It's all about the movies!

Ever since I got my first DVD player (Which was a DVD/VCR combo machine) , I've been collecting DVDs. Actually, if you count computer drives, I have had a DVD-playing drive ever since I bought the computer I have now (a Macintosh G4/450, which I have extensively upgraded through the years with faster memory cards and a wide variety of accessories, including "the Beast", my HP Color LaserJet 3550, which weighs 70 pounds and uses color toner cartridges that cost about $200 each).

My DVD collection is extensive, mainly from buying old TV series on DVD. Not just from the commercially available sources, but from people recording their old VHS tapes on DVD, which has made it possible for me to collect series like "Voyagers", with Meeno Peluce and Jon-Erik Hexum, "Covington Cross", "Manimal", "Robin of Sherwood", and "Earth2", which I had on DVD before the commercial version came out. Of course, being an old supporter of fansubs since back in the day, I purchased the commercial version of Earth 2 when it came out and got rid of the fan-made version. (Fansubs refers to Japanese Animation, where fans of the show would translate the Japanese and use computer subtitling to add to videos of the show. As a point of honor, when the series was released by a commercial company, you were to dump the fansubs and buy the commercial version- this kept new animation flowing to the US and made the US publishers of Japanese animation continue to be viable... in other words, they didn't go out of business because the fans already had that anime from the fansubbers and therefore wouldn't purchase it.)

So, my DVD collection is growing by leaps and bounds. Ebay can be like crack for fans of past shows. My recent purchases include the entire series of 'The Man from Atlantis" on DVD, as well as the aforementioned "Covington Cross" and "Robin of Sherwood", a British import that casts Robin Hood as a dispossessed peasant who becomes a follower of the Old Religion (paganism), specifically "Herne the Hunter", a British God of Deer and the Hunt. He is also called "Herne's Son", and wields a sword made by the smith, Wayland. (Wayland/Weyland is also a God of Britain, a smith-God, but he was human in this series. Robin's sword, Albion, Bears the legend: "Herne's son is my master. I cannot slay him." The 11 other swords of Wayland also show up in the series. It is, by the way, really excellent, and I suggest you seek it out.) Later on, the original Robin is killed and a new man, Robert of Huntingdon, takes up where the original left off. Robert of Huntingdon has the more typical background of Robin Hood, being a noble who fights against injustice.

Other recent additions to my vast warehouse of DVDs include the movie I talked about in my last blog entry, "Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God". Incidentally, I did watch the movie with the commentary on, and it wasn't anything like I was expecting. They had three people doing the commentary, who were doing it in character. And when I say in character, I mean that they were pretending to be three of the characters introduced in the Player's Handbook: Krusk, Half-Orc Barbarian, Lidda, Halfling Rogue, and Jozan, Cleric of Pelor, or God of the Sun.

For the most part, the commentary is only so-so, but there are amusing moments, such as when Barek cuts off Damodar's hand and lower arm to prevent him from using the Orb of Valzhure, and Lidda cracks, "Give that man a hand!" (my MST3K comment on that one was "There's more than one way of disarming a villain," which made the person watching with me crack up.) But too often, some of the comments had a quality that just made me annoyed, such as Jozan remarking that women succumbed to the weakness of their sex, which made me want to hit something, preferably him. Of course, we had the example of the strong female barbarian, Lux, in the movie, and Ormaline, who shows a different sort of strength- casting a teleport spell after a bad teleport has merged her arm with a wall, and showing courage when the only way to get out of that is by amputation, and she accepts getting most of her arm cut off by Barek. Ouch!

Most of the rest of the comments seemed to be about Lux and Krusk. Krusk, being a barbarian, was quite taken with Lux, seeing that she was beautiful... and the other two characters riffed on the unwashedness of Krusk (when there is a scene of Oberon taking a bath, Krusk says, "He's stewing in his own filth!" and then one of the others says, "It's called a bath" and the third says, "Maybe you should try it some time!"

I probably won't be watching the commentary again, but the movie is going to remain one of my favorites for a long, long time, and I am quite looking forward to any sequels to this one.