On Movie Collections: My Current To Be Watched (TBW) List – March 2022 Edition

Ever since I bought my first videocassette recorder in the summer of 1984 – it was a VHS machine from a company whose name I’ve forgotten and it cost me the princely sum of $400.00 ($1,092.27 in 2022 dollars) plus Florida sales tax – I have collected “home media” versions of movies I either saw in theaters between 1969 and 2019 (the last year I visited a multiplex) or missed seeing for any of a million reasons. And while I no longer own a VCR or have any of my VHS tapes (I think I owned close to 100 VHS tapes in 2002, but since we had no working players after 2004, I gave my collection to my former neighbor Alain De Paz.), I have a fair-to-middling stash of disc-based media releases in three formats – standard definition DVD, high definition Blu-ray discs (BDs), and ultra-high definition discs (4K UHD).

According to my Blu-ray.com account’s Collection database, the current breakdown – which includes two orders that are either pending or shipped but not yet in my possession – looks like this:

• DVD Discs: 240 (161 movies, 79 TV seasons)
• Blu-ray Discs: 470 (412 movies, 58 TV seasons)
• 4K UHD Discs: 82 (all feature films)

There is, of course, much overlap/title duplication among the three formats. Most – not all – of my DVDs have their BD and 4K UHD counterparts, either by design or because lots of my Blu-rays of feature films (especially those from 2008-2017) included a DVD and a digital copy slip in the packaging. The same is true of most of my 4K UHD sets, except that those now include a 2K Blu-ray along with the 4K Blu-ray, mainly because most studios do not include 4K UHD extra features in their discs.

 I don’t have the time or inclination to watch movies all day or even watch one movie a day, so when I add a new title to my collection – like I did yesterday with Paramount’s The Godfather Trilogy – 50^th Anniversary box set – it doesn’t automatically follow that I will watch it right away.

Sometimes – as was the case with 2021’s West Side Story, which I was eager to see in theaters during its recent run but could not until it premiered on Disney+ and home media – I will watch it within 24 hours of receiving the home media release. I did that with the West Side Story 4K UHD when my Target-exclusive Art Edition set arrived on March 16. (Since I’d streamed the feature film on Disney+ for my 59^th birthday, I watched the making-of stuff first, then rewatched Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.)  

And last night I watched Mario Puzo’s The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, Francis Ford Coppola’s 2020 revision of 1990’s The Godfather, Part III. I didn’t see it when it was in theaters, and I was curious to see a Godfather film on 4K UHD but wasn’t in the mood to see the two 1970s films.

Over the past few years, though, I tend to buy either a Blu-ray or 4K UHD title, take it out of the container in which it was shipped, open the packaging, activate the digital codes, then close the package and put it in an appropriate niche in my media storage shelves. After that, I do what I do with new books – create a To Be Watched (TBW) list.

Based on my recent purchases – excluding West Side Story, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, my TBW list includes:

• The Color Purple (1985)
• Catch Me if You Can (2002)
• The Terminal (2004)
• Minority Report (2002)
• The Godfather (1972)
• The Godfather, Part II (1974)
• The Godfather, Part III (1990)

 Well, I’ve prattled long enough; now it’s time to wrap up this blog post. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.