The decision to stop releasing The Simpsons on physical media predates Disney’s acquisition of Fox by ten years. So Disney may have reasons for maintaining the policy but they didn’t initiate it.
One big advantage of DVDs/Blu-rays that aren’t available on streaming: bonus features and commentary tracks. There are several movies that I’ve watched more with the commentary track than the movie alone. (Spinal Tap, Paul, Sideways, Night Of The Creeps, The Thing, for example).
One of my favorite bonus features/easter eggs is on the deluxe DVD of The Kids Are Alright. There’s an interactive quiz about The Who…if you get the wrong answers you get a snide remark by Keith or Pete. If you get a passing score the reward is a 5.1 mix of “Who Are You”.
Tropic Thunder is better with the commentary as well.
Mine is pretty much all Shakespeare (plus some other classic drama). I’d guess probably 100 discs or so? I’ve definitely got all 38 plays on film, most of them in multiple versions.
I have some stuff that would probably count as rare – a bunch of older Stratford Festival and Broadway productions from the 1970s and 1980s, and a bootleg version of Chimes at Midnight from before it was commercially available. (I did the honest thing and bought a legal version later, but I think I’ve still got them both.)
What DVD’s in your collection do you especially like? I have quite a few, including Sherlock Holmes (the Granada series with Jeremy Brett); Seven Days in May (1964) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas; The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal; and The Missiles of October (1974) with William Devane and Martin Sheen.
I have several more that stand out or course, but these are just a few of them. What are amongst your favourites in your collection?
Well, I like the BBC/PBS/Granada/Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, too (at least until the end, when they bloated the stories and Jeremy Brett got too ill to do it), but I only have a few discs.
Others I watch over and over:
Douglas Fairbanks’ original, silent The Thief of Bagdad, with the Carl Davis score
The restored version of Metropolis (although sometimes I’ll watch the Giorgiou Moroder version)
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms -The first and best “1950s monster flick”
North by Northwest
James Burke’s The Day the Universe Changed
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000
Guardians of the Galaxy
Spartacus
2001: A Space Odyssey
Forbidden Planet
King Kong – both the 1933 and the 2005 versions
The original Star Wars trilogy and the first Indiana Jones trilogy