A Hundred Random Pictures — Introduction

#0: “Grease” (1978)

directed by Randal Kleiser
screenplay by Bronte Woodward
starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John and Stockard Channing

Sometime early in 2023, I got bored. I’d just gotten myself into a rather comfy position that paid well and allowed me ample free time to pursue my own pursuits — a sweet deal as far as everyone was concerned. But that relative contentment at work was counterbalanced by profound boredom outside it: no longer was I able to meet friends for lunch or dinner whenever I wanted, but my life was also becoming something of a cultural desert, with absolutely no time for me to read or write or broaden my horizons. It was all getting rather pointless and dry.

One Thursday night, I found myself watching “Grease” with my parents. Over the years, my mother’s made no secret of her love for this movie: she’s watched it at least five times and it’s still something of a comfort movie for her, and when I saw it on Netflix, I decided to find out what all the fuss about the movie was about. The end result was rather lacklustre — stellar songs and chemistry between the co-leads surrounded by treacly crap and rather misogynistic storytelling — but it made me realise just how many people loved movies, loved talking about movies too. Then I thought: gee, maybe I should watch more movies and tell everyone about the cool new discoveries I’ve made along the way as well!

And that is exactly what happened. Every Thursday I’d look up a movie I’d never watched before — mostly on Amazon Prime or rips on YouTube, but also Netflix or a visit to an actual cinema — and I’d watch the whole thing, then post about my watch on the Gram. There was never any rhyme or reason to my picks, which were usually dictated by availability; the only reason why entry #98 is in that position, for example, is that I couldn’t find a good enough copy of the film online for almost two years. I finished a whole year’s worth of movies and thought that would be that, only to reverse my decision three months later when the craving for more movies became too strong. And now that I have finished two years’ worth of movies, I have watched exactly 100 new movies, and as with everything I find fascinating, I have now decided to inflict all of my newfound knowledge upon you through an interminable series of blogposts.

I should note from the outset that these aren’t going to be reviews: I actually tried writing some back during the early days of my movie-watching project, but the large workload I already had soon put an end to that. In any case, I know too little about the processes of actual filmmaking to say anything constructive, and so I’ve gone for a different approach. Instead of objective appreciations of a film’s merits and demerits, think of the 100 posts that follow to be a catalogue of sorts, filled with random musings that bounce off the content and the form (but mostly the content) of these movies. I am no Slavoj Žižek, so the topics discussed will be both randomly diverse and also extremely repetitive. Perhaps I will talk about the goodness of God, or the depravity of the Beatles. Perhaps there will be discussions about the construction of the Berlin Wall, or the deconstruction of Aubrey Plaza. There will almost certainly be at least one post where I go on a self-pitying rant, although that one will come with a warning beforehand so that you all know to skip that one. I have also adhered to the principle of one entry per director: although I watched quite a bit of Wes Anderson’s filmography during this two-year period, I ended up only choosing one of those films to ruminate upon, so those looking to hear my thoughts on, say, The French Dispatch will sadly be disappointed. Which is a shame, that’s a brilliant film, but (my) rules are (my) rules.

Updates on this series will be infrequent, and based on a schedule commonly referred to as “whenever the writer bloody feels like it”. There is a strong possibility that I will completely abandon this series by the time I get to entry #6, just as I did with my last series of reviews. There is also the strong possibility that some (or many) entries will be shorter than this introduction itself. Who the hell knows? It’s something to try, anyway.

See you soon for my first entry, in which I talk about the intersection between adulthood and childhood. Yes, it’s going to be that kind of blogpost.