The Year in Review

    Whenever I tell people that I'm tracking everything I'm watching, they seem to be puzzled by it.  I've found it to be a fantastic tool.
    First of all, I watch a lot of movies, and it's nice to know when I'm not sure if I've seen something before.
    Second, I get a better sense of exactly what I'm watching.  I have it broken down by genre, if it's the first time I've seen it, and what decade it came from.  These give me much more insight into my viewing habits, which, if I want to broaden my knowledge of movies, is invaluable information.

    Because I knew that I was tracking this information, I was much more likely to push myself to watch new movies rather than repeating old ones.  I was especially less likely to watch the same movie more than once in the year.  (This didn't work perfectly.  I still watched The Avengers three times.)
    From 186 movies I watched this year, this is how they break down.
    First viewing - 119
    40s - 2
    50s - 4
    60s - 5
    70s - 15
    80s - 21
    90s - 24
    00s - 64
    10s - 51
    Action - 49
    Anthology - 5
    Comedy - 48
    Documentary - 4
    Drama - 27
    Horror - 79
    Musical - 1
    Romance - 6
    Sci-Fi - 12
    Superheros - 10
    Zombies - 6
    (Note that some movies fall into multiple genres).
    There were seven instances of repeated viewings.  These were The Bourne Identity, Crank, Mission: Impossible 3, The Avengers (2x) The Innkeepers, and The Prestige.

    For comparison purposes - in 2011, I watched 151 movies, 89 of which were first viewings.  I watch three movies twice.
    This means
                  Total Viewed        Repeat percentage        First Time Percentage
    2011        151                       1.98%                           58.94%
    2012        186                      3.76%                            63.97%

    My Evaluation of This Data
    Despite making a more concerted effort to watch more movies for the first time, I only went up about five percentage points.  Of course, the sample size was bigger.  But I also almost doubled my percentage of repeated viewings.

    Some Goals for 2013
    I'd like to vary my habits a little.  I watch a lot of horror, but I enjoy that too much to give up.
    A few things stand out.  Only one musical seems kind of a bad precedent.
    Let's make a few targets.

    Documentary - 8
    Musical - 7
    Sci-Fi - 18
    20s - 2
    30s - 3
    40s - 5
    50s - 5
    60 - 6
    70s - 18

    And then, the rest of the decades I don't care too much about.

    I have a lot of movies sitting around that I should watch.  I just got the 15-disc Hitchcock Blu-ray set.  I still have the Three Colors Trilogy sitting around.  It might be more difficult to find enough pictures from earlier decades, but this gives me something to shoot for.