Aug 25, 2008

Day Dream Day

Everyone has a thinking place.


Day Dream Day (2008) Written & Directed by Luke Fandrich

Perched on the roof with the street at a glance,
An afternoon devoted to pondering chance.

The neighbourhood's silent, the possibility's there,
But you think to yourself, and you shift and you stare.

It's nice to be free, it's nice to be young,
Your potential, you reason, is so out strung.

You glance at the windows, the roofs, and ground,
It's a long way up, when the there's just pavement around.

The world is my oyster, the future my now,
So many questions, but most of them how.

I want to be seen, and I want to be heard,
But so high up, I think, there's only the birds.

So I'll get back to the ground, get my head from the clouds,
I'll shuffle and mingle, shake hands with the crowds.

I'll do what it takes, and I'll work the late hours,
I'll sacrifice some sleep, some meals, some showers.

I'm just another dreamer, another guy with some hope,
Just a man on a leash, tugged by someone else's rope.

But from here things look fine, with camera in hand,
I'll shoot what I'll see, I'll edit and I'll land.

All at once I won't do, cause I don't wanna fall,
I'll just ease myself back, while admiring it all.

But maybe not yet, not just for this minute,
I want to dream a bit more, and find myself lost in it.

Aug 23, 2008

1007 DVDs

I meant to make note of this when hitting 1000 DVDs but time kind of kept rolling and I found myself 7 movies further along before putting this post together. So, 1007 titles. It all started in December 2001 when I had asked for a DVD player for Christmas and had already started buying DVDs to replace my then 100 VHS tapes. Not quite 7 years later I've crossed the thousand mark and have acquired quite an extensive and diverse collection of work that I like to refer to as my library.

I used to receive a lot of flack from my folks, especially in my early uni days because of the money I'd spend on movies. I understood their point, but really, all students have their vices. For some it's booze, some it's fast food, and mine just happened to be DVDs. I can't remember the number of times that I used the excuse that because I was in film production, DVDs were really like my textbooks. That's true, but it's also clear they weren't the most financially responsible choice (especially back in the beginning when they were $20 and up).


Now-a-days, I'm a previously viewed buyer and because I've acquired most of the movies that I had on my wish list, most of my purchases are either pre-1980 films or recent releases. Keeping track of all these flicks can be difficult, but thankfully I'm a pretty organized guy and have all my films databased, referenced, and alphabetically catalogued in binders. A bit obsessive? Maybe a bit, but it's tough not to care about the films that I've spent thousands of dollars on.

The nice thing about having my films in a database is that I can easily share some of the statistics about the films I love and the collection itself. So, here goes!

  • There are 1007 titles in my collection.
  • With a total of 1361 actual discs.
  • A total length of 146852 minutes.
  • It would take approx. 102 straight days to watch all the movies.
  • The average year of the collection is 1993.8
  • The years I have the most movies from are 2005 and 2006, both with 80 titles.
  • Top 5 directors in my collection: Steven Spielberg (18), Charlie Chaplin (11), Robert Zemeckis (11), Woody Allen (9), Martin Scorsese (9).
  • Time it took to reach 1007 DVDs: 6 years and 9 months.
  • That's 2.9 DVDs purchased per week since December 2001.
  • I was 17 when I purchased my first DVD which was Mel Brook's Spaceballs (1987).
  • Oldest movie in the collection: The Kid (1921) directed by Charlie Chaplin.
  • DVDs by decade: Pre-1970 (98), 1970s (38), 1980s (130), 1990s (225), 2000s (516).
  • 17 Genres in my collection: Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Fantasy, Holiday, Mockumentary, Music, Science Fiction, Sports, Television, Thriller, War, Western.
  • Most common genre: Comedy (253)
  • Least common genre: Mockumentary (13)
  • 48 Academy Award Best Picture Winners
  • Oldest Oscar Best Picture in collection: Grand Hotel (1933)
  • Most Recent Best Picture in collection: No Country for Old Men (2007)
  • And yes, I have watched every DVD I own. Some only once, some tens of times, and the majority somewhere in between.

So there's a handful of tidbits regarding my DVDs, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of things slowing down. Although over the years, whenever I told people how many DVDs I was at, they'd always assume the next time I saw them that I must have several hundred more movies. I bet from the date of this post if you add 3 DVDs per week to whatever date, that will be the current total.

I don't have a single favourite movie, but if you're interested the Desert Island Flick entries I've been writing on this blog are all about the movies I own and love. Happy flick watching!

Aug 22, 2008

Jungle Cruise at Disneyland

Sure it'd be nice to pretend that I took a weekend excursion to the jungles of Africa and Asia, but it's doubtful that story would hold up once you saw the animatronic elephants, tigers and hippos. Oh well, I guess that's why there's Disneyland.  Here is the brief edit of the jungle cruise from our 2004 trip.