New Heights in Pretension
As those of you who know me well will no doubt attest (And considering the only person with a heavily-enough festering mental state to read a blog written by someone called "Sean's Beard" is my brother, that's probably the majority of you faithful readers), there are three major, and in fact, exclusive reasons, why I ever buy a DVD, or a book:
1) I have seen /read it before, and enjoyed it.
2) I have not yet seen / read it, but have always, or for a fair amount of time, wanted to.
3) It is an obscure / unusual / esoteric book / DVD which, when I show people my collection, I imagine in my feeble mind their supposed state of impressedness at the fact that I have in my collection such an obscure / unusual / esoteric book / DVD in my collection, whereas in actual fact they've obviously never heard of it and don't give half a flying fuckshit that it even exists, let alone that I was sad enough to fork over money to have it in my collection.
Today on my DVD-buying adventure it was numbers 1 and 3 respectively that reared their ugly little heads and said "Buy me! Buy me!"
The first, and less-interesting acquisition was Michael Cimino's best-known, and undoubtably in many circle, only-known work, the 1978 Vietnam masterpiece "The Deer Hunter". This particular film outperformed my expectations during my most recent 7 Weekly DVD Rentals for $9 offer at my local Video Ezy store, to become the most enjoyable and acclaimed-by-me movie of the lot, over such hyped classics as Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra) and Network (1976, Sidney Lumet). It also, in my recent revision-and-extension of my top 100 movies of all time to a top 250 favourite movies of all time, blitzed the competition in its genre to come out on top of the war movies list, slotting into place at #38 overall. But pointless statistics and utter verbal diarrhoea aside, it's a bloody awesome movie. So when I saw it advertised as part of Borders' (Yes I know, big evil American corporation) "Two DVDs for $40" deal, it was definitely at least on the back-burner, that was, until...
*Huge superfluous drum roll, as though anyone actually cares*
Browsing the titles, I came across what has now become both of the following:
1) The First Asian film title in what can now officially be called my "Pretentious DVD collection"
2) The First film that I have purchased based purely on its presence in my hallowed and personal bible "1001 Movies you must see before you die" by Steven Jay Schneider (ed).
I won't ruin the mood by trying to create written suspense while I reveal the title. Instead I'm not going to reveal the title but I shall allow the IMDb to do it for me HERE. And of course with this addition I have raised what some may call the prestige but others may call the sheer and utter and completely insulting pomposity of my DVD collection. So next when someone asks me "Are you a complete fucking wanker" I can, with complete certainty, look them in the eye and say "Yes. Yes I am"
1) I have seen /read it before, and enjoyed it.
2) I have not yet seen / read it, but have always, or for a fair amount of time, wanted to.
3) It is an obscure / unusual / esoteric book / DVD which, when I show people my collection, I imagine in my feeble mind their supposed state of impressedness at the fact that I have in my collection such an obscure / unusual / esoteric book / DVD in my collection, whereas in actual fact they've obviously never heard of it and don't give half a flying fuckshit that it even exists, let alone that I was sad enough to fork over money to have it in my collection.
Today on my DVD-buying adventure it was numbers 1 and 3 respectively that reared their ugly little heads and said "Buy me! Buy me!"
The first, and less-interesting acquisition was Michael Cimino's best-known, and undoubtably in many circle, only-known work, the 1978 Vietnam masterpiece "The Deer Hunter". This particular film outperformed my expectations during my most recent 7 Weekly DVD Rentals for $9 offer at my local Video Ezy store, to become the most enjoyable and acclaimed-by-me movie of the lot, over such hyped classics as Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra) and Network (1976, Sidney Lumet). It also, in my recent revision-and-extension of my top 100 movies of all time to a top 250 favourite movies of all time, blitzed the competition in its genre to come out on top of the war movies list, slotting into place at #38 overall. But pointless statistics and utter verbal diarrhoea aside, it's a bloody awesome movie. So when I saw it advertised as part of Borders' (Yes I know, big evil American corporation) "Two DVDs for $40" deal, it was definitely at least on the back-burner, that was, until...
*Huge superfluous drum roll, as though anyone actually cares*
Browsing the titles, I came across what has now become both of the following:
1) The First Asian film title in what can now officially be called my "Pretentious DVD collection"
2) The First film that I have purchased based purely on its presence in my hallowed and personal bible "1001 Movies you must see before you die" by Steven Jay Schneider (ed).
I won't ruin the mood by trying to create written suspense while I reveal the title. Instead I'm not going to reveal the title but I shall allow the IMDb to do it for me HERE. And of course with this addition I have raised what some may call the prestige but others may call the sheer and utter and completely insulting pomposity of my DVD collection. So next when someone asks me "Are you a complete fucking wanker" I can, with complete certainty, look them in the eye and say "Yes. Yes I am"
posted by Sean's Beard at 11:36 PM
2 Comments:
I didn't read the whole post, but I by DVDs for the same reasons. I bought the Seventh Seal on a kind of cool-cover-imported-movie black-and-white-film-noir induced impulse. It has, through a remarkable co-incidence, all the qualities that make a DVD good, thus it is the improbable union of good and niche-cool.
My blog is at melbournephilosopher.blogspot.com
Hey Gollysock!
I love the constant posting on your blog. I need my daily fix of esoteric Rushdiesque madness. Now I'm relying on rereading the early version of B&BG I have, to fill the void of Sean's Beard.
So keep up the posting - or better still, write some more of your delightfully quirky magnum opus.
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