Don't call it a comeback...

...I been here for years...

Or something like that. This blog has been dusty, neglected and sort of embarrassing for almost 30 months now, and it's not because I haven't been viciously and voraciously consuming new movies. In fact, by my estimates, I've watched a little over 400 new movies since my last posting below. Unfortunately, between family and work, moving to a new house and having another baby, there simply wasn't time to write about movies. Damn shame. I'm sure it would have made a rich and interesting document to have.

Nevertheless, I'm shaking out the joints and cracking the knuckles now, eager to get back to writing something - anything - in regard to the movies I'm watching. Story goes that I'm on track for a personal best this year watching 400 movies. [Don't ask me what my personal best was prior to this achievement because I haven't always kept track; I'm certain that I've never watched 400 movies in one year.]

As of this posting, at the virtual halfway point of 2007, I've watched 192 movies (24 in theatres and 168 on DVD). A little shy of 200, but I should be able to make up the shortfall by Dec. 31 (second half of the year is usually busier for me as better movies start to pop up in theatres and the Toronto Film Festival rolls in). But more importantly, I'm diving through deep, deep lists of legendary movies that are time-proven to be great and discovering (for the first time) some blistering, extraordinary, breathtaking, intoxicating stuff. Quantity is wonderful...but it's the quality that's been knocking me out.

It's a bit of a Golden Age, to be honest.

Just a sample of the remarkable movies watched and adored in the last 6 months are as follows: The Searchers, Mean Streets, Midnight Cowboy, The General, 3:10 To Yuma, Badlands, Spellbound, The Great Silence, Vanishing Point, The Sting, Porco Rosso, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, Delicatessen, Dr. No, Prairie Home Companion, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; any and all of these could stand up with some of my favorite movies of all time. I'm not sure I've watched this many top-level movies in such a short period before in my life.

I've been tracking most of the new movies daily on Facebook, adding an entry (usually) and dropping 20-30 words on each. But the limitations of this are starting to catch up with me and I'm discovering that I often have more to say on each. I might not write 1,000 on every new movie I find, but this blog is a good way for me to keep track of my initial reactions.

More importantly, I figure that if I can spend 20 minutes a day on Facebook, I can certainly spend at least 10 minutes a day on this blog. Here's hoping.

Godspeed.