Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister_Kidd
Before the pandemic, I had 2 hours a day of commute via train. I would watch 4-5 movies a movie week on the train in my phone in addition to what I was watching at home.
You say tragic, I say magic.
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Let's resurrect old media and bring a portable DVD player on your commute!
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtower182
I remember when I was younger and I would buy a book and think nothing of it, but my grandparents would ask why didn't I get it from the library - it's cheaper, they'd say, what's the point in keeping it? Or when I bought a DVD and someone would ask why not wait for it to come on TV? I even remember a few years ago when I told a friend of mine that I wanted to go to a Drive-In that was showing American Graffiti near me, and he just looked at me and said what was the point? It was an old film and, plus, you could just watch the film at home.
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In the UK the TV argument doesn't hold any water. Of course I'm confident occasionally TV might get something that isn't on disc or streaming so it might make sense to watch an often poor looking broadcast master. But invariably you're asking for a poor quality cut film experience with ad breaks, suffering from PAL speedup. Which is also an issue with DVDs but this is why BDs are useful.
I actually do follow the library example - I will check if the library has a copy, or if all the copies are checked out or on a waiting list - before actually getting a disc. Sometimes I'll even research if there's an audiobook version I could listen to. Not because it means I'll necessarily even read the book in those ways, but it's useful to have boundaries before I end up buying every book ever written. Because I do have a lot of unread books.
Seeing films reissued in the cinema is magical to me. Most importantly it saves shelf space (especially if extras are poor or available online), but it's also of course a better viewing experience than watching at home, sometimes it's a 4K remaster not available on disc, a rewatch in a new way can feel like watching the film for the first time, and it can even motivate me to watch an unwatched disc - go out for the film and finish off with the extras at home.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joonskeezle
Rarely in my life have I ever been someone who didn't always very specifically know what they wanted to watch next, or at least soon. Always had a backlog. To this day when I sit down to watch a movie, I specifically wanted to watch that movie. Usually I knew a day or more in advance.
I was never really someone who would just pop on Netflix and see what was there and then just pick something and watch it.
Another way of putting it is this: a lot of people (maybe even most people, and certainly most of the ones who love streaming) are more concerned with watching anything at all than something specific. They have their TV/movie time, and they'll fill it with something.
But that's always felt weird to me. The notion of just impulsively deciding to watch something and watching it. If I don't want to watch something specific at any given point, I don't watch anything, and I do something else.
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I think because I'm autistic my approach to viewing films is very overcomplicated. If I watch a film it acts as a branch to another film, whether because of shared theme, nationality, distributor, label, year of release, actor, director and so on. With new films coming out in the cinemas, I've been trying to make what I watch at home a mirror of what's showing in the cinema, based on common themes. I used to do piles that shifted around literally every time I watch a film, now I just do Letterboxd lists. It's overcomplicated and I never meet my targets and I kind of hate it, but I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. Outside of streaming and the cinema, it should be possible to draw lines between everything that I watch, besides "this is something that I watched".
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Originally Posted by jzbadblood
I feel this hardcore. Something will spark me to think about an unwatched movie in my collection and it'll be on the list to watch next. I don't find watching films to be a time passing hobby its more of a vested interest. I don't passively watch movies like that.
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My parents only passively watch films except at the cinema and it's infuriating. My mum will take a nap, and rather than rewinding she'll just ask for a plot summary from my dad and close the book on it. She might even rewatch the film a few months later, not realising she's already technically watched it and recognising none of it. She doesn't understand why I pause the film for a bathroom break or to make a drink, and I should just keep it running like it's in the cinema. At the same time, she says because they're not in the cinema, they don't need to massively engage with it. It's background noise while they're constantly on their laptops or doing something else. But I know from my own processing issues that if I do something else I'm not really watching the film, even eating food or unpacking a bag could take away attention. So I feel like my parents only ever watch highlight reels of the best scenes in the film - when the sound and visuals pierce through their distractions and they're actually focused. I'm actually shocked when my parents pay full attention or my mum just does the knitting at the same time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joonskeezle
It's also that so many people, especially younger ones, had gotten so used to the last 15+ years or so of just being able to steal everything online that the concept of having to pay anything at all for movies or whatever is bad enough for them.
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Embarrassing confession time. When I was 17 I followed Arrow's Facebook page for new announcements. But rather than buy the disc I'd end up watching a VHS rip of
Red Scorpion on YouTube, maybe not the most optimal viewing experience. Before I had Letterboxd I had a Word document of films I wanted to watch, picked up from friends or what was mentioned on Wikipedia or in documentaries or in YouTube videos, or what was referenced in pop culture. I had hyperlinks off to all the sites hosting them - most of those domains are probably gone now. I even pirated the films that have good special features on disc, like
Fight Club, telling myself I'd just watch them on YouTube. But I feel like my appreciation for film at that age would have been deeper had I been spending pocket money on second hand DVDs. Of course I was working on a limited budget, but at that age it was always the feeling of "well, film is an ethereal experience anyway, maybe it's better to save space, what does losing out on a few quid mean to a major studio" (and also I was a hardcore atheist then so I think I could be a bit more fast and loose with morality, in a teenage way), however many of the films on that list I still haven't seen, or I watched in a compromised way. I think torrents still have some value but only for films out of circulation. But I also think some people might never grow a deeper appreciation for film as I did without first being exposed to piracy that they later might regret a little.
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