I wanted to this for a long time. I got the idea to watch all of the Best Picture Winners from some random reddit comment early in 2016 and immediately started to buy all the movies i didn't already have in my collection. Had to shop around a bit, because not every movie was available here in Germany, or some where only available as DVD. So i shopped in UK, the US and Asia to get all the titles, even though i had to settle for DVD instead of Bluray for some of the older ones. And i included Sunrise into the thing, as in my opinion the first awards had two Best Picture categories and this was the winner of the one that wasn't awarded anymore in the following year.When i finally had them all in the last third of 2016 i decided to put the project on hold because i wanted to finish watching all the other movies in my Bluray collection first. With a 2900+ title collection this takes a while, so the Best Picture marathon had to wait until September this year.I had to reduce my average daily movie intake a bit during that, as some of the movies aren't exactly easy to watch material i think and they deserved their time and standing, so i didn't want to cramp to many of them in one day, resulting in some days where i only watched one and then proceeded to watch some random dumb stuff on Netflix or Prime, you could say to cleanse the pallet or something like that.Overall i have to say it was a really nice experience to see a bit of the history of cinema and the way the techniques and styles have evolved. There are winners i haven't really heard of before the project, and i have to say some of them are lost to time for a reason. Not every winner is a master piece or a milestone, some of them, even in the early days, just make you question how the other movies from that year must have been. This feeling was of course quite a bit stronger in later years, when i came to years where i basically know every movie. And i know, one could consider it a bit circle jerky to shit on some of the later winners, but in my opinion there is absolute truth to a lot of it. Shakespear in Love, Chicago and Crash to name a few very famous examples, are really things with no right to such an award. But of course one must always remember that the awards are basically an advertisement and popularity contest and don't really try to reflect the best the industry has to offer. Overall I'm glad to have watched a lot of the movies and the good experiences fortunately greatly outweigh the bad or mediocre ones. I can really recommend to everyone interested in the history of cinema to do this if they have time to spare!So after watching every movie in my collection and then watching every Best Picture Winner what can i do next? For one, in the time i watched the Best Pictures i bought roughly 70 new movies i laid aside that need to be watched now (see here)Also i like to read a bit about the movies i watch, usually starting with a bit of the Trivia section on imdb. Over the past years i regularly noticed that on a lot of movies it is mentioned to be part of the famous 1001 Movies to Watch before you die list. So i decided that could be my next project for the next years: Try to watch every movie from that list i can get my hands on. I bought the book and in finest German precision marked every movie i haven't seen with a little marker, discovering that at the time i worked through the book i knew exactly 300 of the movies. The final book with its marks looks like this :)Oh and since my last big post to this sub people have requested a link to my letterboxd profile, you can find me here: https://ift.tt/3giAG53 you have any questions or want to discuss a movie i would gladly join the conversation :)Stay safe everybody and best wishes from Germany! via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2JZ638U
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