#42Movies in 21 Days

It's almost my 42nd birthday! And, as in past years, I'm doing a project to celebrate. This one's less interactive than others have been (but feel free to re-share a post if it tickles your fancy).

Over the next three weeks, I'm going to blog about some movies I love—forty-two of them, to be precise—and how they influenced who I am today. And I'm going to pair them up into somewhat thematic double features.

(Please note, this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the movies I love. That's a much longer list, and considerably more varied. These are just the movies that I have very deep significant thoughts about. Or the ones I could pair up with something else to make a plausible double feature.)

I've consumed a lot of different media in my life, and it's all affected me to some degree. Movies are simply the easiest to encapsulate—they're more self-contained and focused than television series, which can last for years and wander all over the map in terms of story and technique. Similarly, books and music are often entwined with other life experiences and don't necessarily stand on their own.

I'm old enough to remember going to the movies as a special event, when you willingly shut out reality and plunged yourself into another world for a couple of hours. Glimpsing those other worlds gave me new perspectives on my own life. This will be my flimsy commemoration of some of the films that shaped me.

Finally, a clarification: I don't plan to actually re-watch all these movies over the next few weeks (though I'll likely screen some of them for old time's sake), but you should feel free to do so and then comment on the appropriate blog post. :)

Follow @sparCKL on Twitter and look for the #42Movies hashtag!