| DVD Roundup July 2005
 DVD
Rental -- Is Life Too Short for Netflix?
If I can just haul myself out of this chair and make
it to the mailbox, I have another DVD waiting for me. Yes, Netflix is spoiling me rotten.
Simply subscribe online, and they’ve got just about any movie you can think of, ready
to ship out to you overnight. Their bulging website offers a spread of appetizing
suggestions. If you’re really movie-hungry, you can have three at a time. I’m on
a free trial right now. Should I join?
I thought I’d test Netflix against my ordinary rental options using a movie I was
interested in -- a documentary called The Corporation.
First, I tried the cheapie way: the online catalog of my
public library. Turns out they own six copies of The Corporation, but 142 other
cardholders were in line ahead of me. The library option is pretty impressive, though, if
you’re not in a hurry. I order online and they e-mail me, often within a few days,
when the films have arrived. I can have ten at once and keep them a week -- for free. They
own about 12,000 films, including some out-of-the-way titles. These films are ordered by
librarians, after all, with developed tastes and interests. Since there are a zillion
films I haven’t seen, waiting around for The Corporation doesn’t seem too
bad. Besides, when it does arrive, it means a five-block walk to my local branch. God
knows I could use the exercise.
But I’m eager to see this documentary, so next I check
out my local Blockbuster. No luck. They have 128 copies of The Aviator and 64 of White
Noise, but only two of The Corporation. Those two go in and out pretty fast,
the friendly clerk tells me. I get consistently friendly service from the young staff in
their snappy blue-and-gold T-shirts. No one in the store, staff or customer, is over 25
except for me. Blockbuster is just right for those who favor the uniform, anonymous
predictability that corporations manage so well.
When I ask the clerk to recommend a similar movie, he
directs me to Yes Men, of which they have two copies. He seems to suspect
I’m testing them on some score; customers don’t ask for recommendations here.
Netflix, on the other hand, has its own resident critic, James Rocchi, who not only
recommends films but shares the reactions of his readers over the website’s blog.
They’ve got CineMatch, which is something like Amazon’s engine -- it remembers
what you like, but without Amazon’s push for the sell.
As I leave Blockbuster, a six-screen monitor is blasting
out a trivia quiz on Aviator. I head out to the one locally owned rental place here
in Madison, Wisconsin: Four Star Video Heaven. As I enter, the movie on their monitor is a
Dutch musical comedy. A clerk with bright green hair is checking out a Gary Cooper movie
for an older woman in a windbreaker. The clerk helping me is a nice guy in his 30s in
jeans, a T-shirt, and a jade monkey pendant. Yes, they have The Corporation. He
suggests I stroll over to their extensive documentary section. Here’s one called This
is Nowhere, about oldsters in mobile homes who go from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart because
they can park overnight for free. Here’s Amandla! about South African freedom
music and its role in ending apartheid. Here’s American Mullet, about guys who
like it short in the front and long in the back. Here are gay lifestyle films the clerk
tells me are rented by "curious young people."
Their New Arrivals section is just as rich. Yes, they have
five or six copies of current big-budget hits, but so much more: Casshan, a
Japanese science-fiction film released through Thailand; a rerelease of A Farewell to
Arms, with Rock Hudson as the romantic lead; an Italian feature called Night
Sun, based on a Leo Tolstoy story; Xala, a comedy from Senegal about an
impotency curse. The staff seems to know something about them all.
Almost all these films are available on Netflix, but it was
fun browsing the aisles, reading the boxes, and chatting with the staff. I asked if they
were worried about Netflix and they weren’t, no more than they’re worried about
Blockbuster. Their store has been in business 19 years, owns approximately 17,000 titles,
and has a host of loyal customers, some for all 19 years.
I viewed The Corporation and it set me thinking
again about Netflix. Who are they, anyway? Netflix has three million subscribers, over
40,000 titles, and 50 or more distribution centers. Blockbuster Online is scrambling to
catch up, and Wal-Mart has already conceded, agreeing to shut down their service and trade
their 100,000 subscribers for a link on the Netflix website. Netflix’s CEO, Reed
Hastings, another of those astonishingly competitive dot.com founders, plans to soon offer
video-on-demand so that users can download movies via the Internet and avoid the hike to
the mailbox.
Is Reed Hastings Faust? Has he sold his soul to the devil,
of whom Wal-Mart is certainly one incarnation? I learned from The Corporation how
much like psychopaths big corporations are -- for example, in their disregard for others.
Just yesterday, at the Capitol here in Madison, legislators rallied against Wal-Mart for
sticking the state for $2.7 million in medical coverage for the 1252 Wal-Mart employees
and dependents who qualify for health care as working poor. "Big business too often
privatizes the profit and socializes the costs," as one of the legislators put it.
Isn’t it better, then, to support small local businesses?
Another question: how many movies do we really need to see?
Five a month is the average for a Netflix subscriber. That’s more than one evening a
week -- in addition to whatever TV people are watching. When do we read books? play
sports? garden? volunteer in the community? talk with neighbors? take walks with our
children? go out into nature? learn new skills? If I pay for the service, I’m going
to want to use it. Maybe life is too short for Netflix.
…Charlotte Meyer
charlottem@hometheatersound.com |
