#riphmv

First Farewell to HMV/Tales from the Weekend:

I went to er, pay my respects.

Much as I love the convenience of Netflix, streaming, and downloading from questionable sources. I’m from a time and type who gets no greater satisfaction than material possession of those things that I covet most. There’s a certain joy in scoring Boxing Day door crashed deals of your favourite new releases, or finding that one elusive non-criterion (aka affordable) copy of a classic film.

Before movies I collected CD’s, new or used I never minded, there were few greater pleasures than flipping though an endless catalogue of discs, your fingers turning black from the dust, in hopes of finding those last few items from your “music/movies to buy” list.

Collector havens such as HMV have vastly dwindled here at home (abroad too, I have very fond memories of HMV Piccadilly, and FNAC stores in Europe) and now our last temple faces collapse. (Independents aside...Sonic Boom never die!)

Anyway, my most pleasing score in this heap: 54 The Director’s Cut. I went to a screening of this re-cut last year and it was one of my favourite screening experiences of the year.

The studio had previously forced the filmmakers to edit the film inauthentically in attempts to give it more commercial appeal. The result of the theatrical cut of 54: a largely panned disaster. Everyone walked away in disgust, until this opportunity arose to redo it right.