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Directors How many movies have you seen? (1 Viewer)

MartinTeller

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Feb 26, 2002
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Maybe I'm the only one crazy enough to do this, but I recently decided to try to recall every movie I've ever seen. Excluding shorts, TV movies and straight-to-videos, and only counting movies that I'm at least 90% sure I've seen, and seen all the way through, my total is 1187. I'm sure there are a few more that will occur to me, but it's probably not much more than 1200. I'm 32 years old, btw.

Interesting (well, interesting to me) factoids:

# of movies I saw for the first time on DVD: 284
# of movies my movie-crazy girlfriend and I have seen in the theater in the past two years: 92
# of those 92 movies that I actually liked: 36
 

george kaplan

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Geez.

Well, I probably like only about 1 film in 10 enough to want to buy it. And I've bought over 700 films, so that's about 7000 right there. But I'm also certain that when I was younger I saw lots of movies I can't even remember, so add a couple more.

I dunno, 9000 give or take a couple of thousand?
 

MartinTeller

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Well, you might be surprised! It's fairly easy (and fun) to do on iMDB using the "My Movies" thing. Although you have to be careful about adding movies to your list twice, since they don't seem to have any option to prevent that.

I figured mine would be around 2000. And I would guess that the tendency for most people is to overestimate. 9000 seems pretty crazy. That's 5 movies a week, EVERY week, for 35 years. And that's not including watching stuff more than once.

Yesterday I remembered Betrayed, Quest for Fire and City of Lost Children... and I watched Altered States and Ringu, which brings my total up to 1192 :)
 

Jack Briggs

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Martin, I don't think I've ever seen this put forth here before. And I haven't the foggiest as to how many films I've seen. At least a dozen or so.

Welcome back, btw.
 

Brook K

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I've rated around 1300 at Netflix, but since that consists only of movies I've rented or that happen to show up on the opening screen, I would guess I've seen more than 2 or 3 times that. BUT, saying I've seen 3,000 means 100 for every year of my life. Now, while I've seen 2 or 3 times that number for the last 4-5 years, I really doubt I saw anywhere near 100 movies that I hadn't seen before, a year for the first 15 years of my life.
 

george kaplan

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I'll admit I probably overestimated. But it's a pretty damn tough thing to do. The thing is, while it might seem ridiculous to have seen 5 movies a week for 35 years (actually it's 4.95 :)), as a kid I would watch on tv easily 3-4 movies every weekend. I'm sure there are weeks I watched less than 5 movies, and I know there are weeks in my life I've watched a hell of a lot more. But who really knows the total number.
 

Carl Johnson

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Let's see.......
From 1974-1991 I didn't have a job and I would estimate that I saw 40 theatrical films.

From 1980-1987 I'll count 10 per year misc theatrical movies (broadcast tv, at a friend's house, in school, etc) that's 70

From 1987-1991 I'll count 20 per year theatrical movies on television or VHS (we never had cable and didn't get a VCR till I was in my teens) that's 80

From 1991-1997 between my Columbia House VHS membership and my job at the movie theater I probably averaged 1 movie per week 6 yrs * 52= 312

I got my first DVD player in 1998, I'd estimate that I've bought or rented 200 movies over the past 5 years. 40% of those were movies that I had previously seen either theatrically or on a different format, so that's 120

40+70+80+312+120=622
Off the top of my head I would have guessed that I've seen thousands of movies but that number has got to be close.
 

Jim_K

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Yes, I've been using that feature for a few years now. :emoji_thumbsup:
It's the best way to keep track of what you've seen.

As of right now my total is 3449. I'd imagine the actual amount is a tad more as these are just the films that I remember seeing.
 

george kaplan

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You know, this actually started bugging me :), so being the statistical nerd that I am, I did a more detailed estimation. Without going into a lot of detail, since it would take a long time to list all the movies I've seen, I've done it for a random subset and extrapolated to the population. Currently, my estimate is 3729, which is admittedly a lot lower than my initial estimate of 9000 :b

And no, I'm not just making up a number, I really am this nerdy :)
 

Scott Weinberg

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Oct 3, 2000
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Well, you might be surprised! It's fairly easy (and fun) to do on iMDB using the "My Movies" thing. Although you have to be careful about adding movies to your list twice, since they don't seem to have any option to prevent that.
No it doesn't. If you come in and rate Terminator 3 at a 7 and then you come back in a few weeks and re-rate it, it doesn't add it to your list twice. It just takes the most recent rating.

And if you wanna use IMDb's "My Movies" feature to give you a good estimate as to how many movies you've seen, I recommend using the most recent Maltin guide at first (circle all you've seen) and then use that book as a reference when rating movies at IMDb. Then just keep it up-to-date with everything you see fresh.

My number's fairly high. :D
 

Arman

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Jan 10, 2003
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I'm still counting ... :D

I've seen a personal record breaking more than (old and new) 650 films (226 2003 films) last year though and more or less 3 films a day since January 01, 2004. :)
 

Ray H

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I tried going through year by year and checking off the number of films I'd seen from each, but I never finished. It was just too hard. First you have to find a definitive list of films released per year. You could use IMDB, but their lists are just too big to go through. Especially since they include every movie, tv show, made for tv movie, video featurette, documentary and porno made in that year. So it's definitely not fun to go through. :frowning:
 

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