Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Movie DVD List
Didn't sleep well last night, not because of the heat (the house had largely cooled down from the low 30-degree heat of the previous day by the evening), but because some idiot in the area with leftover fireworks from Victoria Day decided to set them off at the time I normally head to sleep. And just when I had settled in, Erika came back at 2am from what turned out to be a 4-hour practice session with the new orchestra she is playing with.

So I spent my sleepless hours finishing off a rough cataloguing of all my movie DVDs. As of this morning, barring anything that may have slipped behind the TV, I have a total of 99 movies on DVD. That's not counting any TV-specific DVDs, or anything that could count as aimed at the kids (which may well be an equal or greater number).

For the heck of it, here's my list:
TITLE DIRECTOR
A Day at the Races Sam Wood
Adaptation Spike Jonze
Æon Flux Karyn Kusama
Amadeus Milos Forman
Amélie Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Animal Crackers Victor Heerman
Artificial Intelligence: AI Steven Spielberg
Austin Powers in Goldmember Jay Roach
Big Trouble in Little China John Carpenter
Black Mask Daniel Lee
Blade Runner Ridley Scott
Bless the Child Chuck Russell
Brazil Terry Gilliam
Broken Flowers Jim Jarmusch
Cast Away Robert Zemeckis
Chicago Rob Marshall
Cinderella Man Ron Howard
Cold Creek Manor Mike Figgis
Cold Mountain Anthony Minghella
Constantine Francis Lawrence
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie Shinichirô Watanabe
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang Lee
Cutey Honey Yasuchika Nagaoka
Dark City Alex Proyas
Donnie Darko Richard Kelly
Duck Soup Leo McCarey
Ed Wood Tim Burton
Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton
Elephant Gus Van Sant
Elizabeth Shekhar Kapur
Enter… Zombie King Stacey Case
Finding Forrester Gus Van Sant
From the Earth to the Moon Michael Grossman, David Carson
Gangs of New York Martin Scorsese
Gattaca Andrew Niccol
Ghost Busters Ivan Reitman
Godzilla 2000 Takao Okawara
Good Night, and Good Luck George Clooney
Gun Crazy Joseph H. Lewis
Half Baked Tamra Davis
Henry V Kenneth Branagh
Hero Yimou Zhang
Horse Feathers Norman Z. McLeod
House of Flying Daggers Yimou Zhang
I Heart Huckabees David O. Russell
I, Robot Alex Proyas
Kill Bill: Volume 1 Quentin Tarantino
Kingdom of Heaven Ridley Scott
Kung Fu Hustle Stephen Chow
Lost in Space Stephen Hopkins
March of the Penguins Luc Jacquet
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Peter Weir
Millennium Actress Satoshi Kon
Minority Report Steven Spielberg
Monkey Business Norman Z. McLeod
Monty Python and the Holy Grail Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam
Murder, My Sweet Edward Dmytryk
Mystery Men Kinka Usher
Ninja Scroll Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kevin Seymour
Out of the Past Jacques Tourneur
Phil the Alien Rob Stefaniuk
Primer Shane Carruth
Revenge of the Pink Panther Blake Edwards
Road to Perdition Sam Mendes
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard
Serenity Joss Whedon
Shakespeare in Love John Madden
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Kerry Conran
Solaris Steven Soderbergh
Star Trek: Nemesis Stuart Baird
Star Wars: Clone Wars Genndy Tartakovsky
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith George Lucas
Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension W.D. Richter
The Asphalt Jungle John Huston
The Aviator Martin Scorsese
The Brothers Grimm Terry Gilliam
The Cocoanuts Robert Florey, Joseph Santley
The Day the Earth Stood Still Robert Wise
The Fifth Element Luc Besson
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Sergio Leone
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Garth Jennings
The Ladykillers Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Wes Anderson
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Peter Jackson
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Peter Jackson
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra Larry Blamire
The Matrix Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
The Matrix Reloaded Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
The Matrix Revolutions Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
The Merchant of Venice Michael Radford
The Rookie John Lee Hancock
The Set-Up Robert Wise
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold Martin Ritt
Topsy-Turvy Mike Leigh
Touch of Evil Orson Welles
Volcanoes of the Deep Sea Stephen Low
Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks

Of late, the prices have really started to fall on used DVDs, the local Blockbuster selling off a good selection of semi-recent titles effectively at two for $20, and the local Rogers outfit has an "okay" selection of similar titles at three for $24. Since I almost invariably end up returning videos late, the cost to buy is comparable to renting with a late fee (or re-stocking fee, however you look at it). And I often end up watching titles more than once, so its makes (some) economic sense.

When compiling the list I just found that it was easier to find out such info as the date and director by looking up the movie title's entry in the Internet Movie Database -- much easier than squinting at the often teeny text on the DVD box. I don't always agree with IMDb's listing or the order of genres for each movie, but I snagged that info as well for sorting purposes later. In case I want to do further data mining some day, I added the IMDb link for each entry as well, though I didn't add it to the listing shown here).

Most of the titles are of relatively recent vintage, but the earliest dates to 1929 (The Marx Brother's debut "The Cocoanuts"). Turns out that my favourite director (going by the count of DVDs I own of his work) is Terry Gilliam. There are also a number of real oddball movies in this listing, some of which are personal favourites of mine ("The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra", "Buckaroo Bonzai", and the Criterion edition of "Brazil" come to mind), and some are gifts from Bill of things I wouldn't have gone out to get for myself ("Godzilla 2000", Jet Li's "Black Mask", and "Enter... Zombie King", which even the IMDb hasn't classify into any known genre as yet).

A good candidate for a MySQL database, which I may get around to some day. For now, until I throw in more data (such as leading actors/actresses awards won, a personal rating, etc), will just keep the data in a spreadsheet file.

Here's an interesting thought: how much drive space would this collection take up? 99 movies times 4.76GB per disk (conservatively) adds up to 473.22 GB -- well within the range of some of the 500GB hard drives that are beginning to appear in the market. With only minimal compression one could likely shave a hundred GB or so from that total. I already have all of my CDs ripped at a high bit rate and placed on a hard drive, but in another year or so it should possible to do something similar with my movie collection

Postscript: I subsequently found out that the fireworks that started all of this was actually a film crew shooting down at the waterfront. No community notice went out as far as I know that there would be fireworks...


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