ntroduction
Have you been inside a video store lately? Our fearless leader recently had occasion to pay a visit to his local Blockbuster. When he returned to the Orbiting HQ, we couldn't tell whether he was angry, disappointed, or just having a bout with diphtheria. Maybe it was all three.
To cut a long and depressing story very short, the store didn't have what he had been looking for. In fact, it had virtually nothing worthy of Ken's attention for two hours. We resolved then and there to do a thorough breakdown of the options available to today's film connoisseurs, the good and the bad, and figure out who actually uses any of them. Masochist that I am, I volunteered for the job.
Wal-Mart
Why not start with the largest DVD retailer in the world? If you're looking for new releases, very popular catalog titles, or whatever is in the deep discount bin today, you can't go wrong here. Nobody can stock a shelf quite like Sam Walton's boys and girls, so the latest and greatest is virtually guaranteed to be there at all times.
Sometimes you might have to hunt across the 200,000 square feet of the Supercenter to find the conveniently placed "hot titles" display rack you need. But you know the latest Adam Sandler masterpiece is going to be worth it. Who needs rentals when you can buy your movies for five times the price, and then get to dust the DVD rack every couple of weeks until you've forgotten what movies you have? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Let's move on.
Blockbuster
That brings us to the raison d'êtré of this little treatise. Your average Blockbuster store, or at least those close to where I live in the Tampa Bay area, is becoming less of a movie rental venue these days. The store walls are covered in new releases by the bucketful, and the floor space in between holds about twenty chest-height display racks.
But about half of the available square footage, and half of the rack space, is occupied by video games, snack foods, and used discs for sale. I can understand the urge to feed the gamers, but all the extraneous material makes actual DVD rentals a breed threatened with extinction in here. VHS tapes are nowhere to be found, of course, but surely Little Johnny's grandma can afford a US$40 DVD player if she can handle the late fees?
Yes, the late fees. The much-publicized "no late fees" program was not universally adopted by owners of franchised stores, and even where it is in effect, it basically amounts to a "rent to own" program. Keep the movie as long as you like, but you'll eventually have to pay up and become a proud new owner of Gigli: the Extended Edition. The behind-the-scenes material alone is worth every penny.
I brought a list of 70 movies to two local stores and started checking titles off. It was a somewhat eclectic mix of Orbiting HQ favorites, quality anime, Oscar winners of various kinds, and a few international titles for that musky French spice. The results were downright depressing. Sure, they both had Kentucky Fried Movie and Fight Club. One store even carried a copy of Princess Bride, but neither had Weird Al's UHF, recent Oscar nominee Evil, or any of the anime titles. Not Noir, not Fullmetal Alchemist, not even Akira for crying out loud.
When I say they didn't have these movies, that's exactly what I mean. It's not that they were rented out; they didn't exist in those little worlds. All in all, I found 22 movies from my checklist in one store and in 23 the other. And that's mostly because I had 12 new releases on my list. I'm in a charitable mood, so I'll point out that new releases were reliably in the store. Walk the Line was closest to an exhausted supply, and there were still about a dozen copies of that one in each Blockbuster.
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