I started the Cinematic Century project I just recently finished because I felt like I wasn’t getting the opportunity to talk about older movies. And, I ended up having a blast with it. Revisiting movies that I love, throughout the history of the medium, and really experiencing the evolving art-form of cinema became one of my favorite things I did on this site, so I knew that I would have to find some new movie-based project to take its place. And, I had quite a few options. By the end of Cinematic Century I realized that I had talked quite a bit about American films, and considered doing something that kind of opened itself to more international movies, like trying to tackle the Criteron Collection. But, that proved a little too daunting, and perhaps likely to cause burnout discussing movies that were interesting, but maybe not the most fun to talk about. I also considered trying to do something with the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, but that didn’t really help my whole American-centric problem.

So, I’ve settled on something that seems like the perfect compromise. I’m going to begin making my way through the various 1,001 Movies to Watch Before You Die lists, which at this point have reached 1,222 movies in total. It’s maybe a less official list, but it’s a nice mix of foreign films, arthouse, populist blockbusters, and everything in between. And, falling into my same system as the Bat Signal posts, I’ll be randomizing the whole thing, so that each week we hop around through the history of cinema, going through multiple different genres, countries, and eras of film, hoping to gain an appreciation for the entire medium. So, starting next week we start crossing movies off the Bucket List, and I hope you’ll join me.