Time Capsule

This records my personal memories, thoughts, and other miscellany.

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Location: Colorado, United States

My wife Sue and I are retired and have lived in the same house for over 30 years. Our local family consists of son Mason, daughter Katrina, son-in-law Dan, granddaughter Natalia, and grandson Joel, all living in the same metropolitan area where we live.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Top Movies in Our Collection


I’ve been recording movies from TV to VHS tapes for several decades. At the peak of our collection, we had about 800 movies total, including those we had purchased on VHS tapes and DVDs. In the past year, we’ve reduced that number to about 375 (I say “about” because a few of them are on both tapes and discs, purchased at different times). Except for some movies on tapes that were purchased before 2005, all of these movies are now on DVDs. I spent many months copying our recorded-from-TV movies from tapes to discs.

I use a neat software package called Movie Library (which I purchased several years ago) to catalog our movies. The software company continues to upgrade the package, at no additional expense to owners – an excellent service. One of the best features of the package is its capability to search online movie databases, such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), and download all the movie details to my database at the click of the mouse. I have spent many hours with this package, updating our collection database.

I just completed the task of adding a personal rating (scale of 1-10, or a zero for no rating) for all our movies. There are a number that I have not yet watched and a good list of those I’ve not seen in quite some time, and most of these have no rating (0) at this time. Of those I remember reasonably well, I rated them in the database, with none rated below 4. If I don’t like a movie that much, I won’t have it in the collection. I do have two movies rated at 4 and probably will dispose of them soon. But this blog article is about the top-rated movies we have.

I have rated forty-five of our movies at level 10, more than 10% of the collection. These are movies I watch repeatedly. I watch almost all of them at least once a year and many of them multiple times each year, so I believe these would be classified as my favorite movies at this time. Granted, there may be a few “10’s” that we do not own at this time, but this list is a good indicator of the movies I most enjoy. Alphabetically, here are the movies we currently own that I’ve rated a 10.

The Bridges of Madison County – 1995
Bull Durham – 1988
Charade – 1963
The Cheap Detective – 1978
Christmas Vacation – 1989
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1977
A Fish Called Wanda – 1988
Fun With Dick and Jane – 1977 (not the recent remake)
The Goodbye Girl – 1977
Hatari! – 1962
Hopscotch – 1980
How the West Was Won – 1962
The Hunt for Red October – 1990
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – 1989
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World – 1963 (my all-time favorite movie)
Kelly’s Heroes – 1970
The Living Daylights – 1987
The Lord of the Rings (all three) – 2001, 2002, 2003
Maverick – 1994
Murder by Death – 1976
Murphy’s Romance – 1985
The Music Man – 1962
North by Northwest – 1959
Operation Petticoat – 1959
Patton – 1970
The Pink Panther – 1963
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl – 2003
The Quiet Man – 1952
Raiders of the Lost Ark – 1981
Romancing the Stone – 1984
South Pacific – 1958
The Spy Who Loved Me – 1977
Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope – 1977
A Steven Wright Special – 1985 (a TV comedy special, not a movie)
The Sting – 1973
The Thomas Crown Affair – 1999 (the second version of this movie)
Tootsie – 1982
Two Mules for Sister Sara – 1970
Under the Rainbow – 1981
Vacation – 1983
Victor/Victoria – 1982
Where Eagles Dare – 1968
White Christmas – 1954

I have rated some great movies at 9 and many excellent ones at 8, but this is the list of movies that I constantly turn to for an entertaining afternoon or evening. I was surprised to see how many of these were fairly recent movies, because I generally believe I prefer movies made in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, but it appears that I have many top favorites that have been released since 1969. Collecting and watching movies is a major hobby of mine, and I am thoroughly enjoying it these days.

1 Comments:

Blogger News & Reviews said...

Thanks for the info on the Movie database. I worked in a video store for 18 years and have a large collection like yourself. I think this software is what I've been looking for!
Thanks
Art

23 August, 2006 07:49  

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