What was the last DVD you bought and why?

The booklets aren't that big, but the ones I've read contain interesting analyses of the films and help understand some of them, especially the two Godard ones that I own.

Anyway, just ordered this Twin Peaks set, already watched the show but want it on DVD so I can watch it again (and again, and again ).

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The complete 6th season of Bonanza.

Now I have the years with the original cast members.

Also just crazy about that series and westerns as well.

Bought the Twin Peaks set a while back on a total whim - I was never a huge fan of the show at release (an admission likely to get you kneecapped in certain areas) but thought 'What the heck? It's landmark, innit?'

Landmark it is, and also much more frivolous than I remembered.

EDIT - Oh yeah, this arrived the other day:



I know those cardboard case things distress as soon as you look at them but, hey, it's The Third Man so nyah...

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

The Raid , great film

Mine was more expensive because it was a steelbook edition with 3 or 4 discs, can't remember which without looking and comes with extras not available outside of the steelbook edition apparently. I didn't mind paying that at the time.

In my Amazon basket (ready to order this Friday):

-The Big Lebowski (Limited Reel Hero Edition, whatever that means) + Chungking Express [Amazon Get Two Selected Blu-ray Titles for £10*]

-Miracle in Milan (+II Tetto) (Vittoria De Sica)

-The Birth of a Nation (released July 22, 2013)

-Eagle Eye. Haven't watched it since it was released but I remember enjoying it.

-Inland Empire + Lost Highway + Wild at Heart (David Lynch)

Looking forward to getting them.

Do the right thing - 1989
The man with the golden arm - 1955

Been wanting to see both movies for ages and i managed to pick them up for £1 each yesterday.

The Big Lebowski is just phenomenal, good choice

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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~

That's a Blu-ray I've got my eye on, trying to decide.

Stuart Little (1999)

Because I wanted to find out what quality I can get when I buy a DVD at a supermarket. It wasn't worth it.

Eh? I buy most of my DVDs in supermarkets...

Did you go in and ask "Can I have a DVD please?" and they threw Stuart Little at you?

The Man Who Shook The Hand of Vicente Fernandez.(2012)

This was Ernest Borgnine's last film made at a youthful 94 years of age.

Still the old pro. Though most of the time he was shown as being wheelchair bound in a nursing home, at the end he was shown standing up and walking. Still a hefty gentlemen.

And also a very good performance.

I remember him as Fatso Judson working over Frank Sinatra in From Here To Eternity.

Changed his image from bully to sympathetic character in his Oscar performance in Marty.

I have a friend who was formerly in the military. many years ago he was sent to Hollywood as an advisor and got to know Borgnine.

He said Ernie was a real great person, very outgoing and a staunch conservative.

Made his film debut in 1951 in China Corsair as Hu Chang. Also appeared in two episodes in 1951 in the Captain Video TV series.

Borgnine, like other actors ( Pat Hingle, Raymond Burr, James Whitmore & Karl Malden) was a good enough reason to watch a film or purchase It for my collection.

R. I. P. Ernie

No... there is no service like that in Polish supermarkets. Everything is on the shelves and you just take it down yourself. The people who work there do everything. They put the price tags on, they clean, they take the goods out of the warehouse and put it on the shelves and they run the registers. There are no separate employees for each of those tasks so they don't exactly have time to help me choose a DVD.

Also, in Poland, if you buy something at a supermarket, you do it because it's cheap. With many things you can't get the same quality at a supermarket that you would at a proper store. Therefore you can buy a DVD of a certain movie at, say, a good online shop and you will get proper world-standard quality DVD. If you buy it at a supermarket, you will get an entirely different, although cheaper DVD. All the features are still gonna be there with all the menus and the extra footage and bloopers and such but the quality is worse.

You might think: "well, why don't you just watch movies on Netflix or Hulu? You would get the same quality everyone else in the world gets every time." - Well guess what: Netflix and Hulu are not available in Poland. If you go to the websites, you will just get a message saying: "we're sorry but this service is not available in your country". There are tricks to get around that, but when it comes to payments, you would have to do international money transfers every time. Those are costly. Alternatively, you could use paypal, but many people would rather not since, at least in Poland, paypal is very unreliable. They freeze people's money randomly and such.

So yeah... the only way you can get a movie in Poland is either by buying a crappy DVD at a supermarket for a reasonable price or spending a considerably bigger amount of money at an online shop to get a good DVD. This, of course, wouldn't be all that bad if you actually had a decent choice of movies in either of those options. But you don't. Both supermarkets and online shops only sell what is popular at the time. If you want to buy a DVD of an older movie or an obscure movie... you simply can't. There's no way in hell you will ever find it anywhere.

So next time you hear on the news that piracy is very high in Poland, now you know why. Even if we have the money, we can't buy what we want.


Buuuuut I digress...

Amazon or eBay? I get loads of stuff through there.

Supermarkets here are very hit and miss but they tend to drop the prices pretty quickly to move on old stock.

There is no Polish version of Amazon or eBay. We can buy there, of course, but again: international money transfers and international shipping.

What we have is Allegro, which is a Polish thing that tries its best to be like eBay but fails miserably. Every now and then you can read news about how badly they treat their customers compared to Amazon and eBay.

So yeah, basically, most people, me included, use Allegro for online shopping and like I said, not much of a choice there.

Damn. It's a bit drastic but ... have you thought of emigrating?

I'm in rural Ireland so without the internet I'd be stuck when it comes to watching and owning good films, but I can use Amazon etc freely.

Yes I did think of that. There's a problem though. See, the only thing I'm genuinely good at is... the English language. I wanted to be a programmer but for that I would have to be really good at math and I'm only average at math so that was not an option.

So yeah, with English being the only useful skill I have, I can either be a translator or a teacher. Since in Poland you have to have friends with benefits to get a job as a translator, and I don't think anybody needs an English-Polish translator abroad, teaching is the only thing left for me. But then who needs a Polish guy who teaches English abroad? If I wanted to go to any English-speaking country and get a job like that it would be like shipping wood into a forest.

I'm stuck here...

Considering the amount of Poles working abroad, what about becoming a translator? Personally, I know a couple of girls who translate for the education services when schools are dealing with parents who don't speak English.

There might also be opportunities for actually teaching Polish in the UK or wherever. The woman who used to call herself my wife worked for a while in Germany teaching English (her native language).

Well, it's not like it's impossible. I heard that some people who graduated from the university I attend to actually went to England and they teach English there despite being Polish.

The thing is, I'd have to pull that off in the USA or Canada or something because I study the American English variation so England is definitely out of the question.

But perhaps I will try to find something. I'm gonna worry about that when (or if...) I graduate from college.

Nah, just learn to spell 'colour' properly and you'll be fine.

I've got a degree in English Language & Literature myself but that's as a native speaker. The only foreign language I was any good at was Latin...