Having not visited an actual, physical shop in order to buy DVDs for literally a while now, and with time to kill the other day between the usual thrilling engagements that make up my Bondesque social life (I'd misread my watch and was an hour early meeting the Mrs from work), I tiptoed gingerly into the Westfield branch of HMV, or hmv as it appears to be called in these upper-case-phobic days. And let me tell you, it was an education. You might learn a lot from sitting at a computer boggling at the internets till your optic nerves shrivel up, but sometimes there's just no substitute for a field trip.
So come with me on a pictorial odyssey through the aisles of mystery, the shelves of wonder and the price tags of insanity as we discover just some of the fascinating titbits we can learn from "the real world".
Every single one of the top sixteen books for sale in HMV - sorry, hmv - has been adapted into a film. Are hmv customers completely ignorant of the 99% of literature that remains unfilmed? Of course not. But I am concerned they might be behind a grand conspiracy whose next step is to get Frankie Boyle's 'My Shit Life So Far' into cinemas.
For just twenty of the Queen's pounds you too can be insulted and patronised by these horribly marketed box sets of 1980s films "for him" and "for her". My love for
Footloose is now the love that dare not speak its name, but I hope to reassert my masculinity soon with a viewing of
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, especially the bit where Matthew Broderick takes a shower.
hmv have employed a team of construction workers to erect an enormous wall of DVDs, the centrepiece of which is an eight-foot-high tower of
Toy Story 3 boxes. In an unprecented display of swaggering over-confidence, these have been produced in insanely large numbers and priced at just £29.99, which is pretty much the epitome of optimism. Good luck shifting those suckas.
There's a
Lake Placid 3! I didn't even know there was a
Lake Placid 2! Amazing tagline there though ("DON'T FORGET YOU'RE LUNCH!"), playing on the most basic human fears of the aberrant apostrophe, the inadvertent failure to remember one's midday repast
and being eaten by an unconvincing crocodile slash alligator. Linguistic virtuosity.
Love your Mum? Why not prove it by treating her this Mother's Day to one of the most reviled, woman-hating films of all time?
I didn't want hmv to think I was taking the piss by hanging around in there taking photos all day so I bought these completely brilliant DVDs. When I got home I discovered I could have ordered them both online for almost half of what I had just spent. That was irritating.
Still, thanks to hmv for allowing me to photograph every square inch of it like some kind of potential terrorist, and if they want to send me Volumes 2 to 6 of the
Tom & Jerry Classic Collection and the
Looney Tunes Golden Collection I'm sure I could write something nice in return, like how lovely the staff are or how clean the floor is or something, I don't know, God, stop going on about it.
"There's a Lake Placid 3! I didn't even know there was a Lake Placid 2!"
ReplyDeleteI hate to use a phrase that I really don't like, but I actually did LOL! My reaction was exactly the same.
No doubt in the future all hmv stores will be constructed from Toy Story 3 boxes that they weren't able to shift!
I always find visits to flesh-and-blood DVD stores hideously depressing. Online, you can pretend that just the stuff you like exists; in a store, you're forcefully reminded that that good movies are the whitecap on an ocean of cinematic crap.
ReplyDeleteWant to know what is more sad? I've seen Lake Placid 3 at my fiancee's parents. Starts out promising with the amusing idea that it is about killer baby crocs! After that's it is worse than you can imagine.
ReplyDeleteLove it Mr Suit. A perfectly described and photographed trip through an actual hmv store. I too have fallen into the trap of buying dvds in there only to find them so much cheaper online when I get home. Also agrre with Rainicorn's comment above.
ReplyDeleteI watched Lake Placid 3. Only notable for some chick who used to be in Eastenders or Emmerdale or summat being in the nip. And then getting eaten by unconvincing CG crocogators. I think it was a tv movie.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have bought Lake Placid 3 after all.
ReplyDelete