Still holding on to your DVDs? Or have you moved on…
This Oscars week, some films hardly ever shown in cinemas and made by the new digital platforms have been celebrated as great movies.
But recently one of the last, and certainly one the most eclectic, DVD stores in Australia has pulled the plug largely sunk by the technological torpedo of the streaming services.
The Film Club, (now closed) in Sydney’s inner-city Darlinghurst, prided itself in stocking the types of movies for which the populist Netflix and their ilk “frankly… don’t give a dam”*
Classic, cult, foreign language, niche directors, noir, gay, you name it, and the Film Club had shelves dedicated to the obscure, the outrageous but above all the discerning viewer.
So what are your memories of the DVD? They came to Australia only in 1999 when the players cost between $600 to $1000, although prices soon tumbled.
Do you prefer the disc and its extras to navigating online delivery for movies?
‘Mr Movies’ Bill Collins might have checked out, but for those who require more than hyperventilated Marvel comics and do not regard films from the 1990s as quite classic yet the DVD has been a Godsend.
I’m not ashamed to admit I have dozens gathered online and from various travels, mostly honouring the Golden Years of Hollywood alongside gritty Film Noir and the UK’s Ealing comedies.
But the Film Club always had titles I could never find legally elsewhere, be that via streaming, online sales or combing garage sales. “Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia” from bloodstained 70s director Sam Peckinpah would be one such much-parodied gem.
Now I shall have to resort to op-shops which sometimes, amidst the reams of thrown out DVD copies of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings etc., are true treasures.
For $2 of late, I have scored: Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai, John Houston’s 1951 African Queen with Bogart and Hepburn and the original and most shocking of noir’s 1947’s Nightmare Alley.
Some of these you can find on streaming services if you happen to subscribe to the right one. Still, streamers do not carry all the special features of audio commentaries and ‘making of’ documentaries.
So what are you doing with your DVDs? Have you already chucked out the player, so it doesn’t matter? And are you fully converted to digital delivery's convenience and albeit curtailed content?
*As many would know "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is the closing line from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. It was Bill Collins’ favourite movie.
