What is the IMDb top 250 challenge?
IMDb, short for the Internet Movie Database, is a popular online website chock-full of information related to all things TV and cinema. There, you can find information on movies, TV shows, actors, production crew, and fun tidbits of trivia about all the like. Two of my favorite extra features of this website, though, are (1) their top 250 movie best movies list, and (2) the always interesting and lively message boards -- I'll delve into those a little deeper some other time. IMDb compiles this famous "Top 250" based on a ranking system in which registered users rate films on a scale of 1-10 and those that are most popular with the highest average rankings are at the top of the list. There is in fact a mathematical formula to all of it, but we don't really need to get that far into it do we?
The top 250 challenge consists of an individual taking on the task of watching all 250 films, usually within a specified amount of time. For me, my challenge begins this very moment on July 30, 2012 at 12:58 AM central time and will end exactly one year from today. I have pulled IMDB's top 250 list as of today, and because the list is always constantly changing, the one copied from today will be the one that I will continue to use throughout my journey. Hopefully, by July 30, 2013 I will have made it through the challenge and successfully completed and blogged about every single film on that list. Wish me luck!
A Little About Me
I'm not the first person to do this challenge, and I definitely will not be the last. But as with each person's taste in foods or fashion, everybody has their own brand of what they like. And things such as age, experience, and gender factor into an individual's taste in films. I am a 21 year old college student living in a very hot and humid state in the Midwest. Currently, it is summer break and, for the first summer in quite a long time, I have decided to take some time off from school and work and just have a little me time. Something that has become a definite hobby and passion of mine during this break of mine has been movies. I love all types of movies, and I will pretty much watch anything if you ask me to. In particular though, I am a major fan of psychological thrillers, classic horror, and of course the superhero films -- I think it's something about the suspense. Even though these are my bread and butter, I have to admit I am a sucker for the occasional chick flick, and I'll be the first in line to see that raunchy Adam Sandler comedy, no matter how terrible it looks.
On a regular day, I am a very busy person; I wake up around 6:30 in the morning, go to work, go to class, eat dinner, and then go to more classes -- I typically do not make it home until 9 o'clock in the evening... and then it is homework time. With this busy schedule, I have definitely fallen behind on recreational things such as watching movies and there is so much out there that I have been meaning to see, but have never gotten the chance to. I'm the kind of person that is very determined and dedicated to what they do: once I am invested in something I have to finish it. So with this challenge I am not just challenging myself to watch really awesome movies (how hard!), but it is also a challenge for me to remember to find time to myself. That is what I love about movies: they are essentially a momentary escape from ordinary word. For that 120 minutes you are sitting down and watching a movie, you are enveloped in the storyline of the characters and you are not worrying about doing the dishes or paying the bills. I find movies to be therapeutic in a sense, and hopefully, in my last semester of college this fall, these films will help me work through the hours of monotonous reading and studying.
I cannot wait to get my journey started, so let's begin!
-Heidi
