Film 2019 - With Ed Boff

(Disclaimer: I chose the name of this blogging series before the news that the Beeb were dropping their Film 20XX series.  I am a bit sad to see that long-running institution lapse, I wasn't a regular viewer, but any well made resource keeping people interested in the world of cinema is something to be cherished.  Keeping the name though!)

So as you've likely gathered by now, I see a lot of movies, and many of those I do so at the cinema.  Indeed, the last few years I've been making great use of my Odeon Limitless Card, getting a lot of bang for my buck, probably even more this year with the newly restored Odeon Leicester Square.  Also, I have a few more cinema memberships; Lifetime membership to the Prince Charles Cinema (which has paid itself back so many times since I first got it), and BFI Champion Membership (which comes in very handy booking for the London Film Festival, my main staycation each year).  Thing is though, I realised recently that despite this, I don't actively keep track of exactly how often I go, where I go to see them, all that sort of thing.  So for this year, I decided to try as an experiment over the course of the year to keep a proper spreadsheet of my cinema visits, and I'm going to use that as the basis of a bunch of blogposts on here.

Let's set a few little rules for how I'm going to try this truly epic quest...

1. Probably doesn't need to be said, but to be clear, this is only going to count films I have to go out and see, stuff watched of disc/streaming at home (or at a friend's house) is not going to count.
2. Film club viewings and such count, as long as they are publicly advertised.  There are some film licences that specify private group viewings only, so if the event is one of those, I won't count it.  I don't want someone to face the wrath of the copyright ogres.
3. If it's a marathon screening, like one of the Prince Charles Cinema's all-nighter events, then even if it was a single ticket, I'm going to count the separate features as individual entries to the list.
4. If it's a short film showcase, like those shown at various festivals, I'll count the event as one entry on the list.
5. If it's an event held in a cinema, like Mark Kermode's Live in 3D nights, or something along those lines, that will count too.
6. If it's not at a proper cinema, but the event is strongly cinema based, like a film-based pub quiz, I'm counting that too.

If any of these don't seem fair to you, I invoke the law of "yah boo sucks, my list, my rules, nahnahnahnah booboo".  On this blog, I'm going to try and have weekly updates on here, giving a quick look at what I've been to see, along with any other thoughts about the cinema experience.  I won't do the most in-depth reviews/dissections of the films, except if it's something that really deserves that treatment, they'll be one or two paragraph affairs for the most part.  I'll also occasionally talk about the venues themselves if there's something to say there; I'm going to try at least one different cinema to my usual haunts each month, somewhere special that might make a fair recommendation, or at least good reading.

I'm interested to both see what final totals will be, and get an idea of what effect having an organised list will have on my movie-going habits.  One of the reasons why I'm not doing a top-ten blog this year is that I realised how much I've missed and I need to catch-up on in the coming months, so it will be interesting to see if this will make me keep more up to date.  So with that in mind, let's round things off by doing a little glimpse of what's coming up in the year I'm most looking forward to catching on the big screen (well, what I'm most interested in that currently have trailers out!), and I'll see you back here on the 7th of January, for my first weekly blog.