My local video rental shop is (finally) closing, and that\u2019s a sad, sad thing. While this happened years ago for most people, I\u2019ve been lucky enough to have a local video shop this whole time. So what\u2019s the big deal?<\/p>\n
Cost is one factor. Watching a movie is now going to cost a lot more than $1 on a Tuesday, and at $5-7 a go, I\u2019m less likely to take a chance on odd movies with mixed reviews. As someone who rarely re-watches movies or TV, I\u2019m not inclined to buy discs. Disc rental was the only cheap way to watch TV shows that were otherwise locked away on pay TV \u2014 especially if you\u2019re catching up on past seasons.<\/p>\n
Apart from the money, though, the main thing I\u2019m going to miss is the browsing. Digital shopfronts are really good at letting you find what you\u2019re already looking for, and pretty bad at helping you to discover something you\u2019d enjoy. The analog world of the video shop is the opposite: hard to find what you\u2019re looking for (and with limited quantities) but terrific at introducing you to something you didn\u2019t even know you wanted. (Disc rental kiosks don’t duplicate that at all: no older releases,\u00a0a limited selection, and I still have to return something. Worst of all worlds.)<\/p>\n
Spending a half-hour at the video shop scanning the shelves was a joy: all a film needed was an interesting cover to pique my interest. If a quick look on Metacritic showed that it wasn\u2019t trash, I might take it home. I honestly don\u2019t know how to replace that, because the digital world allows commercial interests to insert themselves into that process, and I\u2019ll have to engage with some other system\u00a0that simply shows me all the films recently released. It probably exists, but it won\u2019t be as much fun as walking the shelves.<\/p>\n
So many of the films I\u2019ve found at the local video shop over the years were unknown before I stumbled across them. Sometimes it took repeated looks over a few weeks before I caved in; sometimes they were good, sometimes not. But I don\u2019t know how else I would have found\u00a0God Help The Girl<\/a>, or\u00a0Wanderlust<\/a>, or\u00a0Pride<\/a>, or\u00a0All Is Lost<\/a>, or\u00a0Locke<\/a>, or\u00a0What We Did on Holiday<\/a>, or countless other good movies that never got enough of a marketing budget to put their name in front of my ad-blocked eyes. Also, I couldn\u2019t have watched all the behind-the-scenes making-of specials that don\u2019t always make it to digital formats \u2014\u00a0Wanderlust alone has an entire alternate cut of the film made from outtakes. I may even have missed out on Game of Thrones, the first season of which I bought when my last video shop of choice went under.<\/p>\n Digital is a tricky beast. It makes search easy, but browsing hard. If digital shopfronts make it difficult to discover lesser-known or older works, then we\u2019re doomed to a future of only tentpole blockbusters for the mass market and indie films few people see. We can do better than that, but given how movies have shifted in just the past few years, I\u2019m not sure if we will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My local video rental shop is (finally) closing, and that\u2019s a sad, sad thing. While this happened years ago for most people, I\u2019ve been lucky enough to have a local video shop this whole time. So what\u2019s the big deal? Cost is one factor. Watching a movie is now going to cost a lot more … Continue reading The Demise of the Local Video Rental Shop<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}