Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, February 2, 2021, or: My Blu-ray Collection is Like My Waistline…It Keeps Expanding

Hello again, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon here in New Hometown, Florida on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. As I write this, it’s 54˚F (12˚C) under sunny skies. With the wind blowing from the northwest at 13 MPH (21 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 54˚F (12˚C), just a couple of degrees colder than the forecast high of 56˚F (13˚C). The rest of the day will see partly sunny skies and there will be a breeze around. Tonight, skies will be clear with temperatures near the freezing point; the low will be 37˚F (3˚C).

I don’t have much to report today; I received my 4K Blu-ray of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket on Sunday, which brings my Blu-ray collection (in both 4K UHD and 1080p HD formats) to 372 overall. According to My Collection page on Blu-ray.com, the breakdown looks like this:

• 372 titles
• 321 Movies
• 51 TV Seasons

Of course, quite a few of my Blu-rays are reissues of the Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga; I don’t have every single reissue released by either 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment or its successor, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, but I do own:

• Star Wars: The Complete Saga (2011)
• Star Wars: The Complete Saga (2015 Darth Vader box set variant)
• The 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment Limited Edition Steel Book single-disc reissues of Episodes I-VI (2015)
• Individual multi-format Blu-ray sets for Episodes VII-IX, as well as those for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2016-2020)  
• The Buena Vista Home Entertainment reissues of Episodes I-VI in individual Multi-Screen Editions (2019)
• The Buena Vista Home Entertainment Steel Book multi-format (4K, 1080p, and digital copy) sets for Episodes VII-IX (2016-2020)
• The Best Buy Exclusive 27-disc Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga set, which has Episodes I-IX (but not the standalones Rogue One and Solo) in 4K UHD and 1080p HD Blu-rays. (2020)
• The Walmart/British Import region-free Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 18-disc set, which is similar to the Best Buy Exclusive minus the pricey packaging and with only the 1080p Blu-ray discs (2020)

That’s 22 separate stock keeping units (SKUs), out of a total of 244 SKUs.  

Anyway, yeah…I added Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket to my collection earlier this week; it’s not a movie that I would watch on a regular basis, just as I would not rewatch United 93 or Saving Private Ryan more than once a year. I saw it in theaters when it first came out in 1987, and sometime in the 2000s – when I still lived in Miami – I bought the DVD (a barebones offering with only the feature film and the theatrical trailer. I might have upgraded to Blu-ray in 2009 (when I bought my first Blu-ray player) if I had given it more thought at the time – but I did not.

When I decided to start getting 4K discs for my video library, I decided that – with the exception of some franchises – Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park – I would get 4K titles that I did not already have on Blu-ray. Full Metal Jacket is one of the titles I didn’t have on Blu-ray. And because the 4K edition comes with the 1080p Blu-ray and the digital code for streaming it on Movies Anywhere, I got three formats for my $24.99 (plus Florida sales tax).

I have not watched the 4K version of Full Metal Jacket in its entirety since I received it late Sunday evening. I watched the extra feature documentary Full Metal Jacket: Between Good and Evil, as well as the first 20 minutes that night. However, after listening to the late R. Lee Ermey’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s profanity-laced monologues in the Parris Island-set first part of Kubrick’s film, I decided I wasn’t really in the mood for Full Metal Jacket.

Oh, and yesterday I decided to preorder the Blu-ray edition of Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns, which will be released by PBS Distribution on April 13. It’s pricey; $129.99 at Amazon, but I don’t travel, go out to eat at restaurants, or go on dates, so after I pay my share of the bills here, I have some disposable income. I have Baseball on DVD but Burns and Florentine Films have digitally remastered and restored the 10-inning series for high definition, so, yeah. I mean, I have DVD and Blu-ray sets of The Civil War and The War, too. And, of course, when Burns’ Hemingway hits home media, you bet your sweet bippy I’m getting it on Blu-ray, too.

Other than that, no hay novedad here in New Hometown, Florida. At least, nothing noteworthy is going on, and life goes on in a dull, COVID-19-constrained way. Thank goodness that I’ve always been fond of staying home; I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that my half-sister is going out of her mind with boredom, since – as our late mother once observed – she isn’t the type of person who is comfortable within the confines of her own home but has to be out in her car and checking out all the restaurants in the Miami area. Vicky is also hobbled by her hip replacement surgeries that she had last year – twice. I think she had the first one in early 2020, then fell down – like our maternal grandfather did in 1977 – and broke her hip again. I don’t know how she’s faring; what little news I got about my half-sister I received from her paternal cousin Juan Manuel, and he died in late October, so….

And on this note, I will close this post. So until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things!