Thursday, January 7, 2010

Civilian 2009 Wrap-up and Year-End Stats!


So, having addressed the horror genre (which composed more than half the year's viewing time), I figured it only fair to give credit to the rest of the flicks. Again, all of the films listed below were encountered for the first time from January 1 to December 31, 2009 (i.e. no repeat viewings were eligible), with my top picks denoted with an asterisk.

2009 TOTALS:
472 films, 276 1st time views, 289 horror, 38 cinema

(2008 Totals: 384, 278, 226, 39)
(2007 Totals: 409, 284, 260, 40)


TOP 10 2009 CIVILIAN RELEASES
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)*
Hurt Locker, The (2008)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
JCVD (2008)
Gomorrah (2008)
No Impact Man (2009)*
Not Quite Hollywood (2008)
Star Trek (2009)
Up (2009)*
Wrestler, The (2008)

TOP 20 HOME VIEWING DISCOVERIES (CIVILIAN)
Amateur (1994)*
Brick (2005)*
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
Desperate Living (1977)
Female Trouble (1974)
In Bruges (2008)
Juno (2008)
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, The (2007)
Lives of Others, The (2006)
Michael Clayton (2007)
Naked Kiss, The (1964)
Not Quite Hollywood (2008)
Pervert! (2005)
Primer (2004)
Simple Men (1992)
Streets of Fire (1984)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
Tess (1979)
WALL-E (2008)
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)

HOME VIEWING DISAPPOINTMENTS (CIVILIAN)
Brave One, The (2007)
Dreamgirls (2006)
Mutant Chronicles (2008)
Normal Life (1996)

WORST CIVILIAN VIEW OF 2009
O.C. & Stiggs (1985)

VIEWINGS PER MONTH:
January – 61
February – 9
March – 28
April – 38
May – 48
June – 62
July – 27
August – 40
September – 5
October – 79
November – 28
December – 47

Finally, to fully satisfy my OCD predeliction, I tallied up the views from 2009, to see how things broke down in terms of which years/decades ended up being the main focus of the year. While there was a marked (and predictable) slant towards recent films, it still turned out to be an interesting examination. I'm not sure if this means anything at all, but here's the data for your perusal.

Top viewing year: 2008 (57)
(Not surprising, since many films made in 2007 & 2008 were not released until 2009) But outside of the 2000s, it was nice to see 1970 and 1981 make strong showings with 11 views each.

Views Breakdown by Decade:
1920s - 2
1930s - 8
1940s - 31
1950s - 22
1960s - 53
1970s - 66
1980s - 57
1990s - 36
2000s – 197

Longest streak of seeing at least one film from each year:
2009 – 1955 (I thought was good through 1939, then realized I had missed 1954. Whoops.)

Earliest film watched:
Unholy Three, The (1925)

Double Views of 2009:
Children, The (2008) (3 times)
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
TerrorVision (1986)
Evil Aliens (2005)
Timecrimes (2007)
Donkey Punch (2008)
Wrestler, The (2008)
House of the Devil (2009)
Paranormal Activity (2009)

Most watched directors of 2009:
Waters, John (10)
Fisher, Terence (9)
Castle, William (6)
Hooper, Tobe (6)
Hartley, Hal (5)
Tourneur, Jacques (5)
Browning, Tod (4)
Henenlotter, Frank (4)
Raimi, Sam (4)
Robson, Mark (4)
Allen, Woody (3)
Carreras, Michael (3)
Craven, Wes (3)
Francis, Freddie (3)
Gilling, John (3)
Grinde, Nick (3)
Herzog, Werner (3)
Meyer, Russ (3)
Newfield, Sam (3)
Sharp, Don (3)
Wise, Robert (3)

Whew! Thanks, everybody! Get ready for more fun in 2010...

6 comments:

  1. I hope you didn't watch PRIMER and TIMECRIMES near each other. That might cause ones head to explode.

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  2. What?! No District 9?

    Also, you watched Donkey Punch twice? ... *Donkey Punch*? Granted, I haven't seen the movie (well, I've seen it up to about five minutes past the actual donkey punch), but isn't is supposed to be pretty bad?

    Otherwise, good list! I should probably keep stats like these myself. My movie watching has been in a lull the past month or two, but I would estimate I watched about 150-170 movies this year, most of which were first-timers.

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  3. Well, I was beating you in the early going (mostly because you were so busy with other things in February), but you blew me away in the home stretch. Still, I managed to see 421 films last year, which is respectable. Don't know if I'll be able to repeat that feat, though.

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  4. William - Oddly enough, I did see them within a month of one another. I was chatting up TIMECRIMES and someone asked if I had seen PRIMER yet. Seriously, between those two, time travel seems almost possible...

    Robert - DISTRICT 9 is in my horror rankings - and in the top 20, no less. Fear not. And no, DONKEY PUNCH is one of those movies that seems to have been getting universally "surprisingly good" reviews. Despite its pruient title, it's actually a quite solid little thriller. I'd say it's worth finishing. It's not a *great* film, but it's more than servicable.

    Craig - Hell, yeah. 421 is pretty darn impressive, blows away both my previous years' stats. I had a brief moment after I passed 450 that I thought about shooting for 500, but then realized I'd need to watch 7 movies a day for a week and decided to just let the chips fall where they may.

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  5. It's nice to see Streets of Fire getting some love.

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  6. Dude, I totally loved the soundtrack for SOF! I was singing the songs for days afterwards (just ask my poor femalien) and pulling up YouTube clips right and left. Tonight is What it Means to Be Young probably ranked in my top 10 singles for last year.

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