Videos and Films

I got in to videos when I first started work as a computer operator, working shifts for an insurance company. Evening shifts meant that I missed my favourite programs, so I splashed out about £800 for a monstrous piece of technology from Ferguson. It took VHS tapes, had big chunky levers on the outside and could record any program that was broadcast in the next 24 hours.

To me, it was the height of technology and was a wonderful device.

Around that time, I found a company selling very cheap pre-recorded tapes and my collection was off. 1200 tapes later, I had this wonderful collection, which included every episode of Start Trek ever released on tape. Bugger me, they went and invented DVD.

My video tape collection was sold off at car boot sales and via eBay by a friend who needed the cash to find her rather large menagerie of cats and I started collecting DVDs instead.

I have no idea how many DVDs I have now. Everywhere you turn in my bedroom, you'll see DVDs, so I suspect it's a lot. A fair number of them have found their way to the cat lady as I'm running out of room.

As you might expect, given my book preferences, a lot of my DVDs are horror.

Actually, quite a few are the old style slasher movies - there is no real stories to these other than that there are always a group of young idiots who go somewhere creepy to do something stupid and who never listen to the smart one. They end up carved up by the evil sadist who ends up dead (maybe - you must allow for the sequel). That plot line probably account for 30% of my films.

The trick is to not take them seriously and to have fun laughing at the rubbish plots, the contrived situations and the 'bimbo' like acting of the characters (male and female).

I also spend cash buying TV series. I know they're on the TV, but they're never on when I want to watch them and some have the most complex of plot lines, so they're easier to follow when you can watch several episodes in quick succession. I sometimes think the producers forget that the viewers don't have the advantage of production notes when they put these programs together.

Good Stuff (and Bad)

Having watched quite a few films and series now, it's difficult to make a short list of the good stuff. Film wise, I suppose I would need to include these films as the ones I most enjoyed and wanted to see a second (third, fourth...) time:

There are also a few things I've bought on spec and which proved to be a bit of a surprise. These are pretty much all TV series that I then went on to buy all of the seasons and worked my way through them.

There are other things that you might expect to find in such a list. 24 for example. While I liked 24 and found it exciting to watch, it's not something I would want to watch again, so I don't feel it could go in to such a list.

Disappointments

I'm not going to run down loads of stuff and complain about loads of rubbish films; you should have gathered from earlier comments, I quite like some of the most rubbish films around. However, there are some things that I watched that I really wanted to be good and which just plain disappointed.

Angel was the follow on to Buffy. I really wanted to enjoy this as it used recognisable characters and there was no 'learning curve' to getting in to the series. In the end, it just turned out to be Buffy without Buffy. It just didn't work for me.

Then there was Blood Ties. A potentially wonderful series with lots of story lines that just didn't seem to be going anywhere. It felt like a series of separate stories with no consistent series story ark.

Can someone please explain to me why David Lynch is described as "genius" and "brilliant". Seems to me he makes incomprehensible films using a weird style. I see his work like modern art. The experts, desperate to be known as experts, all drool over the artwork and extol it's beauty while the little kid who doesn't know any better asks who spilt the paint.