jae & gail’s reading and movie watching challenge 2023

Gail and I like to create little games when it comes to our movie watching, and this year we decided to do one for movies AND reading books. I discussed this in my Dungeon 23 Diary, but we wanted to make a dedicated post to this challenge for anyone interested.

Our goal is to get us out of our comfort zone and see something new, while being mindful of our artistic consumption.

First the reading challenge:

2023 Reading Challenge

1. A book picked out by the other person.

2. A book in which a character goes from a big city to a small town.

3. A book set in Russia.

4. A book you meant to read in 2022.

5. A book published in the year you were born.

6. A book published in the second half of 2023.

7. Historical Fiction set in Asia.

8. An Edgar Award Winner.

9. A book about non-human characters.

10. A non-fiction book about something from the 1920s.

The rules are that we’ll choose our own book that fulfills the category and read them seperately. So she’ll read a different book set in Russia than me.

I’m really looking forward to what 1920’s non-fiction topic she picks compared to mine, and whether they’re complementary or totally different. Both eventual conversations should be fun.

Now for the movies list….

2023 Movie Challenge

1. Pre-Code Era

2. Directed by Maya Deren

3. From the Sight & Sound Greatest Documentary List

4. Historical Drama

5. Film starring Joan Blondell

6. Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography

7. Made in Germany

8. A film about following your passion

9. A film that came out when we were in high school

10. No budget/DIY

For this one we watch all movies together, but we both get to pick a different movie for each category. So in the end we’ll both watch two different movies starring Joan Blondell.

We wanted to do one award movie, and while I find the Oscars pretty gross, I like the idea of looking at different category than Best Picture.

I might be most looking forward to #10, the no budget/DIY film. I don’t care if they’re fan films of popular IPs or small dramas in the backwoods of Arkansas. I just want to see someone not in the Hollywood-lite indie system. Someone making a movie with their friends in the middle of nowhere. Probably distributed on youtube or via a kickstarter bluray. Honestly I want to watch a lot of these all year. If you know any you’d want to recommend, link us up.

Okay.

That’s the challenge.

We’ll update you on our progress as we…you know… progress.

-jae

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