It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like The 3rd Annual Holiday Movie Challenge(11/19-12/25)

[Darth Maher]

I'm probably going to watch Trading Places and 200 Cigarrettes tonight. I might try to watch a few sitcoms throughout the day, but I'm too lazy to look through this thread for all the New Years shows right now. Of course, I'll turn on various countdowns throughout the night as I enjoy my Bacardi Razz and 7-Up.

[Numes]

I wanted to watch "Millennium" - Midnight of the Century, but I've still got a lot of stuff to get ready for New Year's Eve, so I couldn't pull it off. I was hoping to watch more New Years stuff, but after finishing up the Christmas stuff after Christmas, I guess I was just too burnt out. This was a very enjoyable challenge. I actually made it to 200... way beyond my wildest expectations. I watched a lot of TV shows that I haven't watched in years, and it was a nice nostalgic feeling watching some of those shows again.

[Mister Peepers]

I found a New Year tv show that I'm not sure made the list yet:

Davey and Goliath: The New Years Promise

[The Monkees]

Well now it's officially over. Hope all had fun.

Please finish up your lists by THIS Friday (1/4) and I will do my best to get the list up very soon. Also check the lists thread and make sure your name is in my list on the first post.

Thanks!

[Doc Moonlight]

Well, I tapped out at 45. Not bad, but not where I intended to be.

In retrospect, I spent a lot of time tracking down and watching ecclectic oddities and as a result never got to some of my favorite Christmas standards (i.e. Scrooge, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, Charlie Brown's CHristmas, The Grinch, etc.). I think I'm going to start a calendar next year and schedule some of these in so I don't miss them next year.

I had even more obscure favorites that I wanted to get to: Comfort and Joy, Cash on Demand (the Hammer Christmas film), Joyeaux Noel (which would have been my second foreign language film) and many more. I was saving many of these until it was closer to Christmas, but then I got caught up in social events and visitors and never got around to finishing them. Well, there's always next year.

Now that I've doen the challenge, I'd like to suggest we start on the Thursday before Thanksgiving next year. Starting on Monday doesn't give us a weekend to view Thanksgiving films before the holiday. There are also some categories I'd like to suggest, like Christmas war movies (there actually are quite a few).

So, Monkees, thanks for starting the challenge and a special thanks to Trevor for his exhaustive information.

Hope everybody had a great Holiday Season!

[DVD.guy]

Happy New Year everyone.

Thanks to everyone for all the fun. Can't believe I made it to 67 from 23 last year.

See you again next December

[RobCA]

Originally Posted by Doc Moonlight

Now that I've doen the challenge, I'd like to suggest we start on the Thursday before Thanksgiving next year. Starting on Monday doesn't give us a weekend to view Thanksgiving films before the holiday.

Whenever we start next year, I'm not going to start watching Christmas stuff until December 1st. This year, I started as soon as I ran out of Thanksgiving stuff, the day after Thanksgiving, and as a result, I ran out of movies/shows to watch long before the challenge was over.

It was fun doing this again, bring on the Oscar challenge!

Rob

[Fist of Doom]

This was fun, even though I stalled at 52. Real world stuff just kept getting in the way.

Stupid real world

[Trevor]

When I first decided to take part in this challenge, I figured I'd stick to my DVDs. I have maybe 200 holiday films/shows on DVD. But I ended up barely touching my DVDs.

I think my breakdown was something close to this:

cable - 400 (all on DVD-Rs now)
internet - 60
my DVDs - 40

I also recorded to DVD perhaps 100 additional things that I didn't fully watch (multi-tasking). So I have a 700 or so item collection of holiday shows on DVD for future use now, should last my lifetime easily.

This is definitely the last time I do something crazy and watch even close to this amount of TV in such a short span. Next year I'll do one quality film/show a day, and possibly go for the checklist/bingo card as well, so perhaps 100 total at the most.

I guess I really got into it and lost control, hopefully I'll put that 6 hours a day to better use from now on. I don't recommend to anyone to do what I did last month, my scant hold on sanity almost totally slipped.

[mijorico]

Well, I topped out at 59 this year. Nearly doubled the 32 I hit last year, though. I didn't even get to all of the Christmas programming I have on DVD. I will say that having a DVR sure makes it easier to participate in this. If I had had full use of my dual tuner DVR, and not just the single on my computer, my total may have been much higher.

I look forward to participating again next year when I will (hopefully) have a functioning projector, and can make full use of both my screen and my DVR. That was the biggest disappointment for me with this challenge. My projector malfunctioned just after Thanksgiving, so I had to watch everything on a 27-inch CRT. I was really looking forward to watching my holiday programming on my big screen for the first time.

[Numes]

Some random thoughts on the Holiday challenge:

1. I have never done ANY challenge before, so I wasn't sure what to expect from myself. I never would have thought I would have made it to 200, though.
2. I (like Trevor) had planned on just sticking to my DVDs. I did this up until about December 14th. That weekend, I must have spent hours searching the DVR for Christmas shows on the various channels. The more I found shows, the more I wanted to keep finding more. As I started finding some sitcoms that I haven't watched in years, I kept wanting to find more and more shows with Christmas episodes so I would actually have an excuse to watch them. This was the beginning of the madness.
3. There were only two movies that I really wanted to watch in this challenge that I didn't get to: Elf and Strange Days. Elf just didn't make it because I was busy with DVR stuff. Strange Days DVD turned out to be non-anamorphic, so I didn't watch it.
4. I normally never watch syndicated TV shows on TV because I hate the fact that they are edited for syndication... as well as the fact as the quality is (usually) much worse than a DVD release.
5. It's funny how they do the commercials much differently for shows on Nick at Nite, TV Land, etc... I am so used to fast forwarding through the commercials for currently aired shows, but it seemed like every station did it a little differently, and I would fly by the start of the show after commercial.
6. Next year I am going to try to a) complete the checklist and b) stick to DVDs as much as possible. The only problem here is that I will not want to watch the same shows as I did this year (I need at least a 2 year buffer between repeat viewings of most shows.)

Now some awards:

1. Best show that I have never seen an episode of before: "Monk". I may actually pick up the DVD sets for this show. Runner up: "How I Met Your Mother."
2. Best dramatic show of the challenge: "M*A*S*H" - Death Takes a Holiday.
3. Most disturbing show of the challenge: "Squidbillies" - Rebel with a Claus.
4. Show that I used to watch when it was on, but I was surprised at how much I didn't like it anymore: "The Cosby Show." I only watched on episode, but IMHO this show was early 90's funny and does not really stand up anymore.
5. Worst show: "Ed, Edd 'n Eddy's Jingle Jingle Jangle"
6. Cheesiest show: (tie) "Full House" - Arrest Ye Merry Gentlemen and "The Brady Bunch" - The Voice of Christmas.
7. Show that I was surprised how much I enjoyed: "Food Network Challenge" - Gingerbread Championships. Those gingerbread houses are unbelievable. I would suggest you guys check this out next year.
8. Most shows watched in one day: 20(!) on Saturday, December 22nd. One of the worst snowstorms of recent memory the night before. A good day to stay inside and rot my brain with "Family Matters" and "King of the Hill."

Edit: Thanks to The Monkees for setting up the challenge. Trevor... all I can say is: "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!!!"

[HyperWeather]

Thank you for such a fun challenge! When I started out the challenge I was hoping to at least hit 50 but within a few days this changed to a 100. This was an extremely easy thing to hit, yet I still did it in the last second possible just because I got distracted with other things (and being out of town for 3 days before the end didn't help either). I had been picking up some movies I didn't own and putting all the movies and tv shows that counted together, I barely touched it, everything pretty much came from netflix or tv. So next year my goal is to at least watch my dvds, I missed some that I was really looking forward to watching. So I'm actually hoping for a bigger total next year .

[Chad]

Well, work and a Bond marathon (couldn't resist checking out the Ultimate Editions for the first time!) kept me from getting in as many as I would've liked to have, but I still managed to surpass last year's total by a few. As always it's been fun and I might even sneak in a few Christmas titles this month despite them not counting.

[Bluelitespecial]

So how soon will we see the results thread?

[The Monkees]

Just give me some time to get everything together. Most likely tomorrow, I have work today but not tomorrow, so I'll work on it tomorrow.

[Bluelitespecial]

I hate to be a pest, but I am still anxious to see the results thread.

[The Monkees]

I know, I'm gonna work on it right now. I'm sorry I've been pretty busy.

[The Monkees]

Okay Results are in: The 3rd Annual Holiday Movie Challenge -- THE RESULTS!!

And the winner....no surprise....

[Numes]

Following Trevor's (and others) thumbs up for "The Thing", I decided to watch it this past weekend. Although it's not going on my top 20 list, it was a great movie. The price of the DVD (and HD DVD) was worth it for the Carpenter-Russell commentary alone.

Spoiler:

I'd say my favorite part was where the guys head crawled away from the burning body and tried to run away/hide. Creepy, yet intriguing at the same time.

Anyhoo, I can confirm that this movie has absolutely nothing to do with any holiday, let alone a November/December/New Years holiday. I guess this can be for future reference for next year's challenge.