The Summer Diaries 2012: What I Watched During the Summer of 2012
By: Steve Pulaski
Last summer, I conducted a monumental movie-watching event I, myself, am still recovering from on my personal website. It was “The Summer Diaries,” and it was a celebration of film in every sense of the phrase. I watched a barrage of different pictures, many I was surprised I sought out and many I regret I even bothered with. I saw a number of engaging films in the theater, and used Netflix, Zune, and stores to my advantage in acquiring all of these films. This summer…it’s more of the same, just with a few kinks thrown in.
I probably won’t come close to watching 106 films, like last summer, or even breaking a new record. I’ll be lucky to hit eighty or ninety. So far, I am still contemplating what big films I will try and watch. I definitely want to tackle the nine and a half hour Holocaust documentary Shoah sometime during the beginning of summer, not to mention possibly watch the three original Star Wars films among other things. But I truly don’t know yet. I have a ton of things I need to watch, and hopefully, summer will be mostly mine. For “The Summer Diaries: Part II,” there is no goal. It starts May 31, 2012 and will continue until August 26, 2012.
*Reviews of every film I watch will be posted on my website, here, http://stevethemovieman.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=reviews
THE FULL LIST
Films that aren’t in database will be bolded.
May 2011:
May 31: Lilo and Stitch, God Bless Ozzy Osbourne.
June 2012:
June 1: The Experiment, Piranha 3DD.
June 2: The Poughkeepsie Tapes.
June 3: Grandma’s Boy, The Pill.
June 4: We Need to Talk About Kevin.
June 5: Bottle Rocket, Courageous.
June 6: Freaks.
June 7: Rushmore.
June 8: Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
June 9: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Prometheus.
June 10: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Cats Don’t Dance.
June 11: A Perfect World, Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
June 12: The Royal Tenenbaums, Kids.
June 13: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.
June 14: How to Live Forever, Bully.
June 15: The Darjeeling Limited.
June 16: That’s My Boy.
June 17: Elephant, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
June 18: Eight Legged Freaks, The Triplets of Belleville.
June 19: Jeff, Who Lives at Home.
June 20: The Dreamers, Demoted.
June 21: Lake Placid, Weekend.
June 22: Glengarry Glen Ross, Moonrise Kingdom.
June 23: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
June 24: Monkey Business.
June 25 (my birthday): Paranoid Park.
June 26: Signs, Crash.
June 27: Cyrus.
June 28: Nosferatu.
June 29: None; Took a day off.
June 30: Ted.
Total number of films watched: 46.
Missed days: 1.
Favorite film of the month: Bully, (June 14).
Worst film of the month: Signs, (June 26).
Overall June Film Rating: 3/4
July 2012:
July 1: Magic Mike, The Dark Backward.
July 2: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Spider-Man.
July 3: Animal Farm.
July 4: The Amazing Spider-Man.
July 5: Bubble.
July 6: The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, Wassup Rockers.
July 7: None; Grandma’s House.
July 8: None; Grandma’s House.
July 9: Old School.
July 10: The Puffy Chair.
July 11: To Rome With Love, Baghead.
July 12: Daddy Day Care.
July 13: None; Vacation.
July 14: Love Don’t Cost a Thing.
July 15: Madea’s Witness Protection, Lords of Dogtown.
July 16: Spider-Man 2, Election.
July 17: Mansome.
July 18: Casa De Mi Padre, Girls Gone Dead, Friends With Kids.
July 19: Slacker, Spider-Man 3.
July 20: Indie Game: The Movie.
July 21: Swimming With Sharks, The Dark Knight.
July 22: The Dark Knight Rises, The Spongebob Squarepants Movie
July 23: The Virgin Suicides.
July 24: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
July 25: Lakeview Terrace.
July 26: Rosewood, Sleeping Dogs Lie.
July 27: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, Grandma’s Boy.
July 28: The Watch.
July 29: The Intouchables, Punishment Park.
July 30: Garden State.
July 31: Dick, Legally Blonde.
Total number of films watched: 44.
Missed days: 3.
Favorite film of the month: The Intouchables, (July 29).
Worst film of the month: Madea’s Witness Protection, (July 15).
Overall July Film Rating: 3/4 stars.
August 2012:
August 1: Charlie’s Angels, We the Party
August 2: Sideways.
August 3: The Babymakers.
August 4: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Orange County.
August 5: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.
August 6: The Seventh Seal.
August 7: Wild Strawberries.
August 8: Hellboy, Jay and Silent Bob: Get Old Part 1.
August 9: Hour of the Wolf, What They Say.
August 10: None; took an unplanned day off.
August 11: The Campaign.
August 12: Tomboy.
August 13: None; took another day off.
August 14: The Lion King.
August 15: 2016: Obama’s America.
August 16: Daredevil.
August 17: Funny Ha Ha.
August 18: Hope Springs.
August 19: Yeast.
August 20: The Perfect Storm.
August 21: A Separation.
August 22: The Brady Bunch Movie, Reign Over Me.
August 23: The Batman Shootings, Spanglish.
August 24: Mystic River.
August 25: Margaret.
August 26: It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books, The Summer Diaries: Part II Statistics/Final Consensus.
Total number of films watched: 30.
Missed days: 2.
Favorite film of the month: Sideways, (August 2).
Worst film of the month: Charlie’s Angels, (August 1).
Overall August Film Rating: 3/4 stars.
“The Summer Diaries: Part II” Statistics:
Total number of films watched: 120.
Missed days: 6.
Favorite film of the summer: Sideways, (August 2).
Worst film of the summer: Madea’s Witness Protection, (July 15).
Most films watched in one day: 3.
Overall “Summer Diaries: Part II” Film Rating: 3/4 stars.
The whole calendar can also be found on my website, http://stevethemovieman.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=events&thread=3107&page=1
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01Dean DeBlois
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02Mike Fleiss
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03Paul Scheuring
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04John Gulager
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05John Erick Dowdle
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06Nicholaus Goossen
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07J.C. Khoury
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08Lynne Ramsay
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09Wes Anderson
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10Alex Kendrick
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11Tod Browning
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12Wes Anderson
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13Eric Darnell
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14Eric Darnell
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15Amy Heckerling
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16Ridley Scott
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17Tom McGrath
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18Mark Dindal
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19Clint Eastwood
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20Joe Dante
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21Wes Anderson
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22Larry Clark
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23Wes Anderson
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24Larry Clark
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25Wes Anderson
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26Sean Anders
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27Gus Van Sant
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28Wes Anderson
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29Ellory Elkayem
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30Sylvain Chomet
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31Jay Duplass
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32Bernardo Bertolucci
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33James B. Rogers
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34Steve Miner
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35Andrew Haigh
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36James Foley
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37Wes Anderson
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38Timur Bekmambetov
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39Norman Z. McLeod
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40Gus Van Sant
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41M. Night Shyamalan
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42Paul Haggis
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43Jay Duplass
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44F.W. Murnau
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45Seth MacFarlane
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46Steven Soderbergh
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47Adam Rifkin
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48Brad Peyton
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49Sam Raimi
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50Joy Batchelor
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51Marc Webb
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52Steven Soderbergh
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53Jay Duplass
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54Paul Sen
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55Larry Clark
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56Todd Phillips
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57Jay Duplass
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58Woody Allen
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59Jay Duplass
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60Steve Carr
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61Troy Beyer
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62Tyler Perry
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63Catherine Hardwicke
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64Sam Raimi
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65Alexander Payne
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66Morgan Spurlock
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67Matt Piedmont
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68Jennifer Westfeldt
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69Richard Linklater
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70Sam Raimi
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71James Swirsky
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72George Huang
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73Christopher Nolan
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74Christopher Nolan
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75Stephen Hillenburg
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76Sofia Coppola
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77David Gelb
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78Neil LaBute
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79John Singleton
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80Bobcat Goldthwait
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81Pier Paolo Pasolini
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82Akiva Schaffer
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83Eric Toledano
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84Peter Watkins
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85Zach Braff
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86Andrew Fleming
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87Robert Luketic
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88McG
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89Mario Van Peebles
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90Alexander Payne
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91Jay Chandrasekhar
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92Jake Kasdan
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93Dennis Dugan
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94Ingmar Bergman
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95Ingmar Bergman
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96Guillermo del Toro
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97Ingmar Bergman
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98Jay Roach
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99Céline Sciamma
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100Roger Allers
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101Dinesh D'Souza
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102Mark Steven Johnson
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103Andrew Bujalski
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104David Frankel
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105Mary Bronstein
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106Wolfgang Petersen
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107Asghar Farhadi
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108Betty Thomas
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109Mike Binder
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110James L. Brooks
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111Clint Eastwood
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112Kenneth Lonergan
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113Richard Linklater