I Enjoy Watching Movies On DVD

I recently heard on a radio news broadcast that the retailer Best Buy was discontinuing the sale of DVDs because more and more people are watching movies via streaming services rather than on DVDs.

My introduction to streaming came about when my upstairs neighbors, Harry and Lilia, would invite me to their apartment numerous times for dinner, conversation, and the use of their laptop computers.

Harry or Lilia, while sitting on the living room couch, remote in hand, would skim through the menu offerings on Netflix, reading the plot summaries before deciding on what to watch.

From what I could see, streaming doesn't offer the kinds of features found on a DVD like audio commentaries, scene selection, behind-the-scenes mini-docs, blooper clips, trailers, etc. (Good reasons not to buy bootleg copies because they lack these important features.)

Being old school, I prefer to have the physical disc in hand. As the novelist Larry Duplechan points out in his memoir/film history book, Movies That Made Me Gay (Team Angelica Publishing, 2023, paperback), the DVD is a good backup because "you can't trust streaming services to keep your favorite old movies posted."

A Warning Against Film Piracy

The most memorable DVD "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning" was the one I saw before the start of the 1945 film And Then There Were None, which was based on an Agatha Christie mystery novel, and starred Barry Fitzgerald. In this warning, a computer-generated image of a man is seen in prison stripes walking forlornly into a prison cell. The cell door slides shut, the scene blacks out briefly. He is next shown sitting on his prison cot, head in his hands. Then the "FBI Warning" message crawls up the screen as a mournful harmonica is heard throughout the segment.

If that doesn't send home the message that film piracy has serious consequences then nothing will.

Show The Trailer First, Then The Movie

Last week (November 10), I saw Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller, Rear Window, at Film Forum, the repertory theatre in Lower Manhattan. I've seen the movie many times on videocassette and DVD, probably on broadcast TV, too. But never on the big screen. It is one of the movies I never get tired of watching. As I sat there, I was trying to imagine what it must have been like in 1954 seeing Rear Window for the first time with an audience.

One thing I wish the programmer at Film Forum had thought to do was have the movie's trailer precede the screening to heighten the audience's anticipation.

Incidentally, my friend Velma's former Morningside Heights apartment resembles the James Stewart character's apartment. I could look across the courtyard and see through the windows of the neighboring apartments. Whenever I visited her, Rear Window would come to mind.

A Bad Movie's Tell-Tale Sign

You can usually tell that a movie is a real turkey when print ads quote critics you've never heard of representing publications you've never heard of.

"Hidden Figures," The Movie

Last night I saw Hidden Figures (twice). This excellent film focuses on three African-American women who worked at NASA in the early 1960s and whose extraordinary math skills helped launch astronaut John Glenn into space aboard Friendship 7.

I have the book by Margot Lee Shetterly on which the movie was based and I plan to read it very soon.

I hope to obtain the DVD of the movie when it becomes available. I'm sure bootleg copies are already on the street. But I'll wait for the official version with all of the features that are sure to come with it: commentary by the director, screenwriter, and actors, a documentary about African-Americans at NASA (with an on-screen interview with the book's author), etc.

A Celestial Meaning?

I  recently found among some discarded books a copy of When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by movie producer Jerry Weintraub with Rich Cohen (Twelve Books,2010). Weintraub died at age 77 on July 6, 2015. I found his book on September 26, which would have been his 78th birthday. Does finding this book when I did have a celestial meaning?

Movies Alfresco Are Not For Me

This summer all around New York there will be movie screenings in the city's parks and on rooftops. Many of these events will be free (including the popcorn).

But I doubt that I will be an attendee. They would remind me too much of the drive-in theatres I went to when I was a child in Southern California. Watching a movie on a big screen under the stars never appealed to me. I've always preferred going to what Variety, the entertainment trade publication, has called hardtop theatres, with their plush seats, air conditioning, movie posters, and the smell of hot buttered popcorn and hot dogs.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the smell of grass, the chirping of birds, and the occasional gust of wind. But not while I'm trying to enjoy a movie.They would only serve as distractions.

Is There No Need To Quote Black Film Critics?

The print ads for Selma and Chris Rock's Top Five have several blurbs from film critics giving these movies high praise. Unfortunately, none of the blurbs are from critics in the black press. Does that mean that Paramount Pictures, the distributor, thinks the black media has nothing worthwhile to say about films that are from the black experience?

Denzel Washington To Play Thelonious Monk On The Big Screen

Denzel Washington has played several real-life people on the big screen: South African activist Steven Biko, boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, and Black Muslim orator Malcolm X, to name just three roles. AARP The Magazine (December 2014-January 2015 issue) in its "Big 5-Oh" feature on the back page, which celebrates celebrity birthday milestones, reports that Washington "hopes to star as jazz legend Thelonious Monk." This wouldn't be the first time Washington, who turned 60 this month, plays a jazz musician. He had the lead role (as a trumpet player) in Spike Lee's 1990 flick, Mo' Better Blues.

Has Technology Improved The Quality Of Movies?

"It must not be forgotten that advances in technology do not, by definition, result in advances in artistry. The history of movies is a history of change: from silent to sound, from black and white to color, and so on. Can anyone truly argue that, overall, today's movies, at their current peak of technological sophistication, are markedly superior to the general run of films from earlier eras? The invention of the personal computer did not result in greater writers. A similar analogy, I think, holds true in the film world as well."--Peter Rainer, film critic, The Christian Science Monitor Weekly, September 17, 2012.