You Are What You Watch: Britain's Favourite DVDs

[mcgillianaire]

The Independent got together with LoveFilm, Britain's biggest online film rental company, to analyse the DVD renting habits of its 600,000+ UK subscribers and find out if geography determines our taste in movies. An interesting exercise that discovered that outside London (as was the case with almost every category/movie), the most rented movie in Sheffield is The Full Monty where it is set, Hallam Foe is the most rented movie in Edinburgh, but only 0.5% of LoveFilm members in County Durham have ever rented Billy Elliot.

Other insights include Glasgow renting more titles from world cinema outside London, Birmingham renting more Bollywood outside London, This is England (portraying the 1980s skinhead culture - good movie btw!) being popular in East London where the British National Party has won council seats, but not being so popular in Staffordshire, the director's hometown and another area where the BNP has made gains. It was however a popular choice in nearby Nottingham where a lot of the film was shot. Interestingly, more people rented the low-budget 2006 British thriller London to Brighton, in London and Brighton than any other city. And finally, Manchester consistently rents more porn than anywhere but London. Really... why?! Adult films seem to be popular only in the cities.

Good timing with the article. Only last week I opened a free-trial subscription with Blockbuster's online DVD rental service. So far I've watched The Namesake, East is East and Alfie (the Michael Caine version). All three were brilliant and well worth the hour and a half each. This week I've got cult-movie Quadrophenia and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to watch, while awaiting either If (a 1968 satire of English public school life) or Satyajit Ray's The Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari). Make hay while it's free! After the trial is over I'm gonna cancel it and switch to LoveFilm for a month and then decide which one to settle on. I've already got a list of 200+ movies and documentaries I want to watch. At this rate it's going to take a lifetime to get through even a small percentage of them...

Comments

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

And intense it certainly was! I don't know why I thought the movie was a lot more light-hearted than it actually was. I wanted to watch it because I missed out on it in the cinemas last year when I was in India and by all accounts would immediately identify myself with it in many ways. Like Gogol's father, my dad got married in an arranged wedding two years after moving to the UK, and like their kids, my sis and I grew up in a western environment/went to a western school. Luckily with a name like Hari, I was spared the ambush that was usually reserved for creatures likes us... I wish I had the patience to read the book cover-to-cover.

[chu_hi.livejournal.com]

There isn't much difference between the book and the movie - it's one of the best screen adaptations I've ever seen. Some names were changed - ironically! - but the film followed the book exactly, and the music and direction and cinematography were exactly appropriate. Oh, not to mention the casting!