Movie Scum

Given that at present 27 seasons of The Simpsons have been produced, yet several are not available beyond FXX's constant reruns, countless fans will be disappointed to hear no more DVD sets are coming their way. I've already made the argument why I believe DVDs and other physical forms of media are important but this news courtesy of show producer Al Jean on Twitter introduces a new wrinkle. For dedicated Simpsons fans, in spite of the lackluster quality of many, many of the latter seasons, collecting the newly released (although generally seven to eight seasons behind) DVD box sets just added to the collection. But now? If you have feverishly bought every single set available now, you will have a gap from seasons 17-19 (with the 20th season getting its own out of order bare-bones release) and the rest of the series until it ceases, probably somewhere in the 43rd season. Or when the zombie apocalypse finally happens. Given that all of the box sets previously have con...

As I read a feature over at The Dissolve about making Blu-rays relevant again , I realize that I am not the type of film-viewer that would ever, willingly, make them irrelevant to begin with. From my early years in the late 80s and early 90s, I loved the act of collecting films on physical media, whether it be a less-than-perfect dub from a video store rental, a recording from HBO, or a hard-to-find 'SP' version of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 . Eventually, these VHS tapes gave way to laserdiscs (which were prohibitively expensive mostly), DVDs, and then now Blu-rays. The actual rationale (if there is one) behind my desire to own physical media has not diminished, even if the majority of the world disagrees. Blu-rays and DVDs represent something tangible to me. If you were to look at my collection, you might be impressed at the variety of titles or abhorred at the titles themselves. I mean, who really buys Maniac Cop 2 on Blu-ray? But at the very least, these discs rep...

I love DVDs. Right after high school, I was buying at least a half dozen a week if not more. Yet there are several things that just pluck my nerves. This list is not in any particular order and certainly not inclusive. I am quite sure there could be a revisit to this topic eventually. 9. “Large Screen” Releases Essentially, these are films originally in a larger aspect ration, usually 2.40:1, that are cropped during a certain group of scenes. Not only do I despise not watching movies in their original ratios, the way this was handled for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was quite poor, and I’m not only referring to the movie itself. The jump back and forth between scenes (and even different shots within the same scene) is quite jarring. I know a normal movie-goer might not notice but it is rather annoying regardless. 8. Delayed Releases Now that Netflix and Redbox have caved to several studios’ demands to withhold new releases for almost a month after they hit DVD, the only wa...