| OK, so I have a home theater since 2000. With a big screen, six (5.1) rather large Dolby surround speakers and a fixed foot print that stubbornly resists any female tampering with the layout of the living room. I guess that makes me a bit of a geek. Although watching (digital) TV is possible, obviously, I find I watch TV less and less. In actual fact I watch no TV anymore. It is just very boring and the commercials are just too annoying. Instead I use it to watch (music) DVDs & Blurays. One of the first DVDs I bought in 2000 was the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over in DTS surround quality. I still watch this; it is great. So this is also my first gotcha. I bought the system with watching movies in mind; instead the very first major use of the system was playing music DVDs. About five years ago I extended the system with a networked media tank, so now I can stream music and movies I own directly from the home network. This really marked the end of my use of public TV. The second DVD I bought, back in 2000, was The Matrix. Although I had already seen it in a movie theater, watching it at home in full surround sound quality was quite a trip. |
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There is a French movie that is one of my all time favorites. It is called: Les Uns et les Autres from 1981 and it is directed by Claude Lelouch. Originally I watched this movie on a rental tape around 1990. It was not easy to find this on DVD, but I finally found it in 2002. The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1980s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. Obviously WWII is a central part of the story. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller and Rudolf Nureyev). The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together. Among the cast are: Robert Hossein, Nicole Garcia, Geraldine Chaplin, James Caan, Daniel Olbrychski and a very, very young Sharon Stone.
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Another, relatively recent, movie I really like is The Fall. I wrote an article about this movie. Click the name to jump to this article.
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If you really like to know which movies I like, follow this link: mydvds (site opens in a new window). This is an interactive list of all the DVDs and Blurays I own.
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An other all time favorite is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This is a 1966 movie based on a play with the same name by Edward Albee. It stars Elisabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This is one of the most emotionally tense movies I know of. It was ground breaking at its time for its use of profane language and sexual allusions. The plot is about a couple fighting each other to the ground. Behind all this aggression is the anger and shared grieve of not having a child. Watching this movie is absolutely gut wrenching. |
