When we were discussing how many of the Best Picture winners we hadn't seen, I also realized how long ago I've seen many of the Best Pictures and that I was curious about re-watching them. And also catching up to the ones I've missed.
My main decision in undertaking this is whether to go in strict order, or by whatever I feel like watching at the time (useful for impulse decisions because quite a few are available on Netflix streaming). My impulse is to go in strict order but that will also mean being a bit bogged down in the beginning by the two not available on DVD and a string of movies I haven't been all that interested in right at the start. Thoughts?
Also, I've been thinking about a mega-marathon to watch the nominees for each year as well (extant ones, I think a few from the early years are lost) and decide if the right movie won best picture. But that would probably bog down too quickly, I might do that sometime as a different project, maybe a decade at a time or something. And obviously it would take a lot longer per year before 1944.
I don't have any specific time frame for completion, because a hard and fast deadline like by next Dec. 31st would cause me to give up on the whole thing if it became clear I wasn't going to make the deadline. So I'd like to simply keep it moving forward.
The list:
1929 Wings1930 The Broadway Melody
1931 All Quiet on the Western Front
1932 Cimarron
1933 Grand Hotel
1934 Cavalcade
1935 It Happened One Night
1936 Mutiny on the Bounty
1937 The Great Ziegfeld
1938 The Life of Emile Zola
1939 You Can't Take It with You
1940 Gone with the Wind
1941 Rebecca
1942 How Green Was My Valley
1943 Mrs. Miniver
1944 Casablanca
1945 Going My Way
1946 The Lost Weekend
1947 The Best Years of Our Lives
1948 Gentleman's Agreement
1949 Hamlet
1950 All the King's Men
1951 All About Eve
1952 An American in Paris
1953 The Greatest Show on Earth
1954 From Here to Eternity
1955 On the Waterfront
1956 Marty
1957 Around the World in 80 Days
1958 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1959 Gigi
1960 Ben-Hur
1961 The Apartment
1962 West Side Story
1963 Lawrence of Arabia
1964 Tom Jones
1965 My Fair Lady
1966 The Sound of Music
1967 A Man for All Seasons
1968 In the Heat of the Night
1969 Oliver!
1970 Midnight Cowboy
1971 Patton
1972 The French Connection
1973 The Godfather
1974 The Sting
1975 The Godfather, Part II
1976 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1977 Rocky
1978 Annie Hall
1979 The Deer Hunter
1980 Kramer vs. Kramer
1981 Ordinary People
1982 Chariots of Fire1983 Gandhi
1984 Terms of Endearment
1985 Amadeus
1986 Out of Africa
1987 Platoon
1988 The Last Emperor
1989 Rain Man
1990 Driving Miss Daisy
1991 Dances With Wolves
1992 The Silence of the Lambs
1993 Unforgiven
1994 Schindler's List
1995 Forrest Gump
1996 Braveheart
1997 The English Patient
1998 Titanic
1999 Shakespeare in Love
2000 American Beauty
2001 Gladiator
2002 A Beautiful Mind
2003 Chicago
2004 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2005 Million Dollar Baby
2006 Crash
2007 The Departed
2008 No Country for Old Men
2009 Slumdog Millionaire