Mike Gayle

With a remote control in one hand and a Budweiser in the other, I’m slouched on the sofa in front of my widescreen TV and The Matrir on DVD. I’m not really watching it, though, in the sense of following the story from beginning to end. What I’m doing is pointing my remote control at the DVD player andmaking it skip to the best bits, which constitute any moment during a fi,lm where there’s loud music preferably leading up to an explosion, gun battle or slo-mo fi,ght scene. I know exactly where the best bits of all my favourite fi,lms are — from the bank robbery scene in Heat to the biggest explosion in Mission Impossible (the fi,nal one in the tunnel on the train) and the gun battle at the end of Leon (which is probably my favourite gun battle Wet). I’m enjoying my search through my favourite DVDs even more than usual because I’ve just spent a considerable amount of money on a home-cinema surround-sound system, which is now turned up so loud that it’s making the mirror vibrateabove the fi,replace.A huge grin is fi,xed to my face as I skip to my favourite scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’s character sets off the metal detector with the arsenal of weapons slung around his chest. The noise is tremendous. The bass from the thumping soundtrack is punching me in the chest. It’s fantastic. I feel like I’m in a boxing ring with Ali, and when the guns start fi,ring I’m in ecstasy. I never imagined that TV could be this good. I never imagined that there was a way of making my favourite thing in the world even better. Thanks to my surround-sound, it’s not just the explosions that are clearer : there are new, more subtle noises I’ve missed on a plain old TV. Having the sound separated out into front left, centre, front right and a sub-woofer to handle the explosions is one thing — but with my left and right rear speakers it almost feels like I’m there in the fi,lm with Mr Reeves. I can hear bullets whizzing past my head on the left, the ching—ching of empty cartridges falling to the ground on my right, and thelow rumble of falling masonry surrounds me.