On renting movies

Having moved to a new area recently, and having nothing to do on Saturday night apart from the dishes, C & I thought it might be time to rent a movie. So I joined up at the local Ballbreaker video store and set about finding something entertaining to amuse us. There are rules, sort of. Nothing too violent; not because we're raging woolly pacifist but just because most of the action-man stuff is too boring for words. Also, nothing too overtly um... how can I put this... shit. Y'know, stuff that never even had a hope of making it to the cinemas, usually starring someone from a sitcom who had an obligatory movie deal written into their contract when they got a third season and were seen as a viable marketing option. We usually don't like anything too confrontational either. I mean, I really want to see The Corporation and I know I probably should have had a look at Fahrenheit 9/11 but it's all about mood: those aren't the kind of films I can sit down and enjoy with some cheese & wine, or more commonly a cup of tea, in my trakkies. I'm all for being enlightened and informed, but not on a Saturday night. And I know I'd just agree with most of the stuff anyway, so there'd be a bit of preaching to the converted there: it would just confirm my suspicions about the way the world really works and maybe, just maybe I'd like to delude myself into thinking that my cynicism can't actually be milder than what the truth really is. But I digress. We have no objection to gratuitous nudity either or a bit of steamy stuff between the sheets (or indeed on top of the sheets, in the bathroom, on the couch, on the neighbours' front lawn or at the window table of a busy inner-city restaurant). Y'know, share the love and all that. Why watch killing when doing the wild thang is so much more fun: both the doing and the watching. We don't mind the odd RomCom as long as it doesn't star Tom Hanks, or is overtly an American, formula-written romcom. We prefer the Brit stuff actually; they at least have an original sense of humour. Let me rephrase that: they actually HAVE a sense of humour. So I did a lap of the shop. They have the new releases around the wall and everything else in the middle. Of course the selection was (how did I refer to it before?) shit. I think every second film had either Hillary Duff or the Olesen twins in it. Most of it was stuff that I'd never heard of in cinemas, or just the usual big new release stuff that everyone is supposed to want to watch. I think maybe people just watch these movies because the video stores put 50 fucking copies of it on the shelf. I remember C & I waited about 6 weeks to see Lost in Translation because there was only one bloody copy of the DVD but 50 copies of the latest Will-Smith-chasing-aliens/badguys flick. Eventually I recognised Coffee and Cigarettes and snatched the only DVD copy there was but seriously, it was about the only thing there that was worth hiring. It was good viewing actually as we watched it pretty late and C didn't have to worry about falling asleep and missing the ending, as it's one of those series-of-vignettes things. The vignettes themselves were entertaining but the "link" between them was a little tenuous. All it consisted of was some of the lines from the earlier scenes being repeated in some of the later scenes. This isn't so much a link as mere repetition. Sure it was a collection of amusing scenes involving miscommunications, twists, or shifts of dominance in conversations. The Tom Waits & Iggy Pop scene was pure gold (it ends with Tom looking at the jukebox after Iggy has left saying "Ahhh, he's not in here either!") and amazing to see them both looking so young. But that was about it. Anything else watchable had already been rented out and it left me thinking that next time, if I go in and there's only shit like that available, fuck it, I'm gonna share the love around and hire Þ0rn.