Ultimate DVD shelf

A few days ago I did a post about the Ultimate bookshelf - the kind of books that you just can't part with, the ones that need to be on your shelf for the days (possibly many years from now) when you know you will need to read it again. But in the interest of fairness here at film vs book - I should really do an ultimate DVD shelf too. These are the DVDs that once again - need to be owned and ready to be seen at a moment's notice.

As I started to consider mine, I realised that most are classics, musicals or Disney. These are the types of films that are not normally on TV and sometimes you are just in the mood to watch one - this is when having them in your DVD vault is essential.

Here are my top 10:

1. It's a Wonderful Life - comes out every Christmas, Jimmy Stewart at his finest, heart-wearming and cheesy but oh so brilliantly dark too. "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me .... I burped." Brilliant.
2. Fiddler on the Roof - very rarely on TV but a must if you grew up in my house. 
3. Singing in the Rain - arguably the finest musical ever made for the big screen. Incredible dance sequences, amazing colour and oh so funny.
4. The Lion King - the best Disney ever made, never gets old. Amazing score, amazing story, amazing characters. Perfect Disney fun.
5. Back to the Future trilogy (yes I'm cheating and going for a box set!)
6. Top Secret - so secret, many haven't heard of it. Never on TV and so so funny. A DVD must-have.
7. Monty Python film collection - Life of Brian, Holy Grail. Sometimes you just need some python humour!
8. Pedro Almódovar box set - sometimes you just need to go Spanish, dark and brilliant - and who better than Pedro to take you there.
9. Love Actually - not the greatest film I've ever seen but a brilliant romcom with arguably the funniest audio commentary I have ever heard. Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy and co all chat about the film and are so funny that they become more interesting than the film itself!
10. Stand by Me - the ultimate coming-of-age film with an incredible foursome of young stars back in the day. Deals with some serious issues (this is based on a Stephen King book after all!) but has some of the funniest, silliest insults and one-liners ever uttered on screen.

Others that came close but didn't quite make the cut are Flight of the Navigator, Empire Records, The Goonies (video commentary with the cast all grown up!) a great disaster movie - either Independence Day or The Day After Tomorrow and Soapdish.

So what DVDs would be in your collection?

Films that never made it big - but must be seen!

Top Secret
The jokes are from the Airplane/Naked Gun school of humour and there are so many crammed into each scene you need to watch the film over and over again just to pick up on them. The plot revolves around a very young Val Kilmer, who plays Nick, an American rock 'n' roll star who is sent on a public relations project as he has been enlisted to sing for a concert in Germany - just as they are about to take over the world... Nick is soon mixed up in hostages, jails, the resistance movement and falling for the woman in the middle of it all - all while singing *yes he actually does the singing!* songs lovingly ripped from every Beach Boys classic.


The main humour of the whole film is that it pretends to take itself seriously. I'd say it has some of the greatest one-liners in cinema history - but I've seen Monty Python. It does come close though with lines like "I know a little German, he's sitting over there" and "Nick? What does that mean?" "I don't know my father thought of it while he was shaving."


Absolutely worth buying and watching over and over. Then when you think you can't watch it any more, invite friends over and make them watch it! :)

Point Break
Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, guns, jumping out of planes, surfing and half naked hotties. Need I say more?


Soapdish
Amazing amazing cast includes Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Junior, Sally Field, Teri Hatcher, Whoopi Goldberg... the list is endless. Takes the piss out of soap operas from behind the scenes of the fictitious soap opera "The Sun Also Sets" as life begins to immitate art.


Saved

Mandy Moore is hilarious alongside other brilliant young actors including the fab and all grown up Macauley Culkin. Set in a modern day "cool" Christian school it chronicles a bunch of teens as their lives take turns they could not have seen coming. Deals with acceptance, forgiveness, homosexuality and even Judaism all within a Christian school in the funniest, coolest way imaginable. Absolute comedy genius mixed with some real drama.


Battle Royale
A class of school children are put on an island and forced to kill each other. Brutal but fascinating and compelling from start to finish. Must see foreign film!

Top 5: Funny films

Last week I was asked what my Top 5 films are. An easy question you might think - but not to me. That depends what you mean by top 5... because the top 5 films ever made (in my humble opinion - Shawshank Redemption, Pans Labyrinth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Singing in the Rain and It's a Wonderful Life) are not my favourite five films of all time. And then there are films which I have seen thousands of times but I still wouldn't class them as my top 5 favourites.

I came close to deciding but it then became top 10 because other favourites kept popping into my head and I couldn't choose between them. It was marginally easier to class my top 5 films by genre. Top 5 80s movies, top 5 funny films, top 5 animated, foreign, horror (you get the point!)


So here is today's question: what are your Top 5 funny films of all time?

Mine are:

• Monty Pythons Life of Brian (genius, in film form)
• Airplane (Leslie Nielsen and co deliver some of the funniest lines ever uttered on the big screen!)
• Top Secret (80s classic with a very young Val Kilmer)
• Zoolander (come on, you know you've done blue steel in photos!)
• Monty Pythons Holy Grail (most random of all MP films but has the best one liners of them all)

LE xx