Tomorrow (or today, 4/24), Steven Wright has a DVD out titled, When the Leaves Blow Away. Despite the fact that I've sworn off buying movies for a while, I might need to pick this up, because...well...do I really need to explain? It's Steven Wright.
Wired recently did a gallery of stills from Jan Svankmajer's films. I'm a big fan of Svankmajer and feel that others should look through his work. And, no, I still haven't seen Lunacy yet. Leave me alone. I've been too busy playing SSX Blur.
Also, and I don't know how I missed this the first time I posted, Wired has an essay on Svankmajer's work as a whole. It's a nice intro if you don't know anything about him.
Finally, finally one of my longtime favorite Linklater films, SubUrbia, is coming to DVD. I was really hoping that Criterion would pick this up after they did Dazed and Confused and Slacker, but, alas, Warner Home Video will be taking care of its transfer. Linklater says that Warner "is promising me they will try to out-Criterion Criterion's Collection. So we'll see, but I'm really happy that that'll be coming out." That about sums it up for me. I'm sick of not being able to watch it whenever I please simply because my VCR broke. And now, September has something for me to anticipate besides Labor Day.
So I have switched over to the new account finally and have actually decided to post. Weird huh?
With the great book crazy sweeping thru our small group of friends right now, and me owning not so many books, I was feeling quite inadequate. In order to make up for my short comings I decided it was about time to catalog my DVD collection. There are a number of tools out there for use, and some are quite a bit better then others, one of the ones I know the most about is DVD Profiler. There is a free trail version of it out there and I believe you can load back-up libraries on the net to check your collection from other systems. But to stick with the Library Thing idea I decided to find an actual on-line database, that and until I get myself a laptop I didn't want to bye the nice version of DVD Profiler. So I have created an account at DVD Spot. Its not the greatest of all set ups, but you never have to pay anything and they have a very large selection of movies in the database (some times too many seeing as you can't tell which one you own and need to use the UPC).
To view my collection you can go here. Its in the works so not everything is there yet.
Some things to note:
1. Its a little weird looking thru a whole collection seeing as everything is placed in the 'owned' folder and then listed according to the 'Sort By:' field. I find it works much nicer to go to the advanced search page and look by genre. (the subgenre field is anded with the genre, not ored, so I don't like to use it).
2. Also there are filters that you can add/create on your own, selected by the 'Filter By' field. As an example, I created a Criterion Collection filter which will show all my Criterion films.
The good news is that The Tick is still hilarious. As many of you know, it was recently my birthday. And for said birthday, I had a little bit of birthday cash. I spend some on Disney's Robin Hood and the rest on The Tick vs. Season 1. I was a bit wary about buying it, as I remember the show being awesome, but I also remember The Super Mario Bros. show being awesome (which it turns out is terrible). But, as I threw in the first disc and jumped into episode 1, I realized (which rarely happens) that I had occasional good taste as a child. The DVD set has no extras and is missing episode 11 (due to some creative/legal issues). But, for $25, you can't beat 4+ hours of a fantastic cartoon.
So, this brings us to part 2 of this post. Where the hell have I been? I've been drowning under new media. Guitar Hero 2 + Zelda + the Wii in general + 2 volumes of Looney Tunes = no time to blog. Not to mention that work has been crazy busy lately. I would love to break all of these activities down and write up reviews of each, but, again, no time. So, I will say these things:
1) It was worth staying up all night in front of Best Buy for the Wii. Not only has this allowed me the opportunity to plug in 30+ hours into Zelda, but it contributed to an awesome birthday party (4 player tennis is infinitely better than 1 or 2 player tennis). 2) Zelda is a fantastic game. 3) Guitar Hero 2 is...well...fantastic as well. 4) Watching all the old Looney Tunes (I'm 5+ hours into those, without watching the extras) is a wonderful experience. Not only does it offer some great nostalgia, but I still find them to be genuinely funny. My Saturday morning hasn’t been this fun since I watched the cartoons when they aired on Saturday morning the first time.
Also, off subject, I tried absinthe for the first time last night, real pre-ban recipe absinthe. No, no hallucinating or anything. Apparently, that's just a myth and it would take a lethal amount of wormwood to actually create any sort of hallucinogenic effect. But, it is delicious (pretty much a strong anise liquor), and despite being 136 proof, tastes nothing like alcohol. Fantastic stuff. There's really no good reason this stuff is still banned.