A Common Complaint

I'm currently experiencing a worriment that befalls many film bloggers and movie fanatics - the universal battle cry that "There's too much to see! And not enough time!"

Of course, it's a pretty lame problem to have isn't it? Living in a major metropolitan area like Toronto (replete with its stores, rentals outlets, rep cinemas and many film festivals), I have a plethora of choices on an ongoing basis, so I'm never really left out in the cold with no options. However, the Paradox of Choice does sometimes leave me struggling to make a decision - what to watch next?




The end of year rush to catch up with everything missed during 2010 (with full knowledge that it can't be done) has certainly helped stir things up. No sooner than I get a few more 2010 films under my belt when suddenly there's another 5 that just became available to see (at least there's not much new to see in 2011 yet). On top of that, though, two further occurrences in the last few days have pushed me to the edge...

First up, I took a "quick browse" of the TIFF Lightbox schedule for the next few months. These are just the ones that jumped out at me without reading any blurbs:

• The Chase (Arthur Penn's 1966 film)
• Enter The Void
• I, Don Giovanni (Carlos Saura)
• Incendies (Canada's submission to Best Foreign Language Oscar category - still in the running)
• Nostalgia For The Light
• Pandora And The Flying Dutchman
• The Prowler (Joseph Losey)
• Trigger (Bruce MacDonald)

And that's just the stuff I haven't seen before. If you include previously viewed films that I'd like to see again on the big screen, the schedule also includes:

• Back To The Future (I need to bring The Boy to see this with an audience)
• Black Narcissus
• Out Of the Past
• The Red Shoes

And so on, and so on...

If that wasn't bad enough (and isn't it just terrible?), I just received my recent order from amazon.co.uk (oh, region-free DVD player, you just keep giving and giving...) that included:

• World On A Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbiner's 3.5 hour sci-fi mini-series)
• The Trip
• Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape

A treasure chest of riches to be sure...But wait, none of this is taking into account the stacks already taking up space on my floor because they are "in progress":

• The Criterion BBS box set (two down, five to go).
• The Eclipse sets of Hiroshi Shimizu, Nagisa Oshima and Allan King have all been started, but not yet finished.
• A bunch of Japanese films - "Memories Of Matsuko", "Carmen Comes Home", "Sada", "Big Bang Juvenile A".
• "The History of Rock and Roll" - watching with my son and we're up to the mid-60s (he keeps asking when Bon Jovi will show up...).
• My 4 current rentals from zip.ca - "The Flesh And The Fiends", "The House Of Seven Corpses", "Jade Warrior" and "The Doctor And The Devils".

And then we have these ongoing distractions:

• The NetFlix subscription which hasn't really been touched since before Christmas.
• TCM - good lord what a great station.
• The two terrific independent video stores within walking distance (except when it's minus 15 Celsius at which point nothing is walking distance).

The biggest issue of late, though, is preventing any viewing at all - it's my recent acquisition of a capture card for my iMac. It'll help me pull together all my old video tape footage of my son from ages 0 to 6 - just watching the old tapes will keep me busy for awhile, but the editing down to short "films" will be an ongoing effort (a fun one, but certainly time consuming). With all of that as well as my participation in the upcoming list of the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow's top 100 Japanese films (our favourites, not "The Best") it's no wonder I'm barely posting these days...

Oh, woe is me...Such difficult choices ahead!