What's the point of this?

Short answer: There isn't one, really. At least not one that means anything to anyone other than myself.

Long answer: I've been writing about movies on the Internet in one fashion or another for a very long time. I've also been collecting movies for a very long time. At some point - it feels like only a few years ago, but then again maybe I've always been on the downhill in my mind - I started writing less and buying more. The habit exploded circa 2014, when a sudden desire to protect my future viewing whims against the fluctuating availability of streaming video coupled with a genuine research project that, among other things, allowed me to purchase a great number of discs on the government's dime caused my collection to distend past the bounds of the rational. My collection is in fact too large to keep in my house at this moment, which is why I currently rent a storage closet near my workplace in which to keep them all, boxed up and alphabetized. But as with any collectible, the question becomes: I have them. What do I DO with them?

Enter: an idea, a way to maybe break through my sluggish writing habits while justifying the already-sunken cost. I'm gonna watch everything I own and write about it, film by film. The idea is to get myself back into the habit of writing regularly again, because I miss being able to do it without it feeling like the hardest thing in the world. I'm getting older, I'm getting slower, I'm getting dumber. Doing this as a way to keep myself sharp, to stave off encroaching lethargy... well, why not? It could work.

(Why don't I just do this on my Letterboxd feed, those of you who know me might be asking? The answer's twofold. One: Given that this is devoted to my collection, it seems appropriate to give it a dedicated venue - a shrine to the collection, as it were. And two: Porn. Letterboxd doesn't like porn, and my adoration of Vinegar Syndrome means I own a number of films I can't talk about on that site.)

I've actually attempted this project once before, on my now-disused Tumblr (it was called From the Shelf then, because I couldn't come up with a better title, and I still can't - the title above, or at least the portion before the colon, was contributed by the great Kent Beeson). The collection still numbered in the mid-three figures back then. As of now, I'm in the neighborhood of 2500 titles. If I were to watch and write about one film every day, this blog would remain active for around seven years - and that's assuming the collection remains static. Given the pace at which I tend to progress through things, plus allowing for the fact that of course I'm going to buy more stuff, that timeline starts to look more like twenty years. This is a long haul. If you want to join me, well... I wouldn't mind the company.