5 New Year's Resolutions for John Likes Movies

Not to be confused with John's New Year's resolution (going with the cliche "Get in better shape"—shouldn't be too difficult considering I work for Men's Health, but it's eluded me for two years now…).

These are five goals for my blog this year. They're all things I can easily attain if I apply myself. I'm not going with "Increase traffic," as that's both obvious and a little too variable. Everything on this list is concrete, and you should absolutely expect to see them come to life in the next 12 months:

1.) Launch my redesigned site
This was my goal last year at this time, and it just didn't work out for a number of reasons. I'm almost glad though. I've learned a ton over the last year regarding web production, so I expect the final product to be a lot deeper and more interesting than my 2010 plan. Expect this sometime this summer.

2.) Go to three film festivals
Easy enough. I went to one this year (Philadelphia), and I'll definitely be attending again. And with New York so close, there's no excuse to not stop by Tribeca (an old tradition that I got away from for some reason) and NYFF.

3.) Director marathons
It occurred to me that my classic movie-watching is all over the place. I know a little about a lot of directors, but I almost wish it was the other way around. I'm making it a point, therefore, to do more of what I did with David Fincher and the Coens in late 2010—work my way through one person's filmography. I'm going at my own pace as to not get frustrated, so I won't say how many I'll do this year, but I'm starting with Stanley Kubrick. Expect a Killer's Kiss review in the next week.

4.) Finish 2011 by May
This I can't guarantee, as a lot depends on DVD release dates, but I want to be in a position to finish seeing all I want to see from last year by the summer. By that I mean I intend to watch movies as they come out as much as possible. Too often, I put a few movies off and don't get around to completing my must-watch list for months, even as much as a year after the fact.

On a similar note (and I'm not counting this as a separate goal), I plan on watching more documentaries. I try to keep every year's must-watch list at 100 films, just to make things somewhat manageable. Late in 2011, I realized there was no way I could do so, and one of the main reasons was there were a ton more documentaries on my list than in years past. The solution: Break the docs off into a separate list (and stop giving them star ratings...too difficult, in my opinion). I now have a total of 100 fiction films to watch from 2011 and 25 non-fiction. I'll do the same for 2012.

5.) TV!
With all the movies I've watched over the last few years, I've almost stopped watching good TV. That changes this year. I'm going to watch and informally review (more like discuss, I guess) a season of a show as I complete it. Community is up first (almost done with Season 1 actually…amazing). Hoping to get to at least a season of Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Parks and Recreation, as well.

Bonus: Podcast?
This is a maybe. I'm thinking about doing podcasting on a very irregular basis (maybe once a month, or even just before the summer, fall, etc.) It depends on a number of factors, but if anyone would be interested in hypothetically joining me for one or more podcasting sessions, let me know. A partner or two could sway me more in the direction of doing it.

Happy 2012, everyone!