A Miserable Little Pile of Discs

A space collects. What it collects changes over time.

Memories. Dust. And, uh, movie discs. Lots and lots of movie discs, it turns out. Patrick might not be someone who sentimentally collects many things, but one thing that Rob and Patrick have in common is getting suckered by an online sale by a boutique disc company and watching a box of discs show up a week later.

How many times will we watch these movies? Who can say.

(Don't answer.)

Below, though, we try to find an answer.

Rob: Patrick, I am going to assume that you also raided various Blu-ray publishers this past holiday season. I got a pretty good haul, especially from Kino Lorber. I think they’ve become one of my favorite publishers because they seem to have carved out a niche specializing in great editions of movies that aren’t cult hits and aren’t cinephile classics, but just solid genre films the likes of which used to comprise the pillars of the film industry’s release schedule. 

For instance, I grabbed the Ben Affleck / Samuel L. Jackson legal thriller Changing Lanes, which I think you could treat as a companion piece to Michael Clayton, not least because it has Sydney Pollack playing the same character: a paternal and pragmatic mentor at a powerful and corrupt law firm. It’s probably trying to do too much, telling two stories in parallel over the course of “one turbulent day,” which makes it formulaic and overstuffed next to Clayton’s more deliberately-paced character study. But it’s got some great performances, particularly from Jackson, who channels all his familiar live-wire edginess into an everyman who is a bit of a sympathetic loser. Affleck is great as a callow youth at the end of youth, who is perhaps the last person to realize he’s not the hero of the story, and that nobody who cares about him even thinks he is a particularly decent man. Clayton came out a few years after Changing Lanes, but it absolutely feels like it might be about the same guy, just twenty years older. I love that there’s a good 4K of it, despite the fact I’ve never heard another soul discuss the film!

But I’ll tell you the big surprise of this buying spree. I got the 4K of Hot Fuzz, mainly because that movie and Sneakers are the two movies my wife gravitates towards when she has had a tough day and needs to restore the vibes. What I did not realize is that the film basically got a lavish Lord of the Rings Extended Edition-style release, with four commentary tracks with different members of the production. Am I ever going to watch all those? Probably not anytime soon! But God help me I love that I have them. The utility I end up getting out of them is not really the point, it’s the way a release like that gives me the possibility of spending so much time learning details and stories about a film we love so much.

This is the stuff that makes me so happy about my physical media collection. It’s rare a special feature set is going to swing me toward buying a movie I don’t have a ton of interest in. Gladiator’s collector’s 4K is an example of a disc set that is vastly better than the film, and probably the only time I’ve snagged a set of discs specifically on the strength of the package. But I am so easily up-sold on a movie if there’s an edition where there’s extra commentaries or legitimately good behind-the-scenes features that go beyond boring promo material. Especially because I almost always come away from a commentary track or a feature about some particular department within a production with a fresh appreciation for how much of my favorite movies and TV are discovered by the people making them in the act of making them, rather than meticulously scripted and story-boarded down to the last detail.

What about you? When you’re diving into the physical media bargain bins during sales season, what are you looking for?

Patrick: We usually swap Friday evening hangouts with my neighbors and the kids. Nobody but me is into basketball, so I’m usually looking for something innocuous to put on the TV in the background while we’re hanging out. Holidays make that thematically easier, so in December, I grabbed one of my Christmas horror discs—Krampus, I think—and soon realized my PlayStation 5 Pro, uh, did not have a disc drive!

It was this moment that prompted me to say “fuck it” and finally buy a dedicated movie player. I’d been dancing around this idea for years, because I’d slowly started to accumulate a series of discs that I couldn’t even play on any television in the house because they were Blu-ray discs from different regions.

Yes, it seems exceptionally silly to buy discs you can’t watch, but I figured something would push me towards a dedicated player at some point, and when there’s a good deal to be had, how can I say no? This, combined with the foreign release of a truly tremendous edition of The Blair Witch Project, arguably my favorite horror movie ever, and it was time for me to become part of the modded disc player family.

And so now, I am the happy owner of this guy. Earlier this week, I finally set the device up, watched as The Blair Witch Project logo filled my screen, and experienced feelings of intense dread and happiness.

I get why people get deep into Plex libraries, even if they also get deep into physical media libraries, but it’s hard for me to imagine me ever doing both. I want to navigate the little menu and see the bonus features, even if I’m not going to watch most of them. That’s the appeal of me having the library at all.

(It’s also the case that I have access to, uh, several friends with very robust Plex libraries.)