Background

Although, as a child, I always liked to watch films, it it was when I went to University that I started to enjoy them and appreciate them a bit more. Cinema trips became a regular occurance.

Although we could buy and rent films on video tape, we tended not to do this. There was always the quality issue.

DVD

In 1999-1999, the DVD revolution came to the United Kingdom. DVD players had started becoming inexpensive.

I purchased my first DVD player in late 1999, just so that I could buy The Matrix on DVD. This was a film that blew me away, especially as I knew nothing about it before I saw it. (It is a shame that the sequels never lived up to the first film).

For next year and a half, there was an explosion of films being released onto DVD, and I brought large number of them. Since then though, I have cut back on the number of them I purchase.

Japan

Through DVD, I was able to start buying foreign language films. This initial started with French and Italian films, but later changed direction into Japanese films

Part of this interest started because two of my work collegues were very interested in KUROSAWA Akira films. I often borrowed their DVDs, and later started to buy some more myself.

This interest in Kurosawa then expanded into a general interest in films (films set in the Tokugawa Era of Japan).

When I was younger, I had also seen an Anime film called Akira. However, from about 2002 I started to watch some different Anime. One of my favourites is Metropolis. However, my favourite series of films are those produced by Studio Ghibli, especially Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, known as Spirited Away in the UK and US.

The Trilogies

There are two big trilogies of film I really like.

The original Holy Trilogy is the first Star Wars which I have recently purchased on DVD. The Empire Strikes Back is probably one of my all time favourite films, and in many ways far superior to the other two in the trilogy and the prequels.

The other, more recent in terms of when the film was made, trilogy is The Lord of the Rings. The Christmas Festive seasons of 2001, 2002 and 2003 were certainly very enjoyable with our trips to the cinema to see these epics.

I think part of the attraction of these films was how well the special effects fitted into the film. Unlike a lot of other contempory films there was not any CGI effects for the sake of using CGI. WETA. took a very pragmatic approach to their effects, though having said that the Gollum character was possibly one of the best pieces of film CGI I have ever seen.