A year in movies...
So it's been a whole year (more so cos I'm slack at writing this on time) since I started my Pound a Day movie project. To recap, there's an XKCD comic about a guy who loves getting packages and sets up a bot to search ebay for items costing $1 or less with free shipping and buy him one of them every day. Someone actually decided to implement this with a bid site in New Zealand (I hadn't noticed, but it looks like they'd only just set it up when I stumbled across it). But anyway, inspired I thought I'd see if I could do something similar looking on Amazon UK for cheap blu-ray movies. The main difference is that I didn't trust Amazon's data set not to have bad data in it and accidentally send me a non-Blu-ray or something that wasn't a movie, so I didn't include it's autonomy. Plus, I'm very squeamish so I didn't want Horror movies or Musicals. Instead I got it to email me whenever it had something it wanted to buy and I'd then ensure it was something applicable and go and buy it.
Anyway, the thing has been running for a year now (as of last Monday the 7th) and has bought 74 movies. It's a real mixed bag as you can see from the list here:
TitleCostIMDB Rating Beowulf & Grendel£5.296.1 JCVD£3.997.3 Wallace And Gromit - A Matter Of Loaf And Death£5.497.7 Becoming Jane£5.496.9 Candy£4.477.2 Code Name The Cleaner£4.974.1 Burning Plain, The£5.936.8 In the Electric Mist£3.996.1 Copying Beethoven£4.476.8 Getaway, The£4.937.5 My Blueberry Nights£5.486.8 Firewall£4.475.8 Interceptor£5.033.9 Leap Year£4.476.1 Proposition, The£4.797.5 Mechanik, The£4.895.5 Pimp£3.493.0 Bunny And The Bull£5.086.6 Score, The£4.616.8 Shaolin Soccer£4.997.3 Mask, The£5.056.7 Stargate£5.006.7 Son Of Rambow£5.397.1 My Name Is Bruce£5.896.5 I'm A Cyborg£4.997.1 Magnum Force£3.997.0 Passchendaele£4.996.7 Fred Claus£5.475.6 Paul Blart - Mall Cop£4.795.3 Being There£4.998.0 Separation£4.995.9 Privilege£4.996.9 Grifters, The£5.497.0 Into The Blue£4.505.7 That Kind of Girl£4.995.2 Traitor£4.997.1 Elegy£4.996.8 Basic Instinct£4.476.9 Valentine's Day£4.995.7 Disaster Movie£5.001.7 Spread£4.996.0 Rumour Has It£4.875.5 Dear John£5.005.9 Righteous Kill, The£5.476.0 Love Happens£4.495.5 Shorts£4.494.9 Gremlins£4.997.1 Big Fat Important Movie£4.994.4 Sunshine Cleaning£4.997.0 Newsmakers£4.996.0 Sex Drive£4.496.7 Education, An£4.497.4 Yes Man£4.996.9 Sound of Music, The£4.977.9 Music and Lyrics£4.796.6 Airwolf The Movie£4.996.1 High Hopes (Mike Leigh's)£4.997.3 Two Lovers£4.997.2 Rising Sun£4.996.1 Smurfs and the Magic Flute, The£4.995.6 Courage Under Fire£5.496.6 Dead Fish£4.005.2 Heavy, The£5.494.9 Dan in Real Life£4.996.9 Big Momma's House£4.994.8 Last Action Hero£5.295.9 Rise - Bloodhunter£4.565.0 Run, Fat Boy, Run£4.896.7 Single Man, A£4.497.6 Brave One, The£5.296.8 14 Blades£4.996.4 K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask£4.996.7 36£4.997.2 Angel-A£5.297.0
I used IMDB for some ratings and the average rating was 6.3 which shows that on the whole, the quality of the movies wasn't that bad. In fact all bar 8 scored at least 5 out of 10. The worst movie is the aptly named "Disaster Movie" with an appalling 1.7. The best movie is "Being There" with 8.0 which is a film I wasn't aware of. It's a Peter Seller's movie, which explains the high score.
The costs are a lot less varied. There were a few under £4 and a handful that came close to £6, but on the whole most were close to the average price of "4.92. So generally I ended up getting something delivered every 5-6 days. Although with my mail box being just slightly too small for a blu-ray, I'd often have to wait a few days for them to deliver it on a day someone was in or go and collect it from the local collection office. I still have £1.04 left to spend, but I can't imagine ever being able to spend that.
I've still yet to watch them all, but I think that the project has been a success in that I've amassed some pretty awesome movies for very little cost that I possibly might not have discovered otherwise.