A regional daily deputy editor is taking on an ambitious challenge to watch and review every film released in UK cinemas throughout 2011.

Self-confessed film geek Neil White, from the Derby Telegraph, has started a blog called Every Film in 2011 in which he will post the reviews and report on his progress throughout the 12 months, estimating he will need to see between 500 and 600 movies.

His inspiration for the project came from the story of a young woman who spent a year following 365 recipes in a cook book, with her blog becoming a book and then a Hollywood film.

Neil started the blog in December as he was given advanced copies of a number of films to be released this year and has already built up a following on Facebook, with people reading it from as far afield as Bahrain, Kuwait, Russia and the United States.

He has written a column to tell readers of the newspaper about his New Year pledge and about how it has converted him to the world of Facebook.

Neil writes: “It is already starting to occur to me that a shed-load of time is involved. On average, about nine films are released every week, so that amounts to about 18 hours’ viewing.

“Then there is an hour to write up my review and I haven’t even taken into account getting to the cinema. And all of this is being done in my spare time!

“Because I have watched half a dozen films in advance of their 2011 release, the blog was started three weeks ago and it has already opened my eyes to an entire world of cyberspace.

“Firstly, I thought a decent way of getting a following for the blog was to use Facebook.

“I thought I was too old to be on Facebook until I read in our paper about Harold Richardson using it at the age of 88. So, in I plunged and, within a week, I had 104 friends!

“After years of saying I didn’t see the point, I am a convert, having had text conversations with people I haven’t seen for 20 years. Of course, I am also trying to get them to follow the blog!”

To ensure he does not miss any film released during the year, he intends to go to the cinema regularly, watch the advance screeners he is provided with for his role reviewing films for the paper and catch any others when they are released on DVD.