So many DVDs to watch, but Steven Ellis freezes when it comes to the selection process
My son goes to bed at 7pm. My other half and I tend to watch what little sci-fi TV we like together after that. She’s usually in bed by about 10pm. I’m a bit of a night owl, so I often find myself staying up watching a film on my own. But I have a problem… I can never pick a film.
I go over to the DVD shelf corner in our lounge and I wonder what to watch, and that’s when I hit a snag. I just can’t choose anything… I can never decide what I’m in the mood for. I sit there scanning the hundreds of titles and nothing jumps out at me. Am I in the mood for an action movie? Some big space battles? Or maybe something slower and more dramatic? Or how about some comedy? But nothing leaps out and says, “Watch me!”
I then turn to the TV boxed sets and ponder those. Again I can never zero in on anything. I don’t think I’m an inherently indecisive person by nature, and it’s not as if I own a load of films and TV shows which I hate. I don’t think I own an excessive amount of DVDs. But maybe my brain just goes, “Bleurgh!” at the sight of all those titles.
Reverting to old faves
In the end I always end up watching one of my handful of stand-by favourites. A Star Wars film, The Matrix , Minority Report or The Dark Knight are the usual suspects. On the TV front it’s usually either the Farscape Peacekeeper Wars mini-series, some Clone Wars or the Battlestar Galactica mini series. Never an actual series because I just know if I started something I’d have to watch the lot and I know I’d never finish. I’ve been half way through a West Wing re-watch for about 18 months now.
This lack of decisiveness means I just end up watching the same few films over and over. Every time I go over to the DVD shelves I want to watch something different, something I haven’t watched in ages but it never turns out that way. I sometimes ponder the idea of starting at A and working my way thought the lot. But I never want to watch the first film on the shelf, or the second, or the third... And already I’m missing some out, so it’s best to just pick something at random. So, I’m back where I started.
An even odder, but related, thing I do sometimes is stumbling across a film while channel hopping on Sky or some other channel and I end up watching that, whatever it is, just because it’s on. I’ve watched the Wolverine origin film twice in the last few weeks because I’ve just found it on somewhere. Even if I own the film in question and could watch it at anytime, even if I’ve looked at the spine a dozen times in my total lack of ability to pick a film and passed it by. Maybe I just like having the film picked for me.
Sometimes I think I’m better of just reading a book…
I know it’s a silly state of affairs. Sitting there on the floor next to the DVD shelves and not having a clue what to watch but I do wonder if anyone out there does this too? Am I just an indecisive fool? Please tell me I’m not alone. Do you sit wondering what to watch and never pick something? Do you, like me, have a small number of go to films that you constantly watch and if s what are they? If not, what do you do? Do you have a system to work through? Do you do the working your way through the alphabet thing? Or do you decide you want to watch a specific film rather than just idly thinking, “Oh, I’ll stick a film on”? And then having to pick something?
Has anyone out there got any suggestions as to how I can pick films? Should I close my eyes and randomly point? Should I start a thread on the forum and let you guys pick what I watch form now on?
