The Big TV is Here!
The Big TV is Here!
Monday is about movies. And sometimes television too. Today it's both. With the arrival of The Big TV!
It was pretty exciting this weekend just gone. We took the big TV out of the box in the hall and put it on top of the cabinet that I had rolled into place about a month ago. We took the old TV that was on a bracket on the wall and moved it to the bedroom; haven’t had a TV in the bedroom for about 13 years – not in the time we’ve lived where we’ve lived.
TV is the thing this year, this year. Radio was great. But now it’s out of date. TV is the thing this year.
I’ve never had a really big TV. And in fact most of the television sets I’ve owned have been given to me, handed down.
One of my favourite ever memories of my childhood is waking up on my seventh birthday, a Saturday morning. Winter. The sound of The Muppet Show waking me up. Time to light the lights. A television in my room! It wasn’t there the night before. It was a big ole box with a black’n’white telly in it – channels 1 and 2 were all we had at the time and on my birthday present they were found by clicking a dial to 6 and 8.
It was super exciting to have my own TV. It was rowdy and you had to give it a slap for the picture to stop rolling, it would grow loud without warning, it would reduce to a whisper too, and none of that mattered because It Was A TV. And It Was In My Room. Always there.
In high school, I had a TV in my room with a VCR too. I started to collect VHS tapes of old concerts and some cult-favourite films.
When I drove myself to a new town to start university, I had a car filled with boxes of CDs and a stereo, I had a TV cabinet, a 14” colour telly with a remote, the VCR and several VHS tapes. I had a giant box computer. And a printer. And it took all day to move in. But my room was my pride and joy. The posters on the walls were my tattoos. The Chick Corea and Buddy Rich and Pink Floyd concert videos, and the copies of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and An Evening With Robin Williams said something about me – I might have hoped. They might even have been held against me. That might have been okay too.
As I moved through flats I carried leftover pieces of this and that, the movies that eventually switched formats from VHS to DVD, the CDs and the return to records, the last of the cassette tapes.
Every house I’ve ever lived in I’ve had a TV and a stereo. I’ve long ago ditched a big desktop computer setup, but I’ve always had a decent-sized TV and a stereo.
Until just recently.
Now I have an enormous TV. And perhaps crazier than that…no stereo. I’ve sold my turntable, and my amp. I’ve tried to sell my speakers – but no one wanted them, they’re unplugged and awaiting my next move. I have a Bluetooth turntable, I have a Blu-ray DVD player (that will take CDs too) and the big TV has a soundbar set up with it.
About a month ago, I removed the record cabinet out from our family’s favourite hang-out spot. Decided, on what felt like something close to a whim, that I was going full TV-room. I was going home theatre. I was going all in on being a movie guy.
I have rebuilt a rather bonkers DVD collection, and I have been watching all sorts of great stuff and trash across the last few years. I still love music. But movies are moving out into the lead now, but I say that and I think I feel like they were always in the lead. Just as when I put posters about the hostel room and welcomed anyone on the floor in for weekend movie screenings, now I’m doing some grown-up version of the same.
The big TV is huge. It is 65 inches. And the room that it lives in isn’t all that big – so it makes the big TV look even bigger. We couldn’t actually go bigger in this room, short of painting the wall white and having a projector. (Tempting!)
Winter this year will be filled with films. We already do our regular Fright Knightz meetings – me and my Dirty Spoons bandmate, Sam. And my son Oscar. We choose a horror film each and watch all three back-to-back with snacks. But, on top of that, I have all sorts of ideas for all sorts of theme-nights, and special gatherings with different groups of people. A way to catch up with friends, plan a meal and a movie – be the host. That’s my hope.
Silly stuff, that’s fun – I want to watch The Godfather again and serve an Italian meal in the middle of it.
Lantana, The Straight Story, The Evil Dead Trilogy, Scanners, The Fly, Black Swan, 44 Inch Chest, Trash Humpers, Rabbit-Proof Fence, About Schmidt, Training Day, The Anniversary Party, Bringing Out The Dead, The Insider, The Ice Storm, Crumb, When We Were Kings, Rush, Blue Velvet, and Robocop.
These are some of the films I’ve been holding on to – saving up, waiting to watch again. I have a couple of hundred more on DVD. And obviously thousands more in a video store down the road (the last one standing) and on the various streaming services too.
It’s going to be a wonderful winter. I can’t think of anything better.
My favourite food films are The Big Night, and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. But others will come to mind.
Oscar has a list of classic 1980s films he’s waiting to experience – he came up with it himself. And it includes E.T., Evil Dead 2, Terminator, The Thing, and a few others. I’m looking forward to seeing his reaction to many of those films. And to seeing how I feel about them myself, so many of them being formative movie-going experiences for the younger version of me.
The big TV sat waiting for us. It was delivered and we left it in a box in the hallway, to walk around, for a few weeks. We had to move the old one before we could go all in with the new one. I like to think we were also all mentally preparing in our way. It’s a big thing. I mean literally of course.
What movie would you recommend I line up this year for the big TV? Either obscure or obvious, band new or one I’ve probably seen a dozen times. No wrong answers. What would be your first watch on your big TV?
I can always go another round of The Shining – and The Big Lebowski. I love stupid stuff like Hell Comes To Frogtown, any of the Halloweens, Elm Streets or Friday The 13ths, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about The Departed. But, in the end, my first movie for The Big TV was Hellbound: Hellraiser II – as brilliantly bonkers as I remembered it from back in the very early 1990s when I would have first seen it.
I’ve had the Lantana dvd on the shelf for years awaiting a rewatching. It will happen one day. Took a dvd player out west with me when I saw the kids on the weekend. The place I stay has no internet and a temperamental dvd player. Took out Satanic Panic and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter to watch with my daughter, The French Dispatch to watch with my son and Man With Movie Camera for myself. They all served their purpose. Love checking out thrift stores for discarded dvds
Big Night is a near perfect movie for me.