I live in a studio apartment with a large amount of open space.  Towards one side of the room is a storage rack loaded with av gear. It contains; 2 vcrs (one Philips, one General Electric), 1 JVC amp, 1 Pioneer DVL-909 combo dvd/laserdisc player, 1 Sega CDX, 1 Pioneer CDJ-100s dj cd player, 1 Pioneer CDJ-700s dj cd player, two Technics 1210 turntables, and 1 Pioneer DJM-500 DJ mixer.  The dj gear (aside from the mixer) is extraneous to movie-watching, but included to illustrate the excessiveness.  The video output from listed devices is combined and sent to a digital projector mounted on one of the walls, this is also connected to my computer.  Directly opposite this wall we have constructed a partially reflective screen approximately 7 feet wide and 5 feet tall, hung from mounts placed in the wall near the ceiling.  Below the projector is a comfy futon.

Any video source we have can be projected, including games off the Sega, or "You Don't Know Jack" tournaments off the computer.  Normal NTSC aspect ratio (3:4) projections nearly utilize the entire screen.  Given these circumstances, wouldn't you watch a lot of movies too?

Don't get me wrong, I've got a life and stuff.  A majority of the movies wind up being watched in the wee hours after the night's otherwise normal activities, much to the chagrin of our neighbors.

Preferred format is widesceen, but we'll resort to videotape if other formats are hard to come by or somebody brought over a movie.  I own a fair number of decent movies on laserdisc and Netflix is like crack to a movie addict.
 

May 2001
June 2001
July 2001
August 2001
 

04 September
Saving Private Ryan (dvd/ws)
-After a nice, relaxing week in the desert, thought this would be a nice movie to sit back and slowly unwind with.

07 September
Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie (dvd)
-The picture at the top of this page should explain why.
Apocalypse Now Redux (theater/ws)
-Because after a week in the desert, a bunch of depressing war films is exactly what you need to recover.

08 September
Five Senses, The (dvd/ws)
-Not a prequel to the Sixth Sense.

09 September
Tonari no Totoro (vhs)

-This is how I spent a large part of the previous week getting around.  In addition to an entirely yellow furry plush interior, the cat's got quite a sound system.

12 September
Tonari no Totoro (vhs)
-Yes, again.  This time with a group of people that had also been on the cat bus.
Shadow Magic (vhs)
-Not entirely historical, but a wonderful story about the introduction of moving pictures to early 20th-century China.

14 September
Third Man, The (dvd)
-Orson Welles is an evil, evil man.

15 September
Star Trek: First Contact (ld/ws)
-Given this week's tragedy, it seems only natural to long for contact from an alien race.  We need to be shown that we're smaller than we think we are.

16 September
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (theater/ws)
-I'd say that I have an interesting perspective on this movie, but I'd probably be totally misinterpreted.

18 September
Drugstore Cowboy (dvd/ws)
-Any film with Mr. Burroughs in it gains some degree of automatic repect.

21 September
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (dvd)
-A flightful fantasy made of a sugary fiction about what would happen if an honest person were appointed a position in our government.  Thankfully, we can all rest well assured that this will never happen.

23 September
Nuovo cinema Paradiso (dvd/ws)
-Favorite film of a good friend.

24 September
Amadeus (dvd/ws)
-This is probably only a midwestern reference, but a local family restaurant chain once used a Mozart composition in a series of commercials.  Now, every time I watch this film, I can't help but think of "Poppin' Fresh pies."

25 September
Seven Years in Tibet (dvd/ws)
-I had the honor of seeing His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak earlier this year, though I had not yet seen this film.  This movie captures the magic and tragedy of Tibet.

26 September
Bian Lian (King of Masks) (dvd)
-I'm a little teapot, short and stout- here is my handle, here is my spout.

28 September
Ghost World (theater/ws)
-Most people that collect records aren't quite that bad, are they?

28 September
Dong jing gong lüe (Tokyo Raiders) (theater/ws)
-I've decided that's it's probably a good idea for me to include the English name of the films I see next to their foreign-language titles.  After all, I wouldn't know what half of them were without the (usually bad) translations, so why should I be pretentious to the point of assuming that anyone else would?  I've also decided that seeing two movies in different theaters in one day means too much popcorn.

29 September
Running Man, The (ld/ws)
-Bored... also because it has a soundtrack from Harold Faltermeyer and has our wrestling governor in it.

30 September
From Russia With Love (dvd/ws)
-Somehow the intent to watch the Bond series in order got a little scrambled.

2 October
Luzhin Defence, The (videotape)
-Having recently watched a chess master play 12 simultaneous games at a time for 9 hours and not lose a single game, this movie held some interest.

3 October
Mee Pok Man (videotape)
-Happy, sane film.  Enjoy your fish ball noodles.

5 October
Fail-Safe (dvd/ws)
-A brilliant, scoreless, chilling Cold-War movie that at the moment strikes far too many parallels with current world tensions.  We could not have rented this movie at a worse time, and scenes left me in absolute tears.
San tau chi saidoi (Skyline Raiders) (theater/ws)
-Just like seeing Mission Impossible 2, except in a foreign language.

6 October
Return of the Jedi (ld/ws)
-See entry for the 4th of August.

9 October
L.A. Confidential (videotape)
-Funny how the guy that invented warp drive turned out to be a bad cop.
Jerk, The (dvd)
-Why do they even make full-screen dvds from widescreen films?  Grr...

11 October
Traffic (dvd/ws)
-A little difficult to tell if this movie is anti-drug, anti-cartels, or anti-war-on-drugs.  At least I now know what freebasing is all about.

12 October
Ching Se (Green Snake) (theater/ws)

13 October
Videodrome (dvd/ws)

14 October
Iron Giant, The (dvd/ws)

29 October
Creepshow (videotape)
-The lack of comments on the previous movies should illustrate that October has been a crazy busy month.

4 November
Diamond Are Forever (dvd/ws)
-And so is the list of the number of days I tried to watch this film unsuccessfully.  Being what I consider the most boring of the Bond films, I fell asleep on three previous attempts.  In truth, I dozed for about 20 minutes of this viewing as well.

7 November
Mulholland Drive (theater/ws)

9 November
I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (dvd/ws)
-That's my theme music.

10 November
Man Who Wasn't There, The (theater/ws)
-The purpose of which I'm still trying to figure out.  Beautiful, beautiful cinematography... bland, bland characters.  Except, of course, the ones that die.

14 November
Monsters, Inc. (theater/ws)
-Pixar will always have a special place in my heart.

17 November
Sleuth (dvd/ws)
-An exercise in the over-use of the movie plot twist.  And supposed widescreen looked like it was about 1.45:1.

20 November
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (theater/ws)
-Yep, I went to see this movie- which of course makes me a pagan satanist out to destroy christianity.

22 November
Return of the Jedi (ld/ws)
-This was to be the after-Thanksgiving feast movie for the year.  Food coma settled in and I didn't make it past disc 3.