Let’s have some movie fun, we haven’t done that in a while.
Go watch the video on this page. I know, it’s a year old, but I’m just now getting to it.
Watch it all the way through, full-speed, i.e. don’t pause it. As best you can, mentally keep track of what you recognize and what you don’t.
Go, don’t read any further until you’ve done that. No cheating!
Now, go here. This link has the same video, but it also has the list of movies whose shots are included (click on “Read More”). Copy the list into whatever you use to write words (Word, Pages, text editor, whatever), and then highlight or separate or do something to the ones you recognized and the ones you didn’t.
The obvious split is the one I just mentioned — how many did you recognize and how many did you not?
I recognized 69, missing 32. (I know, it says 100 years, 100 shots, but there are 101 movies in it. Reason #1857983 not to trust anything on the interwebs.)
But the more interesting stat to me is a subset — how many movie shots did you recognize that you haven’t seen, and how many did not recognize that you have seen?
Of the 69 shots I recognized, I haven’t seen 15 of the movies. That’s pretty interesting to me; it speaks to the power of visuals and the ubiquity of movies in our culture.
Of the 32 shots I didn’t recognize, I’ve seen 4 of the movies. I knew in all four cases I’d seen them, I just couldn’t come up with the movie. I would have gotten one of them with a few seconds longer, but the other three I would never have gotten.
If you want a list of films to watch, this list is a great place to start. There are a lot of great movies not on the list (half of my list isn’t, e.g.), but almost all of these are worth watching. (As always, know yourself and do your due diligence; some of these are going to offend your sensibilities, so know what the rating, why it’s rated that, etc., before you watch it.)