DVDs for Me

if you've known me long enough, you like know i have an unhealthy addiction of buying dvds. it's not just watching, or downloading movies-- buy buying dvds. something about the act of buying a copy of a movie i can keep forever[ish] makes me feel like whatever crap my job has put me through was slightly more worth it.

sometimes when i'm in a bad mood or having a fight with someone, i'll leave and come back with four dvds. i guess everyone has their one slightly illogical or hypocritical thing they do. for me, it's escapism through film. i can't help it.

so i put together this list of ten dvds i wanted. i treat the internet as my personal blockbuster video and download anything i'm curious about. if i like the film, i'll go and buy it-- if not, i delete it. it's 2010 and i think that's pretty fair.

anyway, of the ten dvds, i picked which five i wanted first and ordered them via amazon. i got them used because i'm what some people call "jewish" but what i like to call "smart."

though, when the first three arrived yesterday, i realized "smart" may not be the correct terminology either.

the first movie was multiplicity, starring michael keaton-- a sort of romantic comedy about cloning and just a good old-fashioned flick that always makes me happy. it's a cutesy one. and it came in fine condition.

then came harold & maude (which i had previously downloaded and forgotten to buy till now). this one actually came in its shrink-wrapping and case-- like it'd never even been opened. of course, once i'd opened it, i noticed a series of very strange ratings and then noticed the dvd was PAL and not NTSC.

if you don't already know, NTSC is the american way of dealing with dvds-- it means the thing plays at 29.97 frames per second, rather than PAL's european 25 frames per second. why on earth amazon.com sold me a u.k. film is beyond me-- i mean it's not amazon.co.uk.

anyway, i couldn't watch harold & maude because of it.

i put it aside and opened the last envelope.

this one was being john malkovich and it came without a case. i wanted the case. if i didn't want the case, i could've just downloaded the movie and burned onto a disc. but worse than that, the disc that arrived seemed to be covered in cake frosting.

seriously? amazon had rated the dvd as being in "acceptable" condition.

i'm starting a real pattern of being screwed silently by companies and i don't like it. the idea behind buying these movies-- as mentioned above-- is that buying dvds makes me happy. now i'm just angry.

i guess at least multiplicity came in one piece. that was nice. and if any of my two english readers would like to purchase a PAL version of harold & maude, i'll sell it to you for a euro and a high-five. though the high-five may be harder to deliver.

two more dvds are on their way and they'd better be fit for america, cake-free and case-included.