Possession Is How Many Tenths Of The Law?
Friday 28 October, 2005

I was discussing CD purchases with Matt the other day. He's been a long time downloader and only this year has he had cash to throw around, so he feels it's time to support Australian artists at the very least. I'd already been through this self-debate before. Two years ago, I had no part-time job and downloaded a swag of great albums (painstakingly using dial-up) and earlier this year all of those bands released follow up albums. In the time between, I'd told myself that I wasn't a pirate or a leecher and that by downloading and approving of their album that I would see them when they toured and buy their next album. Following the self-debate, I have well and truly held up that promise. I now buy swags of CDs with each JB visit, much like a lot of other music fans I know, and I definitely consider myself a true music fan with the volume of CDs I buy, the live gigs I go to and the variety of genres and nationalities of bands I listen to (even if I mainly buy rock/pop-rock and Australian respectively).

Basically, I decided that at the end of the year, I'd draw up a list of my favourite 10 or 20 albums from the year and make sure I own all of them. I'm confident I've got at least three-quarters of them covered already, so it was an easy statement to make.

Leading to the actual point of this article, Dean was considering expanding his already impressive DVD collection with all the classics, meaning our classics, the ones we always quote and watch. I think he's only a few movies short of that mark in any case. But it got me thinking that I really needed to bulk up my DVD collection with all my beloved movies too. It's somehow more fulfilling to have the real thing in your collection, not just a burned copy.

It's not usually easy compiling a list of all-time favourites, but I think I can manage it. Already having Anchorman and Dodgeball is a great start, but there's so many funny movies left out. Necessities would include Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, Baseketball and Cool Runnings to mention a few from my taped-off-TV video collection. Then, I'd need some action-ish movies, maybe Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Usual Suspects. I've already got The Negotiator (for under $10 - score!) And surely I'd have to replace my burned copy of Goldeneye with the real thing; it's gotta be in my all-time top 5 and surely no collection would be complete without a Bond flick!

More movies spring to mind. The South Park movie is bloody hilarious, especially with all the sing-alongs! Thanks to a series of car trips with the soundtrack playing, I won't ever forget the lyrics to most of it! I watch my burned copy of that all the time. A couple more funny and quotable (you know what genre I mean) movies would be good, say Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, another Adam Sandler film (I still think he's hilarious) and something by Broken Lizard like Super Troopers. Then I guess I could get DVDs of more of my old videos: The Thomas Crown Affair, Snatch, Bad Boys to name a few. Then a slightly more obscure movie that only I'd have but's still funny, like The Ladies Man and maybe an Arnie movie like True Lies to round it out.

I think it's already taken shape.

A Weekend of Funnies
Friday 28 October, 2005

Last week I saw quite a few movies, which is a little unusual considering I normally focus on sport and haven't been to the cinemas for well over a month. I guess last weekend was a lazier one for everyone, so I spent each night hanging out in some capacity watching flicks.

After the International Rules game, Super Troopers came on the TV. I'd only seen it once, hadn't seen it in a while and it was even funnier than I remember! It was one of those films about a year and a bit ago that I hadn't seen, but most others had and I was often told I simply had to see it. That sort of thing happens a lot. The Matrix and Starsky and Hutch are other prime examples that I took a long time to see, but finally enjoyed. Next on the list is Old School, Sin City and Undercover Brother.

Saturday night was a more dedicated drinking and movie night. The TV movies sucked (thank God we didn't watch too much of the Lord of the Rings movie) so thankfully Trav got his laptop and hooked it up to the TV to watch some good ol' pirated movies...yarr! Trav recommended Club Dread, made by Broken Lizard, with all the same guys from Super Troopers, a sensible choice considering we'd enjoyed their work last night. It's a piss-take on the teen horror flicks, but was less corny than a Scary Movie because it wasn't so cliched. The characters were fantastic, very well developed too, with some classic lines. Putman's line of "Piss on that! I'm bringing a ma-che-tay!" has been my Messenger tagline all week long.

After that, we put on Elf. I'd wanted to see it for ages, because Will Ferrell's one of the funniest actors ever, but I never get around to renting movies. If I miss it at the movies and it's not in Ben's DVD collection, I probably won't get around to seeing it. Of course, Will Ferrell played the role well and had some great lines, but I found the characters tedious after a while. The whole elf-adjusting-to-human-world joke just couldn't last out the whole movie. To be fair though, a lot of comedies just get funnier if they've got good one-liners, so I won't go saying it's a disappointment just yet.

I actually went to the pictures on Sunday night to see The 40 Year Old Virgin. I was simply glad to know that some people hadn't seen it yet. Half of the people went were going for the second time, it was that funny. I didn't really need any more assurances, it had Steve Carell (Brick from Anchorman) as well as Paul Rudd (Brian from Anchorman), so I was already sold. Despite going for perhaps 10 minutes too long, it was a great film, very much in the vein of Anchorman with the touches of romance and identity and all that crap as well as some brilliant comedy writing. I'm buying this one on DVD when it comes out.

Considering my lack of CD purchases at the moment, I'll probably watch more movies this weekend. I got a copy of the Family Guy movie this week so... ohh yeah, giggedy giggedy!