It's not official yet, but supposedly Amazon will begin offering digital downloads later this year. Until then, brick & mortar stores and Netflix will have to supply me with my rentals, unless something else steps into the breach. Why--hello! What's this!? Yesterday I was walking out of my enormous local Stop and Shop (grocery store chain) when I spotted the REDBOX. It looks like a soda machine but it dispenses DVDs instead, with an impressive 85-title selection. Every Tuesday it offers up new releases with a calculated mix of mainstream (Syriana, Munich, 16 Blocks), TV (Night Stalker, Entourage), genre (Mortuary, Raging Sharks) and niche (Madea's Family Reunion, ATL, Teddy Ruxpin). And something called Tortillas Again?, which looks like an inoffensive family comedy about a lost lottery ticket with packaging modelled after the Friday artwork, but which doesn't have an IMDB entry that I could find. The crazy thing about Redbox is that movies are just $1 a night, though you do need to have them back to the machine by 7pm the following day or you get charged an extra $1. That's still a lot less than the going rate of $4.25 at my home base video store. Redbox has also partnered with McDonalds, which seems kind of ominous but also fitting. This all strikes me as funny, because the first video "store" I ever joined was in the late 80's at another local supermarket (A&P).

And speaking of comebacks, it seems Victor Salva has a new movie out called Peaceful Warrior, about a young male gymnist (yeah, I know) who's coached by Nick Nolte, a gas station attendant named Socrates who can also…levitate. As they say, not the type of thing I'd spend $10 on, but I'll probably see it when it comes to Redbox.

Wow, Redbox sounds like a great way to buy DVDs for $1. Or do you have to pay with a credit card? How does it keep track of you? Did you investigate that aspect? I never thought the video clerk would get on the endangered species list of jobs.

On a similar note, I don't know if this was regional or not but in the mid-80s several 7-11s near us rented VHS titles. They had these big metal racks that held probably a total of 50 tapes. People would browse through them and then tell the clerk which title they wanted. The clerk would then unlock the rack and remove the tape.



EDIT: I also love the idea of the machine screwing up like a soda machine. You pressed PRIDE & PREJUDICE but got WHITE CHICKS!

They take your phone number, email address, zip code, and credit/debit card number and bill you. If you don't return a movie after a set period of time (I forget how long, maybe 2 weeks) they charge you $25. Which means it's doubtful Redbox will be getting Criterions any time soon. ;)

I'm bumping this thread because the strangest thing is going on with that Nick Nolte movie PEACEFUL WARRIOR. It was given a limited release in June of 2006 and performed terribly. It never hit DVD. Now, nearly a year later, it pops back up on Apple.com with a trailer saying, "In theaters March 30th." But the really strange thing is now Universal is distributing it. What in the world? Does the studio have that much faith in a levitating Nolte flick?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/peacefulwarrior/

PS: Redbox just showed up in my area!

There's a lot of money behind the metaphysical stuff (ie THE SECRET), and PEACEFUL WARRIOR falls right in line. They'll milk a few more million out of the faithful before I get my turn...

There's a lot of people in my industry that are concerned about the Redbox. If your video store is mostly new releases, then you DO have something to be worried about. Fortunately for me, new releases are only 50 percent of my income, so let them vending machines come, I say!


marc

I'm waiting for those boxes with massive hard drives that you can plunk down 10 bucks or so and pick out a digital movie file and have it burn on a disc that will then get slipped into a jewel box with liner notes, artwork. For a couple more bucks you can burn the movie extras...

Better yet - instead of a harddrive - the movies will be beamed to the unit via satellite...that way you wouldn't need to worry about drive space...

Wait a minute - maybe we'll have this option in home - oh - wait we do!!!! :lol:

But we want more movies!!!!

So I had my first Redbox experience yesterday when I rented 3:10 TO YUMA on a whim. During the process, it dawned on me how futuristic this all is. Can you imagine if you took someone from 1958 and brought them forward to 2008 and they saw that.

"Why are you swiping that card?"
"That is my money."
Redbox spits out disc.
"What is that?"
"It is the movie we will be watching tonight."

Pretty soon we will be on hoverboards and hearing, "Your jacket is now dry."

Self-threading needles!
Solar-powered Hummers!
Stephen King novels that throw themselves across the room!