Saving Private Ryan

In the second season finale of Lost, a character named Desmond is asked why, having been in prison for a long time, he never read the one book he brought in with him - Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Desmond's reasoning is simple: he wants that book to be the very last one he ever reads. While I never had any dramatic goals to read, watch, or complete anything specific on my deathbed, I must say that I always thought it would be pretty cool if I had chosen one of my many DVDs to be the one that I saved for last. For a long time, I figured I would let Saving Private Ryan be that movie. I purchased it at some point in my freshman or sophomore year of high school. Let's go with "the summer between" (2003) for the sake of specifying a date. Even back then, before I owned hundreds of DVDs, there were several I owned that I hadn't seen - I can't tell you the last time I had a clean (empty) movie backlog. Anyway, as the years wore on, I got around to watching most of my movies in due time, but never this one. And then at some point in college I realized this was the oldest DVD remaining in my backlog. At this point - probably the summer of 2008 - I decided to put it off intentionally rather than incidentally, deciding to give it the "honor" of finishing off my backlog when that day finally came. (Even before I started up this blog, the concept of watching everything I owned was important to me.) Then, during finals week of the first semester of my junior year (December 2008), the moment came. I had watched literally every movie I owned (at this point, at least three hundred) and the very last one in the way was Saving Private Ryan. But I never pulled the trigger. Christmas game and I got a new slew of movies, and even though I watched most of them quickly, a shopping trip or two increased my backlog again, slowly but consistently. This morning it stood at 13. It's currently at a dozen. It's there because I decided to stop putting off Saving Private Ryan for the sake of symbolism. It was supposed to be a fantastic and moving movie, and I figured I may as well treat myself to one of those on this fine day off. It was nice to finally reap the benefits of however many 2003 U.S. dollars I once spent on it. It was indeed a fantastic movie. For a third of my life I've been able to say that I own it, but only now can I finally boast that I've actually seen it. Yes, eight years later, the backlog broom finally swept away Saving Private Ryan. Excellent. Screw designated "last unwatched movie" status. God bless America. And for anyone who cares, the new "oldest movie in the backlog" is actually three movies: Downfall, Goodfellas, and Lawrence of Arabia, each of which was purchased on July 10th, 2010. Yeah, I keep track of this stuff now - how else am I supposed to regulate my backlog? The oldest DVD sets remaining are Seasons 3, 4, and 5 of The Wire (December 2008 purchases) and I've now watched eight straight movies without purchasing one. Can I make it to ten straight? Will the movie backlog be emptied out this summer? Will I ever finish watching The Wire? Find out by tuning in! Happy Memorial Day everyone.