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Similarly I have quite a few DVDs that I'm a little ashamed of to place in my real collection, for a variety of reasons! Some are of the "what will the neighbours/parents think if they see it?" kind such as Man Behind The Sun, the Guinea Pig films and Nekromantik, but others fall into the category of gifts from well meaning friends and relatives which I'm grateful for having the chance to see (because I wouldn't have bought them myself), but am not sure if I could bear to see them in my actual collection - things like Mission To Mars, The Da Vinci Code, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Spider-Man 3, Strong Language (part of the "Cool Britannia era 20-somethings on drugs, clubbing while having trouble with relationships" wave of the late 90s following Trainspotting that also included Human Traffic), Storm (with Luke Perry!), Evil Never Sleeps and Total Reality! (Though on the flip side of that, a good friend from university gave me a copy of Wilde!)

This does not fit in with DVDs but a couple of years ago a friend of a friend was getting rid of all his videos so he kindly let me have all his Redemption/Jezebel titles for £4! I couldn't pass up that offer for twenty films, though do worry I look (even more of) a pervert with a ton of videos with salacious cover art and titles such as Au Pair Girls, The Sex Thief, The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra and House Of Whipcord on my shelves!

However there are a couple of abominations that I am completely responsible for choosing to buy - at the moment the award for worst title I actually paid good money for is being contested between Wild Wild West (I guess I got star struck by the casting and didn't realise that the incoherence of the trailer would be mirrored in the film with an extra garnish of 'witty' gay panic, race and disability banter), The Stepford Wives remake ( #-o ) and The Tuxedo (I have no excuse for this )

domino harvey wrote:Does anyone else have a "Shame Pile" of DVDs that aren't worth enough to sell but you don't want them sitting on the shelf with the rest of your DVDs?

I have this

on my shelf, so I guess my answer is "no."

colinr0380 wrote:Similarly I have quite a few DVDs that I'm a little ashamed of to place in my real collection, for a variety of reasons!

I actually enjoy the Pirates series, Mission to Mars, and all three Spider-Man films (though admittedly the last was considerably weaker than the rest). I guess I don't have a shame pile, you have to take the good with the bad with me. I paid for Soul Plane, and you know what, while I wouldn't sit down and watch it attentively, it makes for a good laugh once in a while.

I have a group of DVDs that most people would put in their shame pile, but I stand by. Billy Madison, Houseguest, and Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood are cinematic wonders just waiting to be rediscovered. And at some point I expect to own The Mighty Ducks Trilogy, and Problem Child 1 & 2.

I guess I am just a sucker for the movies I liked when I was 12.

I love my girlfriend dearly, but her taste in movies does NOT jibe with mine. The worst part is that she'll sift through bargain bins and want to get something for me. This is how I have come to own Snakes on a Plane, Wedding Crashers, and King Arthur (what a fucking awful movie!). I finally had to ask her to stop buying anything for me without asking first. 8-[

She means well, but you'd think that after several years she'd have a handle on the type of films I like! Anyway, while she's in France for the month of July, I'm digging the shame pile out of the closet and taking it to a used dvd store to sell. Thankfully the girlfriend doesn't lurk here, so she'll never know.

jbeall wrote:I love my girlfriend dearly, but her taste in movies does NOT jibe with mine. The worst part is that she'll sift through bargain bins and want to get something for me. This is how I have come to own Snakes on a Plane, Wedding Crashers, and King Arthur (what a fucking awful movie!). I finally had to ask her to stop buying anything for me without asking first. 8-[

She means well, but you'd think that after several years she'd have a handle on the type of films I like! Anyway, while she's in France for the month of July, I'm digging the shame pile out of the closet and taking it to a used dvd store to sell. Thankfully the girlfriend doesn't lurk here, so she'll never know.

I'm in exactly the same boat. My pile may not necessary be that shameful but I seem to own a lot of films I think are ok and will never watch.

I usually ebay them every six months or so. The worst part is when she sees the ebay pile and I get "Why are you selling this? I bought this! Jurassic Park is a great film! I'm not buying you anymore DVDs" Man I wish she'd follow up on that threat (with the exception of things I actually ask for)!

And updating my previous post, I tried the "used dvds" feature on dvdplanet, and provided they pay the quotes they gave me, it was a much better deal than selling them at the nearby used dvd store. I would've expected to get $5 for a pile of ten crap dvds, but I got at least $4.49 for each.

Mr_sausage wrote:Oh yes. I have a pile of Artisans and Merchant Ivorys sent as screeners

Sorry about that.

I still regret getting rid of some of mine, though... Rodentz, The Playa'z Court... more so than I regret getting rid of those tedious Merchant-Ivorys.

It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling when I see others on this board share my distaste for Merchant-Ivory films.

My shame pile is in with my DVDs, I don't separate them. I've gone through my collection a couple of times and weeded out my more shameful purchases but there's a few I can't bring myself to get rid of. But it has still been growing since getting married (27 Dresses and P.S. I Love You being the most recent additions.)

I hear ya, my wife used to have a separate area on the shelves for the DVDs she brought with her, but they have since been integrated, as we both felt that was a bit condescending (and 99% of the titles I had no problem with, anyway). Besides, my taste occasionally slips into the weird or stupid, so it made no sense to isolate the dorm room staple Waking Life when I had my copy of The Skateboard Kid hanging out in the "approved" area.

cdnchris wrote:My shame pile is in with my DVDs, I don't separate them. I've gone through my collection a couple of times and weeded out my more shameful purchases but there's a few I can't bring myself to get rid of. But it has still been growing since getting married (27 Dresses and P.S. I Love You being the most recent additions.)

Sadly, those two films are in my Netflix queue, and I'm not the one who put them there. And that's why I'm not married... yet. Perhaps one day my girlfriend will have an epiphany regarding cinema and I'll drop down to one knee and propose on the spot, but I suspect she'll win this war of attrition and we'll watch even more crappy movies after we get married.

Great topic and interesting to read other people's comments:

I order my DVDs chronologically and if there are multiple entries for one year then alphabetically. I liked how Schreck described it a few pages back as "a history of the best of cinema unfolding physically before my eyes, and connections manifest via the physical nature."

My tastes are fairly broad too so that titles as divserse as Days of Heaven, Heroes of the East and Alien can sit next to each other on the shelf.

Compared to other people's libraries, mine feels rather small at somewhere between 250 and 300 titles.

I always like seeing how other people have their DVD collections set up, gives me ideas for mine. Go on, don't be shy!

At first mine was alphabetical, but that was just too boring for me. If someone were to look at my binder that holds all my DVDs it would seem to be in no discernible order, but is actually arranged autobiographically. For example I bought Dark City the summer of 06, and the Three Colors Trilogy I bought in the Spring of '06, but I have three Colors put after DC in the binder because it wasn't until my second viewing of them a week after I bought Dark City that I fully appreciated the films. It's a very complicated arrangement and a good test for my memory.

Murdoch wrote:At first mine was alphabetical, but that was just too boring for me. If someone were to look at my binder that holds all my DVDs it would seem to be in no discernible order, but is actually arranged autobiographically. For example I bought Dark City the summer of 06, and the Three Colors Trilogy I bought in the Spring of '06, but I have three Colors put after DC in the binder because it wasn't until my second viewing of them a week after I bought Dark City that I fully appreciated the films. It's a very complicated arrangement and a good test for my memory.

Don't forget to use your words, mfunk.

John Cusack is in the process of arranging his album collection autobiographically throughout the movie High Fidelity, and I was reminded of that.

mfunk9786 wrote:That John Cusack is in the process of arranging his album collection autobiographically throughout the movie High Fidelity, and I was reminded of that.

well now I feel like an asshole and need to immediately sit in front of the tv and watch it until I have every second memorized

domino harvey wrote:Does anyone else have a "Shame Pile" of DVDs that aren't worth enough to sell but you don't want them sitting on the shelf with the rest of your DVDs?

Yes, yes I do. A few DVDs I got as gifts (School Ties, Can't Hardly Wait) and a few like Wolf Creek, for example, that I've never watched and I'm not even sure how I came across in the first place.

Sub-question: Does anyone have a few DVDs that they don't even remember getting, and that may not even belong to them, but they keep on the shelf anyway?

mfunk9786 wrote:Sub-question: Does anyone have a few DVDs that they don't even remember getting, and that may not even belong to them, but they keep on the shelf anyway?

Not that I've noticed lately though I probably will but on a sort of related note does anyone go for a DVD and then discover that it's nowhere to be found. I went to lend Run Lola Run to someone recently only to find that it has completely disappeared.

FSimeoni wrote:

mfunk9786 wrote:Sub-question: Does anyone have a few DVDs that they don't even remember getting, and that may not even belong to them, but they keep on the shelf anyway?

Not that I've noticed lately though I probably will but on a sort of related note does anyone go for a DVD and then discover that it's nowhere to be found. I went to lend Run Lola Run to someone recently only to find that it has completely disappeared.

How has this thread not been moved to navel-gazing?

The same thing happened with Band of Outsiders for me. I was crushed, and still hold out hope that it will come back home

jbeall wrote:How has this thread not been moved to navel-gazing?

Because we're talking about our DVDs. It's in the DVD section. Makes sense to me.

FSimeoni wrote:Not that I've noticed lately though I probably will but on a sort of related note does anyone go for a DVD and then discover that it's nowhere to be found. I went to lend Run Lola Run to someone recently only to find that it has completely disappeared.

I realized a while ago that if I was going to basically have a library of DVDs, I would need to treat it like a library. That means cataloguing every release as it comes in and goes out (hello, DVD Aficionado), and keeping a check-out list. This has worked out for the most part though I have still lost a few titles over the years by lending to suspicious people. (I may need to start doing background checks as well )

A late-comer to this thread and I haven't read it all. Has anyone considering cataloguing by studio?? I've been thinking about it for a while, but can't face the work...