I don’t want to give Zack Snyder too much credit, but he did manage to write one line that I have thought about often since I first heard it. In Zack Snyder’s Justice League (which is the official title of the film) Zack Snyder has Bruce Wayne/Batman played by Ben Affleck say to his butler Alfred “I’m older now than my father ever was.” It’s not that this line is particularly clever, it’s a sentiment I’ve probably seen elsewhere as people grapple with grief and how it never really leaves, even as time continues to pass. But the line, in this context, being said by Batman/Bruce Wayne, who turned his grief over the murder of his parents into his only reason for being, casts it into a new light. We see Brucie/the Bats putting his entire existence as a vigilante into a very particular time frame. That one moment, the defining moment of his life, was so long ago that he has overtaken his fatter’s age. We wonder if Mr. Wayne/Mr. Man is questioning his decision to put on a silly costume and punch petty criminals. He looks back and thinks he could have spent the past however many years doing anything else. Raising a family, perhaps. But no, he spent it punching criminals, and as his next line indicates, he isn’t sure it was worth it. He says, “ Criminals are like weeds, Alfred; pull one up, another grows in its place.” He’s been doing this all and isn’t sure it was ever worth it. The line is so good. It probably isn’t Oscar worthy, but by the existing standard of Zack Snyder, the man who thought he was so clever that he was the only one who ever realized Batman and Superman’s mom’s first names are the same. And then went the extra step of making that fact a key plot point in his previous movie.
Poorly organized thoughts on: DVD Collecting I don’t want to start off by making it seem like I have too many movies. I have lots of movies and I will probably have more in the future. But I am trying to keep in mind how many movies I have and haven’t yet watched before I go buying more. There are a number of boutique blu-ray labels that have had sales in the past month, and it has been a bit of a struggle for me to not add to my collection. But I also recently cataloged which movies in my collection I haven’t even watched, and the number is higher than it should be As of this writing, there are 189 movies in my “Owned but unwatched” list on letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/kevsaund/list/movies-i-own-but-havent-watched-yet/) and if you compare that to my list of owned movies (https://letterboxd.com/kevsaund/list/all-the-movies-i-own/) You can do the math and see that it comprises about 22% of my total collection. That’s higher than it should be!
There’s a few reasons for the discrepancy. The biggest reason is probably Boxed Sets. I’ll occasionally find a box set on sale, or even better in a used book store for cheap, and buy it. I have a hard time passing up a good deal. I’ve picked up more than a few boxed sets that way, including the Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman set and the Complete Universal Monsters set (you know, Dracula, the mummy, Frankenstein etc) each of which has nearly 30 movies in it. I’m bad at binging, and so when I pick up one of these, it’s not easy for me to sit and watch them all in a row. I like to pace myself out and watch them here and there, between other movies. But that can be harder if I have multiple box sets in the queue at once.
But sometimes I’ll pick up a movie because it’s something I want to watch eventually. There’s a fuzzy calculation where I compare the price of a movie to my general desire to watch it, and if the price is low enough, it can push even a vaguely interesting movie into the realm of buyable. And boxed sets make this movie math even more enticing. It’s easy to buy a box set with even a couple movies I know I want and the rest becomes cruft or filler but also makes buying those two or three movies I want seem like an even better deal. I bought a BBS Studios box set, which had classics like Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show and Easy Rider (which I have watched) but also had stuff like Drive, He Said and The Kind of Marvin Gardens, which are films you’ve probably never heard of.
So even though, Criterion, Arrow, Kino Lorber, Vinegar Syndrome, and Severin all had/have sales this month, I’ve instead put more effort into making that list smaller. Even a month ago, it was at just over 200 films, so progress can be made!
But also, a friend has literally just mailed me a box full of movies from a family member who passed away and wanted to make sure they ended up with someone who would want them. This isn't even the first time this has happened. A side-effect of being "the DVD Guy" to more than a few friends. So progress will continue to be slow.
Some highlights from the list, ranked in rough order from least to most shame I feel for not having seen them.
The Creature Walks Among Us - A Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel. I’m watching the Universal Monsters movies in chronological order, and this one came pretty late in the game. Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl - A Post apocalyptic musical set sometime after the “Google wars.” this is in the category of “internet movies I don’t quite remember acquiring.” I may have backed it on kickstarter, or just gotten a copy because someone blogged about it. I don’t remember.
Yi Yi - I bought this in a Criterion sale because it came highly recommended, and I needed something to get me over the free shipping threshold.
Jeanne Dielman 28, Qua du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles - Recently topped Sight and Sound’s best 100 movies of all time list, dethroning previous winners like Citizen Kane and Vertigo. I want to watch it really I do, but it is also three hours long and mostly consists of a woman doing household chores in silence.
West Side Story - I really don’t have an excuse for this one.
