Sunday, November 26, 2023
Okay, okay, I admit it
I received an unusually generous check from some ones (yes, more than one person) near and dear for my birthday and I went a little nuts with discs. You'll notice, as well, although there are Criterions in the lot, because of the B&N sale, not all my acquisitions are Criterions, nor were they all movies I have on my ever expanding list of movies I'd like to add to my collection. I check prices on these things and buy where it's cheapest. As you know, there are lots of avenues for price comparison besides Amazon.
You see, that's the problem when you really love movies. We humans haven't stopped making movies or putting them out as physical media (discs and such), so my list, no matter how many items on it I acquire and eliminate from that list, continues to expand.
I know, everyone's a bit crazy, lately, stirring up the idea that physical media that one can collect within one's own home is going the way of the dodo bird in favor of streaming subscriptions. Our Oligarchic Overlords probably wish this were true, probably dream of it being true, "what a wonderful world it would be" (for the Oligarchs), but I'm telling you, people, anyone who has even a meager collection of physical media (and that's a lot of people, Virginia, a-lot-a-lot) isn't going to be easily seduced into subscribing to streaming services. The thing is, if you can pay for a movie or a TV series or a documentary once and watch it for the rest of your life whenever you want without ever paying for it again, why would you belong to a subscription service that's going to pick your pocket ever year or so for that same product and make it so hard to unsubscribe that you'll wish you'd never started watching movies? Why would you, as well, let some other entity besides yourself decide whether and when a particular product is going to be made available to you, or how that product is going to be delivered? Need I mention the recent fiasco (second paragraph of the section to which I've linked) over the questionable "amelioration" of content in The French Connection?
You wouldn't. I won't. And, that's that.
You see, that's the problem when you really love movies. We humans haven't stopped making movies or putting them out as physical media (discs and such), so my list, no matter how many items on it I acquire and eliminate from that list, continues to expand.
I know, everyone's a bit crazy, lately, stirring up the idea that physical media that one can collect within one's own home is going the way of the dodo bird in favor of streaming subscriptions. Our Oligarchic Overlords probably wish this were true, probably dream of it being true, "what a wonderful world it would be" (for the Oligarchs), but I'm telling you, people, anyone who has even a meager collection of physical media (and that's a lot of people, Virginia, a-lot-a-lot) isn't going to be easily seduced into subscribing to streaming services. The thing is, if you can pay for a movie or a TV series or a documentary once and watch it for the rest of your life whenever you want without ever paying for it again, why would you belong to a subscription service that's going to pick your pocket ever year or so for that same product and make it so hard to unsubscribe that you'll wish you'd never started watching movies? Why would you, as well, let some other entity besides yourself decide whether and when a particular product is going to be made available to you, or how that product is going to be delivered? Need I mention the recent fiasco (second paragraph of the section to which I've linked) over the questionable "amelioration" of content in The French Connection?
You wouldn't. I won't. And, that's that.
