The End of Watch This

A few of you … ok, maybe a bit more than a few … knew Allison and I had been watching all of the American Film Institutes’s Top 100 movies in a year, publicly throughout Cincinnati and always for free. It was partly to see if we could do it, partly to stop people whining about there being “nothing to do in Cincinnati,” and partly to spend some more time together - and ended up being a massive citywide project that brought hundreds of people together. What a win.

We started exactly one year ago today, not knowing if we would ever finish…

In fact, we did. We screened our last movie (Citizen Kane) on December 18th and put up our final post yesterday - the last day of the year. Here’s a bit:

This last year has been full of more fun and more frustration than I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I loved every minute of it … I can say that now, looking back, knowing full well than when things went wrong I wanted to pound my head into the wall so hard that I began to laugh inappropriately at films like The Deer Hunter and Schindler’s List. Still, it was an experience like none other.

I loved watching these films. I loved watching these films for the films and experiencing them with new perceptions. I loved watching these films with friends, new friends, old friends, new friends that have since become old friends (the many many of you.) And I loved watching these films with Allison. A girl I barely knew when this began who I now live with and can’t imagine my live without. Doing this was insane, irrational and often time just plane idiotic, and she was there with me for every moment. It wasn’t the crazy project of one lone man – it was the cazy project of two crazy people, and somehow that made it all the more romantic.

And with that, a win. If you want to check out exactly what we said about the 100 best movies of all time, you can, now and always, go to WatchThisBlog.com.

I’m not sure exactly what we’ll be doing now in 2011 - a movie club or some screenings of really terrible movies have all been kicked around - but I’ll certainly let you know when we get there!