49 / 99

hello there

i remain baffled, dear reader, by the rush with which many (not all, look you see) seem to be in favour of consigning the optical disc, in any variation, to the section of history in which VHS and Beta presently happily reside. it is true that they are more convenient options available these days, but they have serious pitfalls.

still, the baffled view i have does not lead me to make too many loud appeals against it, for it sees me be able to use what is effectively pocket money on building up a collection of rather fine films, thanks. here, behold eight films that i purchased on DVD for 49p each, which i think you will find comes to a total of £3.92 in coins of money in real and actual terms.

oh great, blogger and apple are fighting with each other about picture rotation again. cheers for that, guys, it really helps with formatting.

for those of you who can't work out those titles, they are the Mona Lisa (featuring boss performances for Caine and Hoskins), Passenger 57 (with Snipes before he was crap), Fargo (need i say more?), Angel Heart (a masterpiece of cinema featuring Rourke at his finest).

up to the start of the other line with Taxi Driver (one of my all time favourites), Apocalypse Now (sadly the Redux version but still), Battlestar Galactica The Movie (the proper version from the 70s) and Serpico (either this or Dog Day Afternoon is the one that should have bagged Pacino an Oscar, not the one where he wore sunglasses and said hoo haa).

needless to say i am very happy with my haul, and can scarcely believe that it cost an amount that would give you change from an honest and humble fiver. although yes i did spend slightly more, but i thought i'd just highlight these 8.

i can, and always did, understand or understood the rush to jettison VHS in favour of DVD. this was no vinyl vs CD debate; DVD was clearly the vastly superior way to watch a movie. you got a clean, crisp (hello, Faye) image every time without tracking, and perfect sound as it was intended to be heard.

jettisoning DVD in favour of "streaming" or "online demand" alternatives makes not quite so much sense. true, in most cases the sound and image are of DVD quality - assuming that you have an ultra-reliable broadband internet connection, and an uncapped one at that. watching a disc relies purely on you having a player and a tele, having no need or requirement for internet connectivity or extra hardware.

there's also the matter of choice. i recently heard Amazon Prime and Net Flix (or "Nit Flux" if you have a Kiwi accent) described as "a massive fridge full of food, but featuring nothing you want to eat". that's spot on. if i have the disc, i can watch what i want, when i want, as and when i ever get the time to do so. subscribe to streaming services and you are entirely at the mercy of the marketing division of a company. and don't think that anyone hired in an entertainment job must surely know their stuff; it's possible in charge is a dick that thinks only the non-Guttenberg Police Academy movies are worthwhile.

but surely, you say, DVD was made partially redundant by the arrival of Blu Ray? kind of, and to that end it is just as well that some blu-ray, or bluray, or however you write it, discs were available for 99p each.

again with the rotation - what we have here is Sleeping Beauty (dwarf action and i think the first film my Dad saw at a cinema), Despicable Me (boss), Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (brilliant, even if the recent Dawn sequel was a waste of Gary Oldman and a general waste of time).

up on the other side, then, and we have Falling Down (D-Fens! the reason i have the style of glasses frames i do), Total Recall (the Arnie version, featuring my beloved Harry from verk line) and the Jim Carrey interpretation of A Christmas Carol (i have not seen it bit how bad can it be?).

is blu-ray really better than DVD? yeah, but it's not the massive leap that was experienced with going from VHS to DVD. a recent DVD played through a blu-ray player, via an HDMI cable and on one of them fancy 1080p or i tele sets, looks impressive enough, but the blu-ray disc looks and sounds slightly better. the selling point these days, for the most part, is that the blu-ray disc tends to feature extras and the uncut version of movies (see my many posts on Mad Max 2), whereas the DVD usually only has on it whatever the technician could be bothered to add on down at the mastering plant. which is, mostly, limited to Greek subtitles, really.

an even better way, i hear you say, of getting and watching movies when you want is to simply download them, either legally or otherwise. true, mostly. except that most tend to stockpile such collections on hard drives, be they 1TB ones, 2TB ones or larger. this is fine, but have you ever had a massive hard drive crammed with data crash? you basically lose everything. with the discs it's a case of if one gets damaged, you only have to replace the one.

perhaps, though, being able to watch what you want, when you want, is not so much of an issue to the current generation. it's strange really, and quite the paradox of these "millenials" that web articles keep insisting you need to "engage" with (you don't, really). this generation has a broad definition of being one that has an overwhelming and absurd sense of entitlement, expecting to get everything they want instantly, and for free of course, and expect to have their voices heard above all others. and yet they are perhaps the most prone to instantly disposable generation ever to have existed, as is all too sadly reflected in the poor state of music these days.

anyway, i am thrilled that so many have turned their backs on optical discs that i am in a position to sit on these films and watch them as and when i get a chance. i paid, i own the discs, i can watch them as and when i want, regardless of licensing, connection, or read errors on a drive. nice one.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!