Movie a Day Month! - Rules

Below is a copy/paste from Scott's blog. Right under all that are my thoughts.

December 1 begins the first annual Movie-a-Day month. Here are the rules:

1. As there is no prize or reward for following the rules, you may bend all rules. But because if you break the rules you aren't playing the game, no breaking the rules. Example of bending the rules: You go to bed at 2 AM, so before you go to bed you write about the movie for the previous day. Breaking the rules: Skipping four days and writing five times to make up for it. Exception - with the holidays, you can front load some movies if you know that you will travel or have other holiday obligations. Don't skip the Feats of Strength to write about a movie.

2. A movie must be written about everyday. More than one movie is encouraged.

3. You must have seen the movie from beginning to end, credits excluded. The exception is if you were in a theater and the movie was so bad that you left. If you snuck into that movie and didn't watch it all, it doesn't count. You shouldn't sneak into movies anyway.

4. You aren't a professional movie reviewer, so full length reviews aren't necessary. A quick rehash of the plot is fine, but don't retell the story. Tell me what you think about it!

5. While you don't need to be an expert about the movie, the internet, and especially IMDB, is at your fingertips. Feel free to take a moment to get the character's name spelled correctly. Go ahead and give us the exact quote if it's easily available. However, you don't need to rewatch the movie just to get the quote. If it isn't on the internet, let us know that you are quoting it from memory.

6. The movie you write about should be generally available to your readers. If you want to go in a slightly different direction and write about an internet movie or made for TV movie, cool. But writing about Foot of the Bunyan or CA Iverson: The Movie: Part 6 might not resonate with all of your readers.

7. Spoilers! Use your best discretion when using spoilers. If it's a movie that has been out awhile, maybe just put a warning right before you spoil something. If it's an essential part of your movie blog, don't avoid it, but let the reader know at the beginning. If it's a newer movie, make that warning a little bigger and sooner. Feel free to use inviso-text (making the letters the same color as the background so that you have to highlight it to read it.) Yeah, your reader should expect that you're giving away a little bit of the movie.

8. Optional - use some kind of uniform rating system. Thumbs up or down. See it, Rent it, Skip it. Letter Grades. Stars. The only key word is "uniform." Pick a system and stick with it for the month. Be aware that some of these might just be trademarked.

My thoughts: I've really been looking forward to this, as there are a lot of movies that I want to write about but haven't gotten around to it yet for whatever reason. I already know what my first movie will be, and I have an idea for a running theme as to how I plan on titling each entry.

I'm also going to try and follow an additional, ninth rule:

9. Each movie must be from a different genre and decade as the previous one. In other words, if I write an entry on The Maltese Falcon, I shouldn't follow it up with an entry on Murder, My Sweet. Not only are they both from the 1940s, but they're both detective movies. So, I'd have to follow up "Maltese" with something like Superman: The Movie which is a superhero film from the 1970s. (I just realize how lame it is that I explained that. Is that really so hard a concept to grasp?)

I'm also planning on keeping this positive. I reserve the right to change my mind, but I want this to be the poor-man's version of Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies". He doesn't rank them or give them scores; he just celebrates movies that he thinks are great. I don't think that I'm qualified to attempt the same idea. This will be more along the lines of "Lance's Favorite Movies" - as some of my favorite movies I really don't consider to be "great" at all. In fact, some of my favorites are downright bad, but I love them anyway.

Come back tomorrow for my first movie review! Yay!