Friday, June 22, 2007

Go Home Happy!



Struggling Blockbuster Eliminates Rental Fees

Let me tell you right now that I don't feel the least bit sorry for Blockbuster Video and their current woes. Why? Well, several years ago, when it was still fashionable to rent movies, I would go to Blockbuster looking for videos of independent movies. I would rarely find them there. Sure, they had 50 copies of "Gladiator", but what of the smaller stuff?

Turns out Blockbuster refused to stock movies that were unrated. Now, I'm not talking about pornos. I'm referring to indie movies that were a bit too hard to get an R-rating or were from overseas. I had to go to a non-corporate video store (Premiere Video) to get an unrated (the version preferred by critics) copy of "Requeim for a Dream".

Blockbusta did this in order to ensure their rep as a "family" store. However, they were fine with stocking DVD's that had unrated extras on them (such as "Fight Club").

Around this same time, Blockbuster struck deals with some movie companies in which they would be the only place to stock various lesser-known movies (stuff no one had heard of). They would stock 30 copies of each of these titles and then people, seeing the vast amount of copies, would wonder why they had never heard of the movie and, feeling that they had missed something, would rent one of 'em (they were mostly crap).

Suffice it to say that Blockbuster sucks and I am quite pleased that the last BB in town a few months ago.

3 comments:

Maggie Moo said...

I've never been a fan of Blockbuster either. I'm not the movie renting kind of gal anyway, but when I go there, I feel very manipulated. Just like you said...I can only find the biggest, "best" movies that they think I should watch.

And I'm really bad at returning movies.

Brianinmpls said...

I hate blockbuster!! Go Netflicks...although I have not been watching movies very much these days

Anonymous said...

I hat them for the same reason! I love Indie movies and some of the ones I wanted to see the most they wouldn't carry because the were too controversial or unrated.

I wanted to see the movie, Bubble
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454792/
I guess I'll have to start ordering Netflicks.
-P