Welcome to SM's Movie Cramming Project by me, SM Rosenberg. A semi-professional Jewish nerd trying to catch up on all the cultural touchstone movies I've missed before they go poof from my digital DVR.
DEPARTMENT OF BACKSTORY
This project was started when the Oligarchy of Siblings that I share a YouTube TV subscription with decided that since the YES Network was no longer supported by YouTube TV, it was time to move on with our lives and our dollars in time for Opening Day. (I, who listens to the Yankee games via old school radio and uses YouTube TV primarily for the movie DVR function, voted nay, but in vain.)
So this left me with approximately 300-400 movies in my digital DVR that I had about a month to get through. And thus SM’s Movie Cramming Project was born!
Obviously, this required prioritization. At most, I was going to get to 30-40 movies, which, by my math, is about 10% of the aforementioned ridiculous number of movies.
VOILA, A SPREADSHEET
Fortunately, I am systematic even in my vegetation habits, and I’d already been keeping a spreadsheet (sporadically updated, because I’m not THAT systematic) of my DVRed movies, broken down into categories (eg, sci fi, classics, comedies, female-centric, superheroes, etc), and (I’m not joking) color-coded.
Here is that spreadsheet: voila!
[Color-coding key:
Green = have seen, enjoyed (most greens were seen prior to DVR hoarding and to this project)
Bright Green = would watch again anytime
Orange = have not seen
Bright Orange = high priority to watch
Blue = mostly have not seen, available on Netflix (recently added this category while prioritizing)
Yellow = mostly have not seen, available on Amazon (see above)
White = saw this recently and either disliked it or cannot decide if I honestly would recommend it or not
Fuchsia = YouTube TV’s interface tricked me into thinking I had this movie in my DVR but sadly I do not]
Feel free to let me know which other movies here deserve a bright orange!
THE CORONA TWIST
Sometime in the middle of the 2nd week or so of this project, the entire world went bonkers. As by now you know.
What was most salient for me — never mind the working from home, the never leaving my house, the high risk to my parents, the need to suddenly learn how to cook dried beans, the need to make Passover just as I mastered beans and tragically having an entirely useless new skill because NO BEANS ON PASSOVER — what really mattered here was that the Yankees (and indeed, Major League Baseball) shut down, and postponed Opening Day.
Which meant that the Sibling Oligarchy would not be switching streaming services so soon after all. And that, my friends, is what you call a silver lining.
THE BOTTOM LINE
I will be continuing with this project! For as long as I have YouTube TV, which means until things are back to normal enough for the Yankees to be playing again. I am about 25 movies in at this point, and oh god there is SO much more.
Reviews generally go up on my Facebook page, but I’ll be collecting them here in batches of 5 because the algorithm ruins all things. Most reviews there are just a sentence or an observation or two, though occasionally I am moved to write a whole paragraph. I may flesh out some of the briefer reviews when I send them out here; we shall see.
If that sounds like your jam, sign up!
In the meantime, feel free to tell your friends!