The pleasure and the pain of DVD collections

Editorial

We probably have over 200 movies on DVD in our collection, many of which have never been watched. Why haven't we watched them? Lack of time, mostly, and yet, we still buy more, especially when JB Hi-Fi makes them so cheap and accessible. You can pick up classics like The Princess Bride or Hitchcock's Psycho for under $10, so why not? It means that our library is pretty comprehensive, and always seems to impress visitors, in the Ikea shelf towers next to the entertainment unit in the lounge room. They're alphabetically organised by title, from All About Eve to Zoolander, and contains other gems such as Beaches, Far From Heaven, the original box set versions of each of The Lord of the Rings films, Monsoon Wedding, Singin' in the Rain, Gattaca and the special edition of Donnie Darko. It's an eclectic collection, and says a lot about my partner and I, as a couple and as individuals.

Essentially it's a collection of films that we like, that mean something to us, or have always wanted to see, but haven't got round to yet (The Boys in the Band, I'll get to you soon, I promise). It's not a Film Wanker's library, I must point out. We don't have Citizen Kane or Taxi Driver, or the collected works of Ingmar Bergman. Every now and then, I go through them to see if any DVDs, bought in the heat of the moment, would be better off taken to Dixons Recycled Records, but even then I baulk at excising them from our library. They are like books; I can't give or throw them away either.

I like having all these films, sitting there at my disposal, watched or not. They are reference tools, they're an entertainment resource, and it's great when you have those discussions with friends about films, and you discover that your nearest and dearest aren't conversant with the genius of George Cukor and The Philadelphia Story, because you can say “I'll lend you the DVD”, or even pull out old favourites and watch them with friends again, just for a laugh.

The collection is by no means complete. While I'm still debating whether to buy Black Swan or The Social Network (which is strange, given we bought Burlesque as soon as it was released - what does that say about us?), I scour the shelves for some of my most loved films, to no avail. I was lucky enough to find a copy of the 1938 version of The Women, not available here in Australia, in Hong Kong last year, but I've not yet found Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, a film I love and haven't seen for many years now, or Rupert Everett's screen debut in Another Country on Australian shelves. I've had to settle for a cheap Chinese copy of Maurice because it's long been deleted from Australian release. Yes, I could probably find them online at Amazon, but there's something satisfying about finding them sitting on a shelf in a shop, waiting for you to buy them.

Maybe I should just wait for them to be released on Blu-Ray. Or download them as avi files. Because that seems to be the future for movie collections, despite the fact that having a hard drive full of avi files sitting on a shelf just isn't physically satisfying. And that opens a whole new can of worms: should we start replacing our favourite DVDs with Blu-Ray versions because fairly soon, just like poor old VHS, DVDs will be passé, and irrelevant. Damn. Oh, well, tell me about your DVD collection. In the meantime, I'm off to organise my DVDs by date of cinematic release...

Tim Hunter, Citysearch

Read more from the Reel Movie Hunter here.