Angels With Dirty Faces, though that can’t be right, because there are a lot of movies before it in the catalog. At any rate, that puts me in February of 2007 when I began. I was still skipping forward on Netflix in those days, and it took until around Bad Day at Black Rock before I got really regular about writing reviews. We’re almost eight years on, and I just this week dumped a bunch of stuff on my list starting with “science.” So, I don’t know, three or four years to go?

The obvious question is also the hardest to explain. Why am I doing this? This is insane, and I know it. Ten years or more of movie-watching? Watching such disparate stuff as The Last Man on Earth and A Fistful of Dollars? Why would you do that? Yes, okay, this is how I saw The Godfather. (All three movies in one day, which for the record I do not recommend as the way to watch it for the first time.) On the other hand, it’s how I saw The Man From Elysian Fields. Doogal, even. And that doesn’t even get into the made-for-TV stuff, because I’m watching that, too.

So yeah, okay, I actually am crazy—and that actually is part of it. For one thing, when I started this project, my boyfriend was in Iraq. I needed very much to think about something that wasn’t the news. Plenty of people were telling me that the last thing I should be doing was watching the news at all. For another thing, in the years since then but before my son was born, the project put stability in my day. Every day (I’m down to five a week now, and I still spend a lot of time playing catch-up), I watch a movie and write a review. That was what my day involved. Every day when I woke up, I knew I would be doing that. And the nice thing was that I didn’t even have to think about movies I wanted to see. The alphabet provided them.

Another curious thing I’ve discovered is that, when I’m adding movies to my Netflix queue, I’m not good at remembering movies I’ve always meant to see. Movies I want to see in that moment, sure. But ones I’ve meant to see since 1987? Not so much. I’ve looked over those early reviews, and while there were movies like The Seven Samurai in them, you know, I didn’t get to The Godfather. Or even the six other Kurosawa films I’ve been meaning to watch for years.

In many ways, this has been a voyage of discovery for me. Did you know, for example, that there are an awful lot of French movies starting with the letter “C”? It took me thirteen months to get through the letter “M” alone. The letter “S” takes up about five percent of the catalog, and about ten percent of that is things starting with one of only about a dozen words. (“Scooby.” “Spongebob.” “Song.” “Science.” Like that.) Since our library’s software no longer automatically sorts alphabetically over five hundred items, I now know the DVD collection better than anyone else, including people who work there. Because, yes, I now go through the catalog manually when I hit a new letter. It’s a pain. But after all this work, I can’t bring myself to stop now. Did I mention crazy?

Posted in Short Articles | Tagged alphabet, library, project

About the Author

gillianmadeira@hotmail.com'

Gillianren

Gillianren is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a daughter up for adoption. She fills her days by watching her local library system’s DVD collection in alphabetical order, watching everything that looks interesting. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the ’60s and ’70s. She has a Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/gillianren

Related Posts

It Ends With “Z”→

Dissolve On (9/3/2017-9/9/2017)→

This is a way lower res image than I will be allowed to get away with at the new site.Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer→

Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    38515 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    31097 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    30499 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    27717 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    23589 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • The truth is FAR out there.

    The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here

    December 6, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • This is a way lower res image than I will be allowed to get away with at the new site.

    Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer

    December 5, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE

    December 4, 2024 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    December 3, 2024 / Greta Taylor
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024

    December 2, 2024 / The Ploughman

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!