MadMup.com

I don’t know how much you all enjoyed this little contest, but I got more than enough enjoyment out of it for all of us. It was fun to watch your guesses and see not only how many movies you thought I might have but also what movies you thought might be in my collection.

Here are the guesses for what the first movie in my collection is from an alphabetical point of view:

• 12 Angry Men – Not only do I not own this, I’ve never actually seen it.
• 12 Monkeys (twice) – I do own this one. Woo, Bruce Willis!
• 13 Going on 30 – I do not own this one, but have been tempted to buy it because of one simple fact: Thriller Dance!
• 2 Fast 2 Furious – This guess cracked me up so much, and I can’t even explain why. It’s not a movie I’m interested in even a little, but Mary A. gets an Honorable Mention for making me laugh!
• 2001: A Space Odyssey – This movie was boring and pretentious and I didn’t like it. Sorry, film buffs!
• Absolute Power – While I do love Clint Eastwood and have several of his movies, this is not one of them.
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls – I’m curious why G-Knee picked the second one in the series. I mean, yeah, I own them both, but why not choose the first one?
• Adaptation – Yep. Own it.
• Adventures of Milo & Otis – Used to own it on videotape, but don’t have it on DVD. Yet.
• Air Force One – You know, I should get this one. It’s been a long time since I saw it and I remember liking it.

The actual first movie in my collection: The 6th Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s take on cloning. 12 Monkeys is the second one in my collection, so pretty close guessing! (And I’m a stickler for numerical/alphabetical order, so that’s why “6” comes before “12” in my list, even if most alphabetizing rules will say the “1” in “12” trumps the “6” and should come first. Disagree all you want, but that’s how it is.)

I won’t list everyone’s guesses as to how many “S” movies I have, but I have 54 of them. Seems like an awful lot! That’s 14.516% of my collection! Consider that many of them are Star Trek and Star Wars movies, though, so I guess it makes sense. Peter H. was the closest on this guess with 56.

I did not need to use the tiebreakers, however, as there emerged a very late and very clear winner. Here is the list of guesses on the actual number, ranked from lowest number to highest:

• Brian Arnold: 217
• Jeremiah: 223
• Scott: 260
• the obscure: 270
• Wendles: 301
• Angela: 326
• Danna: 344
• Peter C. Hayward: 412
• Carolyn: 417
• Meags: 549
• G-Knee: 622
• The Bon: 636
• magley: 777
• Gretchen: 857
• Lorelei: 865
• TwoSticks: Eleventeen hundred and one (I’m not even sure how to write that as an actual number.)

This list made me alternately feel like I’ve been slacking and like I’ve underachieved. I don’t know whether to sell of my collection or start buying more!

Actual number of movies I own on DVD: 372. Yes, I own many TV shows on DVD, but they were not counted.

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce to you the winner of the first ever MadMup.com Contest:

Danna!

Peter H. had it all wrapped up from the get-go until Danna’s close-to-last-minute entry, so there’s sure to be some bitterness there for a while.

Thanks to all who participated! I hope you had fun and I’m fairly certain there will be more contests in the future, so be on the lookout for them!

(Danna: I’ll contact you about getting your mailing info and get your mug out to you as soon as possible.)

The thought struck me the other day: “You know what might be fun? It might be fun to have a contest.”

And you know what? It might be! I know it will be for me, and I hope it will be for you.

The contest is simple: guess how many movies on DVD I currently own and leave your answer in the comments.

Couldn’t be easier, right? A thing to keep in mind: if I own different versions of the same movie, it counts as multiple movies. For instance (and this is a hint, I guess), I own two copies of Batman, the barebones release and the Deluxe Edition. This counts as two movies, at least for the purpose of this contest. (And recent viewers need not fear – we watched the Deluxe Edition, of course.)

The person who guesses closest to the actual number will win him/herself a fancy new MadMup.com mug. (It stands to reason, then, that the winner will have to give me their address or some way of getting the mug to them, so keep that in mind if you don’t like handing your address out to random bloggers on the Internet.)

In the case of a tie, the following two tie-breaking questions will be used to determine the winner:

1. Alphabetically, what is the first movie in my collection? (Rest assured, since it is alphabetically the first, that means it is also positionally the first.)
2. How many movies do I own that start with the letter “S”? (For the purposes of this contest, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” do not count as the first words in the title. If I owned a movie entitled The Skunk (I do not), it would count as an “S” movie.)

So! Guess away! The contest will close at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, February 7, 2007. Leave your three answers in the comments section, and thanks for reading!

EDIT: This isn’t “The Price Is Right,” so it’s not “closest without going over,” it’s just “closest.”

EDIT #2: Movies with numbers spelled out (Sixty Cats, for example) get filed according to the word. Movies with numbers as numbers in the title (60 Cats, for example) get filed according to standard alphabetizing rules. Where this leaves the movie Se7en, I really couldn’t say.