Organization Chat

[Dirty Duck]

@Dirty Duck I can't wrap my head around watching a VHS nowadays (unless it's some obscure cut of a movie that never made it to newer formats). I say this as someone who does indeed still have a working VCR hooked up, but I'm a big fan of obscure Hong Kong stuff - though most of that is finally getting good HD/4K releases. To say nothing of being cropped to fullscreen most of the time.

It's more that the VCR is there and we, at least right now, don't actually have a communal way of watching that isn't huddling around a laptop (which I've always hated despite it's ironic closeness to the CRT in size). I quite like the act of just putting a film on from a pile compared to the sort of decision paralysis that streaming has sort of given us-I've wasted many many hours of my life flicking through the endless lists of films and shows. We watched Four Weddings and a Funeral while eating dinner the other day because it was just the VHS that was in the TV from the previous owner. We didn't even enjoy the film really but being able to sit at the table and watch it together while eating felt quite nice, and the decision was easy because it was what we had to work with at that time.

This is something that I sort of miss about the way television used to be before streaming too, you'd wind up watching stuff you maybe wouldn't have just because you were flicking through and had to choose from what was on. That feeling of finding something you knew nothing about but wind up really enjoying is kind of lost now, it's so rare to go into a film or show without knowing anything about it. It obviously does still happen, I watched The Hidden (1987) the other day as my girlfriend's housemate suggested it. All he knew was that Kyle MacLachlan was in it, and it ended up being a really enjoyable and surprising movie thanks to the lack of info. It feels a bit like you have to set those limiting parameters yourself to still get that pleasant surprise though.

Anyway really the VHS are just a novelty to make the most of a novel time where we have a CRT on the dining table (...though it is a much easier setup than what we had before which involved a projector and bluetooth speakers and connecting a third device to both every time we wanted to watch something).