A Disaster of a challenge

One of my personal challenges is films with natural disasters as the main theme. Riding on the back of the Tsunami film The Impossible I thought this might be a fun challenge to do.  I mean there’s 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and Deep Impact, although all rather cheesy, they are big budget offerings of natural disasters; plus I do own two of them. 

 

However that was where the fun stopped, as much as I enjoyed The Impossible, my search for “new” films didn’t really turn up anything decent. I came across quite a few low budget made-for-TV films which all looked terrible. I did find one Chinese film; Aftershock which shows the 1976 Tangshan earthquake and is only a couple of years old, so that is worth buying.

There is also the 1974 Earthquake starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, but even this film doesn’t inspire me in this challenge. After watching Post Impact starring Dean Cain, which is a truly horrible TV film, poor script and even poorer acting, throw in some terrible CGI and it was just disastrous viewing. 

 

Poseidon has been suggested as well, but I don’t really see that as a natural disaster, although it’s a rogue wave capsizing an ocean liner; it’s not a major disaster like the Tsunami of 2004, a major earthquake or a massive solar flare which is going to destroy Earth!

So I’m left to watch films I’ve seen before, which include; Knowing, Seeking a Friend for the end of the world and Armageddon. I’ve got 9 films worth watching I think, maybe I’ll stumble across a couple more, but I doubt I will be that lucky! I really can’t see myself getting past the 15 films required for the challenge. I’ll just be glad when this is over!

OK. So I'm a little behind on my romance challenge. I'm blaming it on work. Anyway, time to get moving, I have 9 more to see and 8 days to do it,so I really should be viewing not blogging.

Here's my romance films so far for the challenge, in no particular order. I'll rank them at the end of the challenge, however my favourites were Ruby Sparks and Perks of Being a Wallflower.



Planned viewing to complete the challenge includes:

Brief Encounter
Warm Bodies
The Ugly Truth
Say Anything

Any suggestions ???

The February Challenge

The Romance of it all

       

          Half way through the month of love and romance and a diverse selection of films steeped in romance have been viewed in this challenge. It's actually not been a bad challenge so far, I've tried to find a broad selection of romantic films. I'm sure I would have hated the ROM-COM by the end of this month, but making it "Romance" films has allowed me to enjoy the challenge. My favourite film so far is In the Mood for Love, it's rather brilliant. I've actually really enjoyed them all so far, I give it a year has been the surprise; I really wasn't expecting it to be any good, but it was pretty good. Going to find a couple more "odd" romance films before the end of the month; I've done my zombie ROM-com so I can skip Shaun of the dead,  though I have a couple in mind.

My romantic films so far .....

Ste's films....

Martin's films....

Tony's films.......

Well that's January done. 20 films plus a few off my personal challenges as well. I'm now well into this project and really enjoying it. So far I've watched films I'd probably not have bothered with in the past with mixed results at times, but if you watch enough movies you'll always get some bad ones to go with the good.

The reason I agreed to take part was not only to increase the number of films I watched but also to make sure I didn't just sit and watch films I've see a hundred times before (I'm looking at you Serenity) Instead I wanted to start to watch films from genres I'd not usually go for, or catch up on the films I've been meaning to watch for years.

So we are away, and I've seen plenty of good and bad films, and a few average ones. My top 5 and bottom 5 are below (from cinema viewings only) and of course all my project can be followed on letterboxd.com. This has been a great idea, I'm really looking forward to the end of the year so we can review it all and I think we'll be delighted with the results if we keep going like this. Now for Feb and the Romance of it All challenge, 14 films about romance, and I need to do 11 personal challenge films to get me caught up on the 10 a month average we need for that.

So here are my top 5 films from January, best 1st.

And the worst 3, worst 1st.

The Film Project - January Figures

THE SCOREBOARDS

So all films seen at a CINEWORLD using an unlimited card.

Any Format for the next 2.

January - my first month of the Project!

The January challenge was a fairly easy affair with a heavy schedule at the cinema, and a couple of films at the local horror festival; Grimmfest. A number of the unlimited films populated some of the personal challenges as well, so in all it was a good month for most, well three of us.
Myself, Martin and Steve all managed the January challenge, Martin completing his 20th film on the last night of the month, with the infamous Movie 43!

Personally for me it's proved an excellent way for me to manage what I watch. Allowing me to view a broader spectrum of films; which is exactly what I wanted the project to achieve. I watched a number of superb documentaries, a couple of "classic" films and some not so good films, but then again that's always going to happen.

What I've also enjoyed is the planning, believe me; it's not that easy; it's now a case of can I save that film for this challenge or next month or the month after that?
But I've watched a fair few films from TV as well, yes my collection may be big but I still manage to miss things. Like Fracture with Ryan Gosling or Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks, and I thoroughly enjoyed  both of them.

So as to my top 5 films of January at the cinema are they were:

Django Unchained I had to see twice, it was so good, also the soundtrack is superb.



The worst two films:

Movie 43 was possible the worst film I have seen in 5 years, even Texas Chainsaw was better; and that's saying something.

Anyway I reckon not much this year will be worse than these two, but you never know.




So the February challenge is "The Romance of it all" , 14 romance films. Sounds easy but I also need to add a couple of personal challenge films in as well, once it starts to slip it could get quite difficult!