Heath Ledger – Promise Lost

28 year old Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in his New York City apartment. Early reports and rumors suppose that he might have died of a drug overdose (and that suicide was a possibility) or that he may have succumbed to pneumonia. I am terribly upset by this news and am somewhat surprised to find myself in shock. It’s not that I’ve been a huge fan of his all this time, but I’ve enjoyed watching the development of his career and really believe that he started hitting his stride and his potential with Brokeback Mountain. His public manner and the spirit he has displayed have always led me to believe that he was a grounded and sensitive man. He leaves behind a rather impressive body of work for such a young man as well as a very, very young daughter. My heart aches for his friends and family and I hope that they soon find peace and consolation for their pain.

Perhaps this is hitting me harder today because I’ve been thinking a lot about the tragic death of River Phoenix lately. This comes as a result of having watched 3 Gus Van Sant films in as many days, one of them being My Own Private Idaho. I did a bit of googling and found a March 1991 interview of Van Sant by River Phoenix and one particular part caught my attention. Phoenix asks Van Sant what his favorite holiday is and he answers that it is Halloween. For those of you who may not know, River Phoenix died of an overdose outside an LA club co-owned by Johnny Depp (The Viper Room) in the early hours of October 31, 1993. I wonder if this haunts Van Sant as much as it haunts me.

Both deaths are such a colossal waste. In 1995 Natalie Merchant wrote a song called “River” for River Phoenix and you can find it on her Tigerlily album. Many of the words are appropriate here as I think about the tragic loss of Heath Ledger and the resulting media frenzy. Please God, let us be allowed to remember him for the brightness he brought to our lives rather than the darkness of his death and all the half-truths and sensationalized drama that we will be spoon-fed by the media.

Oprah’s Favorite Thing for 2008: SwapaDVD.com!

Well, not really, but it should be! Oprah’s annual list creates a buying and spending frenzy among her viewers and the people who benefit the most (I’m going to assume that Oprah doesn’t get any kick-backs) are the manufacturers, publishers and distributors of those items deemed worthy enough to appear on her list. Did you know that Williams Sonoma had 2 items on her Favorite Things list in 2007??? You can bet they LOOOOOVE Oprah! Most of the items, while lush and appealing, are too expensive for the average person/family to really afford, with fully half of them costing over $90. Would I spend $42 for 3 bars of soap? Only if they were made with the fat off Elvis’ butt! In 2007 she even featured a $3,800 HDTV refrigerator! My God! I could renovate my kitchen for that! Do you REALLY need to watch The Simpsons in HD while you’re cooking? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been an Oprah fan since the early 1980’s – but an HDTV Fridge?? Come on!

Let me be fair. There are things that have been on Oprah’s list over the years that I love – and some that I buy over and over again! For example, the best thing (IMO) that Oprah has ever had on her list was the Key Lime Cake at WeTakeTheCake.com in 2004! I love this cake so much that I served it as my wedding cake 2 years ago (we had a “Key West” theme)! I’m not trying to bash at Oprah – she rocks! But so many of the things on her yearly lists seem so excessive and make irresponsible purchases for the average consumer.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Oprah included an entry that even her viewers at home could immediately benefit from using without having to justify a “splurge” to the family accountant? But then again, would she feel squeamish about promoting the practice of trading used items that the movie, music and publishing industries are far more interested in selling? You would think that with her own humble beginnings that she might be open to the promotion of sites such as PaperBackSwap, where many of her book club selections may be found and delivered for just the price of postage! She promotes all the things that the developers of these sites promote: books, music and film (PaperBackSwap, SwapaCD and SwapaDVD) . Do you think she’d ever promote the use of swap sites to get these things? I’d hate to believe that it’s all about the money and prestige for Oprah. I’d like to think that she understands that most Americans need to economize right now. Even her frequent guest, Suze Orman, says that too many Americans spend too much – especially during the holidays! The economy sucks, and it’s not gonna get better very soon. In fact, it will likely get much worse. Wouldn’t it be great if Oprah would promote thriftiness??! What’s more, there’s even a healthy element of recycling going on with these sites as untold numbers of books, DVDs and CDs are saved from ultimately ending up at the landfill and are given the opportunity to be used again. What’s better for America? To re-use items multiple times and as a society “share” things or a society where each of us requires our own unique copy to be used and then perhaps discarded?

Audrey Tautou – A Gateway to French Film for the Layman

Most American viewers were first introduced to Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code. While an entertaining movie, it doesn’t serve to celebrate Audrey’s considerable acting talents in a way that might encourage a viewer to explore her other work. This is unfortunate because some of her best films are French and the average American’s aversion to reading subtitles dictates that she will likely remain under appreciated in our culture. You may be interested to know that Tautou has been selected to star in a bio-pic about the early life of French designer Coco Chanel. I can’t think of anyone more suitable for the task and am eagerly awaiting the completion of this project! Production is scheduled to begin early this year.

I first ran across Audrey Tautou in the French comedy Amelie. She struck me as being quite similar to Audrey Hepburn and her angelic face, Mona Lisa smile and soft manner work quickly to establish an impression. Delighted by Amelie I have sought out some of her other films in the hope that her range might truly be as impressive as I’d imagined. I have not been disappointed! Since joining SwapaDVD I have placed a number of her films on my wish list in the hope of building this portion of my collection more quickly.

Daniel Craig – Feeding an Obsession

I’m in lust with Daniel Craig. OK – Maybe not lust – it’s love – but it sure started out as lust! He came across my radar (and that of a zillion other women) with his performance in Casino Royale. He’d been in a number of other films that I’d seen (Sylvia, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Munich, Elizabeth) but somehow he just didn’t make the impression on me that he did as James Bond. Perhaps it was that scene where he was being tortured…. So anyway, now that I’ve seen a larger representation of his (::cough::) “body” of work I’ve come to realize what a talented and engaging actor he is – of course his appearance in big box office productions such as The Golden Compass might have given me a clue as well.

Since Casino Royal, my husband and I have been on a Daniel Craig pilgrimage of sorts. We started out buying movies at Amazon, and the first of these was Layer Cake. What a blast and so quintessentially English! Since joining SwapaDVD we’ve been able to branch out a bit more quickly, though there are several movies still sitting on my wish list!

Should it Stay, or Should it Go (Now)? a ramble…

Trying to decide what to do with the many DVDs in my possession has resulted in an odd dilemma. What do I do with all of them once I’ve watched them? Of course, everyone has “keepers” that they would never get rid of. It’s not the obvious keepers that are causing me pause – it’s the ones that fall into the gray zones between “I’ll watch it again” and “it’s just gonna sit there and collect dust but I might want to watch it again someday” that I’m talking about. This issue seems to come up a lot (see my recent dilemma over what to do with my copy of The Tudors) and it even affects simple things like managing what little space I have available to house all of my accumulated treasures! The answer is to swap them at SwapaDVD, but the question of when and which ones to swap remains the same.

I think I’ve decided to keep the items that I can’t readily replace – even if there’s little possibility that I’ll watch them again any time soon. While I’ve been very lucky to pick up a number of out of print DVDs at SwapaDVD, I don’t kid myself that lightening would strike twice and that I’d be able to get the same titles again very readily. First, because there are other collectors who have the same titles on their wish lists and I’ll be forced to wait in line to get a replacement (that’s fair). Second, because these titles are out of print, they often command stupid-expensive pricing on the secondary used market (as a buyer I call the high prices stupid, if I were the seller I’d call it fair market value)!

I watch a lot of non-fiction. Documentaries, biographies, performance art, you name it – I watch it. A lot of this sort of thing is only produced in small numbers – it’s never expected to appeal to the masses so their production runs tend to be quite small. Some houses, such as A&E/History Channel only issues certain titles based on demand. This is literally a print-on-demand scenario where they will tell you up front that your order will take longer to fill because they physically have to manufacture the DVD to fill your order. If you were to go their website, a great many of their titles are noted this way. Of course, you’re usually forced to pay the full price of $25 for these titles, unless they decide to run a special and produce a bunch of them in advance. They did this recently with their Modern Marvels series and offered them as a BOGO free deal.

The Unknown Marx Brothers – a Pleasant Surprise

I received a copy of The Unknown Marx Brothers from SwapaDVD about a month ago and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a very informative and entertaining documentary/biography. Hosted by Leslie Nielsen, it centered mostly on Groucho, Harpo and Chico (Zeppo is mentioned here and there) and their personal lives with a lot of rare footage that must have come directly from the family. I appreciated the opportunity to catch a glimpse of these men when they were not necessarily “in character” and was delighted to have been given the opportunity to own the disk.

I’m not sure exactly how I ended up with it as I’m positive that I had not placed it on my wish list. Perhaps I ran across it on the “DVDs Posted Today” screen. As The Marx Brothers entertained America long before my time, I’m really rather surprised that I even ordered it in the first place. Aside from hearing their names used over the years and seeing a screen shot or two of Groucho’s “You Bet Your Life” I knew absolutely nothing about them. I can only say that the title struck me as unusual and it’s not the kind of thing that I run across everyday, so why not give it a shot? I certainly wouldn’t have ever ordered it from Netflix, nor would I have ever purchased it (it seems to be out of print). I can tell you that since viewing it a few weeks ago I have placed similar items on my wish list and have made it a point to search for what I’ll call “out of the way” titles that I might not have considered before. One of the best features of SwapaDVD is that the expenses involved with experimenting like this are so low that it would be difficult to ever really feel like I’d wasted my time, money or effort. Too bad more things in life aren’t that way!

Caring for your DVDs – Some Cleaning Tips

I received a Criterion Collection DVD from SwapaDVD that had been a former rental copy. (Previous rentals are eligible for posting to the site though I would personally appreciate the ability to bypass them.) It had a sticker on the artwork insert that said “Silent Movie” that I wanted to remove as it was covering the Criterion series number on the spine. Rather than trying to use a solvent to remove it, which would have almost certainly further ruined the artwork, I instead pulled out my hairdryer. After removing the artwork from the DVD case I aimed the dryer at the sticker and allowed it to run on high for a few seconds. This loosened the sticker’s adhesive just enough to allow me to pull it off to find: yet another sticker underneath! Of course, I then had to repeat the process and the end result was a legible spine number with a bit of ghosting around where the labels had one been. It did leave a small bit of sticky residue behind that I did not feel comfortable about removing with a solvent as I was sure it would stain the paper. I had to leave it there and slip the paper into the case which has effectively “sealed” it in there as the paper is now stuck to the plastic of the case. As long as I can read the number on the spine though, this is acceptable to me. There was a secondary metallic label on the front of the artwork as well that I attempted to remove with the hairdryer. However, this one did not cooperate and as you can see in the photo below, I was forced to leave it in place.

As a collector of many things (including books) over the years I have used many different things to clean up my finds and make them more appealing. The hairdryer is my favorite method to remove almost any sticker (even from a page or uncoated paper) as it usually enables me (with a bit of patience and perhaps an overly-heated digit or four) to remove an offensive label without leaving behind any damage or residue.

For coated surfaces (like plastics or a shiny dust jacket from a book) I alternate between Goo Gone and Goof Off. Goo Gone is an oil based solvent that smells like oranges. I’ve found it at hardware departments and places like Target or K-mart. It’s less harsh than Goof Off but also not quite as strong. It is pretty safe to use to clean the plastic cases that DVDs come in as long as you don’t leave it on too long. Goof Off is a harsh chemical that smells like paint thinner or nail polish remover. Used carefully (one drop at a time or on a clean cloth) it will quickly clean up the residue from a sticker or label and even remove some ink marks and stains from non-porous surfaces. If left on the plastic of a DVD case for too long it could eat a hole in the plastic or cause clouding, creating more extensive damage. I usually test an area first using a clean rag with just a drop or two to see if it will fix my problem or not.

Managing your Wish List

When I first joined SwapaDVD I happily added hundreds of DVDs to my wish list without really thinking about any strategies. There was one DVD I really needed a copy of, and that was The Nightmare Before Christmas mentioned in another of my posts. Of course, there were others that I really wanted as well and some that I would like to have but wasn’t in a terrible hurry to find. Also, there were the requests coming from others in my family to consider.

The developers at SwapaDVD set up the wish list system so that the folks who joined the site first (especially those of us who joined during the Beta phase) wouldn’t dominate the wish lists in a first in, first out fashion. Some members seem unhappy with this decision, but with certain titles such as Nightmare having tons of people searching for a copy (over 75 right now), the new system eliminates the instance of unfair advantage. The way it works is that you rank the titles you want on your wish list by most desired to least. Each item on your list earns “points” for each day it spends at a particular position with the most points awarded for the first place spot. (Those who joined during the beta phase do still have a small advantage as the items they placed on their wish lists early on have been earning wish list “points” for a longer period of time.) So, if a new member places The Nightmare Before Christmas in the #1 position of their wish list, they will eventually overcome and “pass” another member who has it ranked in a lower position but may have had it on their wish list longer. The developers have even provided a graph to visually illustrate for the user their approximate place in line and the ranks others have placed on that particular title in their own wish lists (without disclosing the identities of other members).

The graph above is from my #1 wish list item (showing only those who have it ranked within the first 100 items on their list). My position is indicated by the red square. The image below shows the same graph but only the positions of those who have ranked the item in the top 10 of their lists. As you can see, only one other person, the person in the #1 spot, has it ranked as their #1 priority so over time I will move ahead of many of those other people “in line” because I have placed greater emphasis on my desire to have this title than they have. They have each chosen to place a greater emphasis on something else. If 2 copies were to be posted in the next week, the person who is in first position and has it ranked as their #1 would get a copy, as would the person in second position, who has it ranked as their #4. However, in a month’s time I may have overtaken all of those ahead of me except for the other person who has it ranked #1. If no copies are posted for a long time, that person and I will eventually end up in the first and second positions unless one of those other people between us who have it ranked higher decides to give it a lower rank!

What is the real cost of SwapaDVD?

Unlike other some other swap sites, SwapaDVD is free to use. The primary cost involved is the cost of postage to mail DVDs from your own collection when they are requested by other members. There is no cost to order DVDs from other members – as long as you have the credits on hand that you need to “pay” for all your orders. In cases where you may be new to the site or just don’t have enough credits on hand to get that 6 disk CSI box set (the site “charges” 1 credit per disk, so a 6 disk set “costs” 6 credits), you can always purchase credits in the kiosk at the cost of $4.95 each credit (or $29.70 for that 6 disk set I mentioned). I’ve found this to be an expensive way to acquire movies and we do have alternatives.I’ve mentioned before that there are sister sites that offer swap environments for books and music. These are: PaperBackSwap and SwapaCDThe site developers allow users to transfer credits from one site to the other. Credits transferred between the book and music sites transfer at a rate of 1 for 1. However, transfers from these sites to the DVD site only transfer at a rate of 3 for 2 (30 book or music credits equates to 20 DVD credits). Conversely this also means that 2 DVD credits are worth 3 book or music credits. If one has a plethora of DVDs that they no longer want but a large list of books or music titles that they would like, this is very good news, especially since the costs involved with earning those DVD credits are less than $2.00 for postage.

On the book site, PaperBackSwap, it costs $2.13 to mail a single (1 pound) book via media mail (or $2.31 if one used electronic Delivery Confirmation). This doesn’t include the cost of shipping supplies such as tape or any mailers you might elect to use. So to convert 2 book credits (if you mailed books that weighed less than a pound) the resulting SwapaDVD credit will have cost you $3.20. If one mailed 2 hardcover books weighing 1.5 pounds each, the cost increases to $3.70 (the standard 2 pound media mail rate is $2.47) Even at the 2 pound book rate you would save $1.25 per credit over buying them at the kiosk at SwapaDVD.

The Nightmare Before Christmas – Out of Print and Stupid Expensive!

My 17 year old step-daughter dearly wanted a copy of Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (Disney) but as it is out of print (and now presumably residing in the legendary Disney vault) finding copies of it for reasonable prices is next to impossible! At the end of November, used copies at Amazon were starting at $50 and new copies were over $70! At those prices there was no way we could justify filling this Christmas wish. However, I placed myself on the wish list for a copy at
SwapaDVD.com as soon as I’d registered with them and was amazed when my number came up on December 8th! I received it in the mail on December 18th – with plenty of time to spare and what amounts to a $2.00 cash investment. This was one of my first major “scores” at the site and my step-daughter was extremely happy on Christmas morning. As of the date of this post there are 77 members on the wish list to get a copy. They aren’t posted very frequently so I imagine that the folks at the back of that list may be waiting until after Christmas 2008 to get their copies, unless they rank it very high (top 5) on their list.

UPDATE – June 17, 2008:

As of today, there are 124 members wishing for a copy of this DVD at SwapaDVD.com. Of these, it appears that 41 of them have ranked the title within the top 5 positions of their wish lists . I counted 13 members ranking it #1 and 12 more at #2. No copies have been posted into the system in the last 7 days.