CTMP introduction

CTMP stands for Collection of Tangible Motion Pictures.  Allow me to introduce it.

Now that sales of hard copies of movies and TV are at an all-time low, I would like to take the opportunity to organize a museum of used copies of the following:

• Movies on VHS, Region 1 DVD, and/or Region 1 Blu-ray
• "Classic" movies that have been voted at least once every month at IMDb since the voting process began on January 1, 1998
• "Acclaimed" movies (cited at least twice on lists of outstanding movies)
• Movies not yet in the archive

The idea began after I started a massive viewing quest.  I accumulated a collection of (new and used) DVDs and (all used) videotapes and still built on.

But since VHS is archaic and not many people still have VCRs, I decided to donate those copies—ranging in date from CBS Fox's edition of The African Queen in 1984 to the home video release of Bruce Almighty in 2003—to a preexisting public institution.  Then I visited a used-record store (one of my favorite activities of all time) last weekend and got the idea that I should start my own nonprofit collection.

I want to do it because in the future, there will be very few children who will truly appreciate how lucky we are now to be able to watch movies when we want.  In a word, they will take it for granted.  I believe if I set up this collection, we can keep memories of days gone by alive.

As the first paragraph in Daniel and Susan Cohen's 1987 book, 500 Great Films, observes:

At one time a book like this would have been primarily of historical interest.  Except for the revival of an occasional classic like Gone with the Wind, or the regular returns of Disney features, movie theaters showed only current films.  Television was better, but not much better.  The Wizard of Oz was run annually, and classic films like Casablanca turned up often.  But usually the film you wanted to see was on at two in the morning or some other impossible time.  Films were routinely mutilated for television, and commercial breaks killed any chance of really appreciating what you were watching.

There are two "Temporary Homes" as described in the first post.  One is Blogger instead of its own Web site; the other is my apartment instead of an actual museum.  I would have loved to buy out a building and store all these movies there, but for now my abode will have to do.