Film Listography: A Life in Movie Lists

A few months ago I stumbled upon the book Listography: Your Life in Lists by Lisa Nola in Urban Outfitters and after flicking through the compilation of lists to fill out I decided that I would one day buy it. Fast forward to a recent trip to Manchester's Trafford Centre, where me and my friends Leigh-Anne and Rosita found a more specialised edition of that Listography book, one focusing on films. Needless to say I didn't walk away from Waterstones planning to one day buy that book. No, I walked out with a plastic bag swinging at my side.

Film Listography: A Life in Movie Lists is a collection of 71 film-related lists to fill out with an additional 11 blank lists for you to customise yourself. The topics range from the usual Favourite Films, Directors and Actors to the much more specific 'film characters that remind you of someone you know', 'unforgettable death scenes' and 'quotes you'll never forget'. Each List contains 20 lines, but I plan on using my neatest, smallest handwriting to allow room at least double that as I continue to broaden my film catalogue.

As an ongoing series on this blog I plan on filling out these lists publicly on here. For every list that I begin I will create post on here explaining why certain films were chosen and why others weren't. I have decided, as I am nowhere near having watched enough films to finitely complete each list, that I will for now limit each list to ten entries. This will allow each one to grow as I continue to watch films daily. The lists will also be updated on the Lists Page of my Letterboxd account.

I plan on uploading my first List later today, and encourage anyone reading this to seek out Film Listography, or any of Lisa Nola's other books as they really are a great purchase.

Monday Trailer: Coven

For my first Monday Trailer post in quite some time I have something a little different; the 6th teaser trailer for the third season of American Horror Story, Coven.

American Horror Story: Coven

Evil Fairies and Outlaws

So, after an unplanned two month hiatus from blogging I finally returned this week. My break was due to a series of events and transitions that followed my finishing uni, including Graduation! I now have a very official piece of paper that tells me that I have a BA Hons in Film Studies with Creative Writing, and I'll be sure to post some photos from the day next week.

In the time that's passed since I last posted on here properly I've made a few decisions about how I want to manage this site. I'm planning on mixing up the kinds of posts that publish here to include more than just reviews, something that will hopefully allow me to keep a consistent output of posts as I never want to find myself leaving the kind of gaps between posts as I did during the last few months. I've got lots planned and I intend to keep my word and push myself to make this blog the best that it can be. 

A change that will begin right away, with this post, is that my Pins of the Week posts will now be entirely film-centric, something that I believe I tried in my last Pinterest post. As I'm sure you will have noticed from my Monthly Recap posts I watch an incredibly high number of films, and because of this many films that I have enjoyed go unmentioned on here. While the changes to the content I post will help to amend this I think that these weekly image based posts are the perfect way to draw attention to films that have a particular aesthetic quality that I've enjoyed, or simply show you some of my favourite films and characters.

You can find my Pinterest here.

What Maisie Knew

Let's talk for a moment about film trailers. Three minute promotional wonders that are rather notorious for making bad films look good, for showing all the best bits and leaving few surprises for the full film. This fact is no secret and unfortunately it has transformed me, and I'm sure many others, into something of a trailer cynic. Whenever I watch a trailer for a film that looks even remotely good I generally have to step back and allow for the fact that there's a good chance it won't be as great as I am being led to believe. As a result of all of this I resigned myself to the fact that What Maisie Knew would not be as good as I wanted it to be, that the trailer was exciting me with two actors of whom I am very fond and a cute little girl. I am happy to tell you that on this fine occasion my cynicism was misplaced, on this occasion the film not only lived up to the trailer, it surpassed it.

What I Watched In August '13

68 films in total.

5 of these films were re-watches.

What I Watched in July '13

52 films in total.

2 of these films were re-watches.

The June 100 ...or What I Watched in June '13

Any regular readers will notice that I've been missing from here for an entire month, which was due to a number of things. First of all I moved out of my Uni house, which was a very long process which involved numerous 100 mile trips between Uni in Lancashire and my home in Shropshire. Then there is the fact that immediately after moving home I worked a total of 114.5 hours over 14 days and on top of this I took on a challenge set by Letterboxd community member Cinebro, The June 100.

The June 100 was a challenge to watch 100 films over the thirty days of June, with only two rules: none of the films could be re-watches and each film had to be over an hour in length. I won't lie, continuing this challenge after taking on so many shifts at work left me a little exhausted, but on Sunday the 30th I completed the challenge with 22 minutes of June remaining.

Here's my breakdown of this mammoth month of films.