Posts Tagged VHS
Archive
May 16, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Watching Music
The best way you can learn about music is by listening to it – sure, you can research, ask questions, read up, get opinions from others…these are all smart ways to build your knowledge, but number one is to listen widely. And far too often. Reading about music has been a big part of my […]Archive
March 7, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
The Visceral Thrill of Eddie Murphy’s Early Stand-Up
Beverly Hills Cop was one of the first video tapes we rented as a family. My mum checked with the guy at the counter to make sure it was okay for us all to watch and his suggestion was that the first few minutes contained a few swears so maybe fast-forward that… After dinner that […]Archive
February 11, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Movies of My Life # 25: The Shining
The Shining is a film I can watch again and again. A perfect horror film. Existential fear right there. Amazing performances, brilliantly filmed – that feeling of unease that trickles in with Wendy Carlos’ amazing music and the sound-design just so. Just a brilliant film. And a fine example of Stanley Kubrick’s vision too. Many […]Archive
October 14, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: Seems Telling, No?
I’ve mushed my brain with the things I watch – too much of this and a lot of that, and I am desensitised to violence and I don’t get scared and I have no scars from the things I’ve watched. None of this is good, by the way, it’s just honesty. None of this was […]Archive
July 28, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: The Overdues
There was that time when I worked in a video store, and we were allowed to borrow the preview-tapes and screeners. These had the full movie on them, but they also had a message that would roll along the screen telling you the name of the film – which was fine, didn’t bother me and […]Archive
June 23, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
My New EBook: Wrestling Is Fake. That’s What Makes It So Real – Selected Grapplings (2005-2015)
I’ve just published my new e-book, my third. This is the first one that’s not about music at all. This is a selection of my various writings about pro-wrestling. I’ve fallen in and out with the “sport” over the last three decades, but I can’t quite shake my fandom, certainly don’t want to ignore my early […]Archive
March 19, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: Video Store Homily
I worked in a video store – but only for a few weeks. I wish it was longer. But it was still a good time. And this was in the time of VHS tapes. Actual videos. I’d grown up, in some sense, in the video stores of New Zealand. Renting anything that needed to be […]Archive
February 3, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: I Used To Be Scared of Horror Films So I Watched Every Single One From The Local Video Store And Now I’m Cured
When I was a kid a rather stupid movie had a deep impact on me. It’s called Alligator. It’s from about 1980 – and I reckon we saw it just a few years after that. And in it, a pet alligator gets flushed down the loo. It ends up in the sewer where the bodies […]Archive
June 23, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
Movies of My Life # 17: Beverly Hills Cop
I still go to the video store. And yes, it’s still called a Video Store. We rent/borrow DVDs – we do this because it’s convenient. The store (the last of its kind still standing in our town) is just down the road/just around the corner. And though I never meant for this to happen – […]Archive
December 4, 2018 by Simon Sweetman
Movies of My Life # 16: The Compleat Beatles
Maybe it’s because it’s hard to find and best remembered for what it represented (also: time/place) but I reckon The Compleat Beatles is the very best Beatles doco there’s ever been. It shits on The Anthology which is not terrible, but is, probably, far too much of a good thing. When The Anthology was released […]Archive
March 13, 2018 by Simon Sweetman