Cinema Hype

I once had a roommate who didn’t own a single DVD. He was the kind of guy who liked to live light on the land, he said. He didn’t want to accumulate too much stuff, and anyway, he couldn’t think of any movies that he’d want to watch more times than he could reasonably rent (when pressed, he thought for awhile and said, “The Princess Bride. If I had to.” At least he had good taste.) On some level, I understood his thinking—fewer material things, less commercial culture, all things living together in media-less harmony—but that didn’t really assuage my disappointment at not having a whole new person’s collection to pillage. Whether because of my roommate’s media asceticism or not, we didn’t live together very long.

Checking out a new person’s DVD collection is a perfectly valid gauge of character and personality, I think. Is this person a romanticist, a pessimist, a thrill-seeker? Does he or she acquire movies at random, or is there a motif going on? Are there complete series sitting side by side, or is this person missing Star Trek II, V, and VI? Are there signs of group movie-watching, or is the collection full of movies only the directors’ mothers have seen? DVDs are the new knickknacks. Pretty soon, coffee table books will be obsolete; we’ll just leave copies of our Netflix queues lying around, and call it good.

It’s in this spirit—that of poking around in someone’s living room while they’re in the bathroom—that I’m introducing a new CH feature, “Off the Shelf,” in which I’ll give a glimpse into my own DVD collection. You’ll see who I like, what I’ve seen so many times that I don’t actually need to watch it anymore, which teen-era embarrassments I’ve held onto, and what I’ve currently acquired.

A note about the organization of The Shelf, and therefore of this feature: rather than sort my DVDs alphabetically, chronologically, or autobiographically a la John Cusack in High Fidelity, I’ve got my own system: chick flicks on the right, non-chick flicks on the left, and musicals somewhat naively in the middle (because Rodgers and Hammerstein are for everyone. Right? Guys?). I’ll be alternating sides, to provide variety and also avoid the sugar shock that would come from writing about the right-hand side all at once. We’ll be pacing ourselves. As for the middle, well, Rodgers and Hammerstein are for everyone. You’ll see.

Keep an eye out for Off the Shelf in the next few days.