Region 1

At one time I would have owned well over a hundred DVDs. Now, the ones in the picture above are almost all that remain. In my early forties I somehow lost my ability to enjoy movies. Bad films bored me; loud films irritated me (I’d be delighted if I never saw another superhero movie again); and even well-crafted, well-acted films would make me anxious and fidgety – more so if there was any amount of dramatic catharsis in them. Television likewise became more of an irritant than a comfort, and I eventually threw out my TV a decade ago.

The DVDs my wife and I had accumulated were given away to friends & family, or donated to charity shops. Except, that is, for those few Region 1 discs we’d ordered from the US or Canada. I was wary of releasing those back into the wild with no ready way of reminding prospective buyers that their Region 2 hardware wouldn’t play them (unless region-checking could be disabled). I’ve yet to act on the vague notion of selling them as a job lot on ebay. Some of the cases aren’t in the best of shape, with noticeably sunned spines.

From top to bottom we have Amélie (2001); City of God (‘02); Donnie Darko (‘01); Kung Fu Hustle (‘04); Mulholland Drive (‘01); A Scanner Darkly (‘06); season 3 of Canadian TV comedy Trailer Park Boys (‘03); seasons 1 & 2 of the same (‘01-‘02); and season 2 of The Wire (‘03). Media from the earlier part of the ’00s predominates as it became too temptingly easy to obtain films & TV by other means later in that decade. Of the movies, I remember Kung Fu Hustle the least clearly (aside from the plain fact that I enjoyed it); whereas Mulholland Drive is still wedged firmly in my memory (aided by having revisited scenes from it on-line over the years).