How Many?

This is just a quick post on something I find cuh-razy. According to the MPAA, the average american saw 5.5 films in theaters in 2006.

I thought, wow that seems low- but of course I probably go to way too many movies. So I counted. In small print, here are all the films I saw last year:

Good Night and Good Luck, V For Vendetta, Thank You For Smoking, Inside Man, Brick, The Da Vinci Code, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Break Up, Superman Returns, Pirates 2, A Scanner Darkly, Monster House, Clerks 2, The Illusionist, The Black Dahlia, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, The Prestige, Babel, Volver, Casino Royale, The Fountain, Letters From Iwo Jima, Curse of the Golden Flower, The Painted Veil, Children of Men, and Pan’s Labyrinth.

That's a grand total of 27! My girlfriend actually saw 28, as she went with to all of those except The Break Up, but saw Failure to Launch and Open Season when I was otherwise busy. So she and I saw 27.5 movies apiece, which means there would need to be eight Amish people out there that saw no movies at all to average it back out to 5.5 between the ten of us. Astounding.

I was curious, and it turns out I've seen even more films this year. The list:

The Lives of Others, Bridge to Terabithia, Music and Lyrics, Zodiac, The Host, 300, The Namesake, Reign Over Me, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Spider-man 3, Waitress, Away From Her, Shrek the Third, Once, Pirates 3, Knocked Up, Day Watch, Ocean’s Thirteen, 1408, Ratatouille, Transformers, Rescue Dawn, Harry Potter 5, Sunshine, The Simpsons Movie, Moliere, The Bourne Ultimatum, Stardust, Superbad, Becoming Jane, Death at a Funeral, 3:10 to Yuma, Shoot ‘Em Up, Eastern Promises, Across the Universe, The Darjeeling Limited, Lust Caution, Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone, and American Gangster.

41! I even topped '06 before I had the excuse of this blog to go see films. With the bulk of awards season coming up, I may even double up last year's total. Judge me at your leisure, but I'm oddly proud of this.