Seconds Per Frame
This page is Gregory Wilds fault.
I should have expanded my Video page into individual reviews as Id done years ago with my Music library, but I wasnt sure I wanted to tackle the challenge of writing something more than a flip comment about so many videos. I could write about music until my fingers were worn down to stumps, but films are a different beast altogether (Films are a different beast.), and in some ways more complex and in other ways more simplified. But in 2006 I received an email from the director of the deservingly infamous film Highway of Heartache, Gregory Wild, thanking me for touting his film on my website (for better or for worse, as my comments on it were both celebratory and warning), and shortly thereafter he sent me a copy of the press kit for the films belated (and quite unlikely) DVD release. And I thought well, shit, I have to rave about this and about more of the films qualities than I could address in a cheap one-line assessment, and that means expanding my Video page but I wasnt in a space that allowed for that at the time, so the project hung in the air like a piñata that I didnt dare swing at unless I was ready to deal with the fallout.
Most of this video library is films, but theres also a good showing of music videos and documentaries (the latter mostly historical in nature) as well as a smattering of television-related stuff. Im not a film buff by any means I go to maybe one film per year; and I dont watch TV. So that I have a video library at all is a little odd. Its mostly composed of certain classic films and ones I happened to encounter in my 20s and 30s. From time to time I add to this library, but its not what youd call a living thing, reflecting my tastes.
As for the question of format, its a mixed bag here but largely VHS videotape with maybe 20% now in DVD format. That some of these items have even manifested on VHS in the first place is surprising, and where somethings now available on DVD I may have acquired that format if the DVD interface has anything significant to offer. Its rare. Then again, I have a multisystem VCR thats still serving me quite well in its 8th year of use, allowing me to watch obscure-but-beloved French and British videos which arent likely to command DVD release and theres the question of how long DVDs will be the medium of choice. All of that considered, Im happy with my librarys format for the most part.