This week someone sent me an annoying link on Facebook. Yes, this is hardly news but it wasn’t for a stupid cartoon game, nor was it for some app that my retro (possibly geriatric) phone wouldn’t (couldn’t) support. It was a list. You’ve seen them. How Many Counties Have You Been To? How Many of the BBC Best-Reads Have You Read? How Many of These ‘Naughty’ Things Have You Done? The list of lists goes on.

So when I read the first few words ‘How Many…’ my soul died a little. How many what? How Many Colours Do I Know? How Many Different Haircuts Have I Had? How Many List Quizzes Have I Taken? It saddens me that the answer to the last is quite high. I love a good list!

But no, this one was How Many of the AFI’s (American Film Institute) Top 100 Films Have You Seen? I was intrigued, more about what the top 100 were, then whether or not I’d seen many of them. Intrigued enough to take the quiz and see how many I’d seen.

0

Zip

Zero

Zilch

None

Well, I’ll admit I was surprised. I’m not the biggest film fan but still. That’s a little embarrassing. I don’t watch many films. I like character driven plots and I just don’t think you get that with films. Show me a list of the top 100 TV shows and I won’t be missing many. Except The Wire. I just didn’t get that show.

I’ve always had gaps in my film knowledge. I’m only 28 and never bothered watching the classics. Both myself and my mother are named for Gone With the Wind and I have no idea of the plot.

So I decided to catch up. Catch up on nearly 100 years of classic film. 87 years to be precise. I made the decision to use the Oscars as a guideline. I’d watch every every that won Best Film at the Oscars. But a look at the list showed a great number of ‘classic’ films I’d heard of that never actually won. They were, however, nominated.

So one link on Wikipedia led to another and another and before I knew it I’d made the decision to watch all the films that have been nominated for an Oscar. Ever. Obviously not in all categories.

Because THAT would be an impossible task.

I stuck with the big 6. Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

That’s a lot of films so I had to be methodical. Start at the beginning and ‘complete’ a year before moving on. The Best Supporting Actor/Actress awards weren’t added til 1936 so I had a few years with only 4 categories.

I made a spreadsheet. Looking at it made me realise I’m going to be dedicating years to this. My boyfriend is especially thrilled.

Hopefully between my Amazon Prime account, Sky Go and online streaming I’ll succeed.

I must be mad.