DVD Library

[zedz]

Needless to say, that Best / Worst viewing project ended up with several of the least anticipated films being seriously great (e.g. The Song of Bernadette - one of those pesky domino recommendations).

[Perkins Cobb]

I don't have any particular desire to own movies that I love (in a philosophical sense, I don't even concede that it's possible!), so almost everything on the 'yip is a blind buy, acquired because I want to see it and it's in the category of unrentable / unborrowable. Which, as swo and others have documented, is an increasingly large category these days, hence the gradual expansion of my kevyip. Stuff goes on the pile, and eventually gets plucked off of it, for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the films themselves: I spot a bargain; I have to write about something; I hear something is going OOP; I decide to cover a director or a "movement" (Australian New Wave, say) and buy a few odds and ends to supplement Netflix or whatever.

There's also a crucial subdivision within the 'yip in terms of physical organization and priority: actual purchases (which take up more space, and have resale value) and rips of rented, purchased, or borrowed MODs (which have nowhere to go except the closet or, potentially, during a move, the landfill).

Man, that Kevin Yip guy is never gonna live this down, huh?

[Matt]

He reaps what he sowed.

[swo17]

Which, as swo and others have documented, is an increasingly large category these days, hence the gradual expansion of my kevyip.

Yeah, if you define kevyip as "movies that I could have just as easily rented or borrowed but that I bought instead just to stick it to starving kids in Africa" then I could probably count mine on two hands. But a majority of my purchases these days are in fact from me having to run my own personal Netflix out of my house for a single customer whose rapacious appetite for all things Blu-ray knows no bounds.

[Perkins Cobb]

If Netflix ever dumps the disc business completely, I could literally be buying two or three dozen DVDs & Blu-rays a month, then trying desperately to unload them all. Weekends watching movies, weeknights eBaying movies. Whee.

[warren oates]

Another obvious downside to becoming too obsessed with your kevyip is denying yourself the pleasure and edification of rewatching the truly great films you've already seen. One of the nicer thing to happen to my viewing habits this year was the relocation of a younger movie-mad relative who comes over once a week for his dose of Bergman, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Godard, etc.

[matrixschmatrix]

Two of the things that inflate my kevyip (which I've diligently kept to a mere 671, which is at least less than half of my collection) are box sets- where one Garbo purchase means I suddenly have about 15 unwatched things on the pile, and even if I marathon them over a weekend I'll never do more than half at a go- and a habit of trying to get complete director's sets, which means I've got a lot of things like Scorsese's Cape Fear that sit around for a long time before I get the impulse to see them.

I agree, though, that it's actually kind of delightful- every time I'm reading a film book and realize the movie they're talking about is one I can just put on and watch from my own stash, it's like winning a little prize. And absolutely I love lending movies out- a friend is a film teacher, and I get to be the point person every time she wants to show something not available from the library.

It's fucking frustrating when I wind up upgrading something I never actually watched, though.

Another obvious downside to becoming too obsessed with your kevyip is denying yourself the pleasure and edification of rewatching the truly great films you've already seen.

Yeah, I don't know if it's just my Catholic upbringing rearing its head, but I literally feel guilty when I pick watching something I've seen over something I've been meaning to watch. Doubly so for rewatching TV shows, which I used to do all the time- I rewatched the entirety of Arrested Development a couple of months ago because my girlfriend hadn't seen it, and I felt the whole time like I was shirking homework.

[warren oates]

It's fucking frustrating when I wind up upgrading something I never actually watched, though.

Sometimes, though, isn't this the perfect excuse to finally watch it, either in the lesser format/pressing ("Will I even like it enough to keep it and/or upgrade?") or in the newer, better version ("Let's see what I've been missing now that it's been restored.")?

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, true enough- I'd been putting off Magnolia for years and finally watched it when I got it in a DVD2Blu package- but it always seems foolish to watch the lesser version when I know something better's available but simultaneously worry that I'm buying something twice that I wouldn't have wanted to see in the first place. Or, as with Casablanca, re-re-upgrading something I've only seen in theaters and may never actually watch on home media.

[Perkins Cobb]

Just forget about the money and congratulate yourself on having dawdled to the point that now you can watch the movie for the first time in a better form than if you hadn't left that DVD on your kevyip for three years.

[Drucker]

Two of the things that inflate my kevyip (which I've diligently kept to a mere 671, which is at least less than half of my collection) are box sets- where one Garbo purchase means I suddenly have about 15 unwatched things on the pile, and even if I marathon them over a weekend I'll never do more than half at a go- and a habit of trying to get complete director's sets, which means I've got a lot of things like Scorsese's Cape Fear that sit around for a long time before I get the impulse to see them.

I agree, though, that it's actually kind of delightful- every time I'm reading a film book and realize the movie they're talking about is one I can just put on and watch from my own stash, it's like winning a little prize. And absolutely I love lending movies out- a friend is a film teacher, and I get to be the point person every time she wants to show something not available from the library.

It's fucking frustrating when I wind up upgrading something I never actually watched, though.

Another obvious downside to becoming too obsessed with your kevyip is denying yourself the pleasure and edification of rewatching the truly great films you've already seen.

Yeah, I don't know if it's just my Catholic upbringing rearing its head, but I literally feel guilty when I pick watching something I've seen over something I've been meaning to watch. Doubly so for rewatching TV shows, which I used to do all the time- I rewatched the entirety of Arrested Development a couple of months ago because my girlfriend hadn't seen it, and I felt the whole time like I was shirking homework.

You hit the nail on the head about line-cutters and box sets. Sometimes I don't watch a full box set but take it out of the kevyip pile and put it in the library. With Postwar Kurosawa, I watched every film except The Idiot, which 30 minutes in, wasn't doing anything for me and the studio interference really annoyed me. If I hadn't put it in the library, I'm sure it would still be in the pile, as I've had no desire whatsoever to finish the film.

[repeat]

I have made a conscious decision to stop buying any more DVDs and blu-rays until I am at a reasonable kevyip level.

I tried that a couple of years ago - like someone already mentioned, instead of completely stopping purchases, I'd recommend just strictly limiting them to unmissable bargains and stuff that's going OOP. You'll have to see for yourself of course, but I ended up kicking myself quite a bit for some of the stuff I missed out on.

My physical kevyip (excluding all my watchlists on various streaming services, which I'm trying to clear first for fear of them expiring plus my reluctancy to pay for subscriptions for longer than necessary) is currently about 60% of what I have, and probably enough discs to spell out Godard's quip about how home video will only lead to people spending more time on buying films than watching them - so no, I don't think your situation is unreasonable at all

Does anyone have James Monaco's Resnais book on hand? The book-buying anecdote on the last page would be well worth quoting here!

[colinr0380]

I certainly agree with warren oates - I don't let my kevyip overrule me from going back and re-watching old favourites, or even films from the 'watched' library that I haven't seen in a while - I had a strange urge to go back and re-watch Robinson In Ruins and Takashi Miike's Gozu last night for example! (I went to bed with visions of Vanessa Redgrave narrating footage of a strange Twin Peaks-but-in-Japan film involving 'trained attack poodles' being spun around by their collar over a yakuza's head!)

It must be great to be able to introduce people to a whole swathe of films. That would be my dream but unfortunately nobody in my general vicinity seems to be that interested in Godard, Ozu, Antonioni etc!

With Postwar Kurosawa, I watched every film except The Idiot, which 30 minutes in, wasn't doing anything for me and the studio interference really annoyed me. If I hadn't put it in the library, I'm sure it would still be in the pile, as I've had no desire whatsoever to finish the film.

*Eyes widen, monocle pops out, swoons onto the forum's (handily placed) fainting couch with hand to forehead*

[hamsterburger]

I have made a conscious decision to stop buying any more DVDs and blu-rays until I am at a reasonable kevyip level.

I tried that a couple of years ago - like someone already mentioned, instead of completely stopping purchases, I'd recommend just strictly limiting them to unmissable bargains and stuff that's going OOP.

I totally agree. It’s more a case of curtaining my excessive buying than actually stopping cold turkey.

I usually buy films in binges. I go on a spree and wait by the mailbox for the flood of packages to arrive. Often these sprees happen when I am procrastinating something, for example during my exams.

In the last amazon criterion sale this December I bought about 20 criterions, but to max out on shipping and at the same time keeping my order under about $32, (which is the customs limit in the country I live), I needed to pair each higher tier criterion blu with another film that cost about $10-13. In the end I was struggling to find piggyback DVDs for each order, and I was essentially buying films I didn’t really want just to pad out the order.

This kind of reasoning is a major cause of purchases for me, for example I have been trying to get through Joan Crawford’s filmography and wanted to se Female on the Beach. The TCM MOD DVD costs $ 18, which I consider too expensive for one DVD, especially a MOD. But because I added two bargain blu-rays to the order, Mean Streets and Fort Apache, which cost $5 each, the total price of each film when I divided the cost including shipping by three made the price seem more reasonable.

By spending more, I feel that I am saving money. This is the kind of inane reasoning I use with myself. I some times feel like Homer Simpson when he has arguments with his own brain.

[HistoryProf]

Another obvious downside to becoming too obsessed with your kevyip is denying yourself the pleasure and edification of rewatching the truly great films you've already seen. One of the nicer thing to happen to my viewing habits this year was the relocation of a younger movie-mad relative who comes over once a week for his dose of Bergman, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Godard, etc.

This is my ongoing personal battle. Recently i've noticed that I frequently forego rewatching something a 2nd (3rd4th5th6th) time in favor of something off the Kevyip out of some compulsion to do SOMETHING about whittling it down. I've gone a bit mad in the last couple of B&N sales, and then added a lot of TV stuff between turkey time and xmas most recently because of so many good deals that it's near impossible to do much about it while also getting a couple Netflix/Redbox choices out of the way each week too. a look at DVDProfiler shows 1078 unique titles and 374 unwatched to date - but one season of Justified = one kevyip tick. I just went through all four seasons of Fringe in anticipation of the finale, am about to do so with Game of Thrones, and have so much other stuff I want to watch but just don't seem to have the time. And then there's that random afternoon where I just want to pop in Fargo for the hell of it but feel almost guilty because of that 30% kevyip.

It's a struggle I tell ya.

[HistoryProf]

It's fucking frustrating when I wind up upgrading something I never actually watched, though.

This is doubly frustrating. Ivan's Childhood is in this category for me. I bought it in the summer 2010 B&N sale and have not yet broken the seal so it's still new. do I sell it? Won't get half what I would have before the announcement...or just stick with what I have and deal with it as penance for my indulgence in buying so much?

[swo17]

If it's still new, it looks like you could still get more than 50% MSRP for it on Amazon Marketplace.

[Drucker]

It's fucking frustrating when I wind up upgrading something I never actually watched, though.

This is doubly frustrating. Ivan's Childhood is in this category for me. I bought it in the summer 2010 B&N sale and have not yet broken the seal so it's still new. do I sell it? Won't get half what I would have before the announcement...or just stick with what I have and deal with it as penance for my indulgence in buying so much?

If you haven't even opened it, can you at least get store credit from Barnes and Noble?

[triodelover]

This is probably veering OT, but have those of you upgrading their kevyips tried your local used book/CD/DVD store as a possible quick and relatively painless way to recoup some of what are already sunk costs? We have a rather large one here who's business is helped by the presence of a large university. Last spring I took around 120 DVDs (all Region 1 or 0 NTSC) representing pulls and upgrades to them. It was a mix of Crits and other lesser labels, a number of which dated from the snapper case era. Half an hour later I walked out with a check for just under $800. True, I likely could have gotten more for the Crits, but some of the snappers and others probably wouldn't have sold at all or gone for peanuts. I averaged over $6 a unit and didn't have to mail anything or deal with any dissatisfied buyers. Just a thought...

[swo17]

Half an hour later I walked out with a chick for just under $800.

Hey, just what kind of a place is this?

[triodelover]

Half an hour later I walked out with a chick for just under $800.

Hey, just what kind of a place is this?

Full service, whaddya expect?

(*&%$#@ spellcheck. Fixed. )

[Murdoch]

There used to be an FYE near me that bought back used DVDs but it's since gone defunct. The money you would get fluctuated dramatically but it was a good way to get rid of those movies selling for only a couple bucks on Amazon. I miss going through the aisles of used discs in that store, early on they had a buy 2 and get the third disc free policy that was a great way to buy movies; it was almost like a treasure hunt sifting through the stacks of cases. Ah, those were the days.

[Perkins Cobb]

Half an hour later I walked out with a chick for just under $800.

Hey, just what kind of a place is this?

Hooker keyvip: I've got half a dozen standing around, waiting for me to get into the mood again. Coco's been here for three weeks!

[Perkins Cobb]

I understand "DVD buying guilt" (and feel it hard every month when I study my credit card bills) but the idea of "kevyip guilt" is mystifying to me. It seems like a pure compulsion with no up side.

At this point - apart from occasionally having to cram on some viewing for a writing deadline - the only stress I feel about watching stuff is the worry that I might croak before I get to see every movie I want to see in my lifetime. So far this mostly translates into cashing rainchecks -- i.e., I'll stumble upon some movie I was saving for a rainy day and think, well, I'm closing in on 40; I guess the rainy day is now.

[Drucker]

I understand "DVD buying guilt" (and feel it hard every month when I study my credit card bills) but the idea of "kevyip guilt" is mystifying to me. It seems like a pure compulsion with no up side.

At this point - apart from occasionally having to cram on some viewing for a writing deadline - the only stress I feel about watching stuff is the worry that I might croak before I get to see every movie I want to see in my lifetime. So far this mostly translates into cashing rainchecks -- i.e., I'll stumble upon some movie I was saving for a rainy day and think, well, I'm closing in on 40; I guess the rainy day is now.

I absolutely have not only kevyip guilt, but even worse, library guilt. Before I got into film and was exclusively a music buyer, I would look at all my CDs and all the ones I've only listened to a handful or one time and absolutely feel terrible. I'd try to always include a few CDs I hadn't played enough in car trips next to CDs I listened to all the time. It's no different when I realize I've only watched even my favorite blu rays 2 or 3 times.