You Have Mail

I am a great fan of film. On an external hard drive, I now have a collection of more than 700 movies, recorded from broadcast, and thanks to the nature of digital recording, with all traces of advertisements removed.

They are simply stored in alphabetical order, although I have occasionally mused about whether they might be placed into separate folders containing different categories of film.

But I have restrained myself from undertaking this kind of exercise, although I do enjoy imagining numerous sometimes unorthodox categories, over and above the obvious ones.

One such category might be the way in which certain films have entertained an audacious approach to American history, almost inventing a history that has never existed. This might include the National Treasure films, and Sahara, but there are as many sub categories as can be identified by anyone with personal predilections for subject matter.

Another exercise that I tend to practice in my imagination is to identify almost genealogical links between films, as if to identify which might have preceded the other and made it possible for a certain story to be told in a certain way.

This is entertaining, for myself, but is not necessarily something that would be of interest to a wider audience.

One of my recent new acquisitions is the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy You Have Mail.

I have only recently viewed it properly, and of course it could form a useful addition to those films that explore the way in which the Internet has become a means of communication in society, and how indeed it is transforming the way that we communicate.

In my own case, it has made me suddenly realise that there is a parallel with the way in which I write this blog on a regular basis, aiming to communicate my thoughts not to one individual, but as it happens to an extraordinarily worldwide audience that is always surprising me as to the range of countries in which English is clearly a shared language.

I am a particular fan of what might be described as ‘chick flicks’, and I am certainly much less interested in violent adventure films and have no interest in horror at all.

I am equally interested in observing the second-hand value of films, although these days I try to minimise my purchase of actual DVDs in cases.

It is always interesting to discover films that have retained an exceptionally high value, often much higher than the original release price for a modern DVD.

Bargains are to be found, and I have a friend who regularly combs the shelves of several town centre second-hand stores to discover where perhaps such bargains can be had.

Film is a fascinating reflection of social and cultural interests, and my interests are definitely those of an armchair anthropologist.