A Pictorial History of the Movies
The Pic of the Day feature started a month into the blog. January 31, 2011. I know it was that day because that was the day the news broke that John Barry had died. And as a tribute to him, I posted an article in tribute to him, and put in an unofficial Pic of the Day from Goldfinger, with Sean Connery slapping a woman on the ass. And it made me think. I had a lot of screenshots (not nearly as many as I do now, but still, a fair number), I had a blog. Why not share them? So, the Pics of the Day began. The first was from The Third Man. And above, I put a quote from the film (the “cuckoo clock” speech). Three and a half years later, a new one has gone up every day since.
I don’t know the exact number, but I said originally I had “over a thousand.” Which was either me lowballing it, or that’s really what I had at the time. I’m sure I had close to 10,000. I can’t imagine it was that few. But at first, I was still recycling the same films over and over. And now, almost four years into the blog (and essentially because of it), I have over 50,000 screenshots. (That’s not an exaggeration. It’s really that many. The joke being that I added about ten thousand between when I wrote this article and when it went up. And I still haven’t fully sorted all of last year’s Fun with Franchises shots. So it’s going to even go higher than that.)
Anyway, with all of these Pics of the Day, I’m sure we’ve all seen my theme months. Christmas movies in December, Oscar movies every January and February. One month I did specialized studio logos (the Paramount logo made by buttons for Benjamin Button, etc). I did a horror month, a westerns month, a musicals month. I did the Disney films, the Bond films (twice. Once for the films, once for the songs). I did all the Best Pictures in a row. I did famous opening lines (“Rosebud”) and famous final lines (“The stuff dreams are made of”).
Now, I’m starting on my next theme: a history of the movies. (more…)