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Box Office Binge: 1981

 



The other day I was thinking about how much I love a project.  In addition to my regular seasonal projects I've also done reading projects (52 books in 52 weeks), fitness projects (80 Day Obsession), travel projects (visit every National Park on our travels), and cooking projects (making the top rated recipe of my favorite meals). I've done many other projects but suffice it to say, I enjoy a project.

Instead of letting each day turn into a week turn into a month turn into a year--with nothing to get especially excited about--it's fun to throw in some kind of sparkly scheme to educate, challenge, and give our family some fun new memories. So that's what this series is all about.

Welcome to what I'm calling, 

"Box Office Binge: A Cinematic Journey Through the Top Movies of My Lifetime."


This is a small project aimed at directing our screen time away from mindless streaming and toward purposeful and meaningful cinema. We'll watch the top movie of each year, beginning with the year that Jeff and I were born: 1981. 

Wanna' know how this project came to be?  Is it boring?  I'll give you the bullet points:

  • A few years ago for my birthday, Jordan made Spotify playlists of the top 20 songs in each year I've been alive.  It was so much fun driving around the country to the soundtrack of my whole life, being reminded of songs that I hadn't heard since I was a child.  It was so simple but turned out to be an incredible birthday gift!
  • I've been sick of tv and movies recently.  With only a few exceptions, we have collectively not found anything worth watching on any of our streaming services for a few years.  It feels like everything is TV-MA. Or it's pushing agenda hard.  And everything that isn't TV-MA or pushing agenda is cheesy, sappy, soupy nonsense.  
  • I thought about how it might be time to revisit some of the classics.
  • Then I remembered what Jordan did with the playlists.
  • I proposed it to Jeff
  • and then he was like, "Yeah, that sounds fun."
  • I had a sudden thought and exclaimed,
  • "Wait--how many weeks are there left in 2024?"
  • I Googled, only to find...
  • That there are the exact number of weeks left in 2024 as years that Jeff and I have been alive!
That's a pretty rad coincidence, no?  

(Later Jordan burst my bubble and reminded me that I still haven't had my birthday this year, so technically there is one more year than there are weeks. By that time I was so pumped about this idea that I dismissed her and planned to simply fold an extra movie in somewhere to make up for it.)  

(Also, I seem to have forgotten how to use bullet points. Hahaha.)


Okay, so Jeff and I were born in 1981 and the top box office movie that year was...


According to the Wikipedias, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" grossed almost double the #2 movie, "On Golden Pond." See the chart below:

1Raiders of the Lost ArkParamount$212,222,025
2On Golden PondUniversal$119,285,432
3Superman IIWarner Bros.$108,185,706
4Arthur$95,461,682
5StripesColumbia$85,297,000



This may surprise you but I have never watched an Indiana Jones movie all the way through, though they were regularly on our family television while I was growing up. I have a general sense of the premise of "Raiders", but no memory of storyline. 

Now I'm off to watch the movie!    

*Updated to add: I don't know which Indiana Jones movie I thought I had some sense of, but this movie was 100% brand new information for me. haha.

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