Don't count them out just yet, some new independent places have popped up in the hipster neighborhoods of Chicago. I'm sure it's happening in other cities.

The "Big Box" video stores like Blockbuster, Hollywood, and smaller chains like Videorama are all pretty much dead but I see hope for the indie ones. If you took one film class in college, then you know that you'll probably see maybe two of the films you ever studied pop up on ANY of the streaming services, including services for movie-specific broadcasting corporations like HBOGo and Snowtime Anytime. And if you're about to say "ooh but Pulp Fiction" or maybe a recent Best Picture Nominee, then you had a pretty shitty film teacher, just saying. The idea of "renting" from Amazon.com or waiting around a few days for oldschool Netflix to deliver sounds like less fun than taking a walk down to the video store, and certainly less illegal than bittorrenting, which everybody already knows how to do.

IZ: Have you checked out Kanpoy? It's a streaming video site for art films, indie films, foreign films, and documentaries. They host a lot of the Criterion Collection movies. I never took any film classes in college, but it certainly looks like a lot of proper film class curriculum movies could be found on that site. The university I work at offers the service free through the library and I'll bet a lot of other libraries would, too.

With regards to this video, I really do miss video stores. I remember my distaste for Blockbuster (especially the mysterious "late fees" that would show up when you were checking out, but the minute you asked them which movie you had returned late and when, the fee would magically disappear), but Hollywood video wasn't bad and the Video Hut in Iowa City totally ruled. I wish I could still just browse a store and pick a movie off the shelf sometimes.

fandor
filmstruck
kanopy
mubi (curates about 30 movies at a time)

Ah thanks! As soon as I wrote that I realized I was thinking only about the Hulus and Netflixes: As a side-note I originally signed up for Hulu because they actually used to have the Criterion Collection, but I should've figured SOMETHING was out there.. good to know!

Cinefile is still going strong here in LA on the corner of Sawtelle and SanMoB

fedex, we should beer sometime!

I was really sad when they closed the I Love Video that was close to my house in Austin a couple years ago, but at least one of the branches stayed open. Then again, most of the cool things are getting shut down in Austin, so it might not really be Netflix's fault.

Agree, OZ. Blockbuster was the wal-mart of video stores and no one should feel nostalgic for this bullshit.

The world needs more casa videos and scarecrows

http://www.casavideo.com/

http://blog.scarecrow.com/

I wish Video Oasis was still around in Cambridge. 50,000 VHS titles, specializing in out of print and obscure stuff.

"every recent wide-release movie"

Yes


"a good number of niche and classic films under one roof."

Not even close. Absolutely horrible back catalog, could never find anything. They were physically the biggest place in town (well, after Photo Graphics, which was bigger) and had the least selection by a huge margin.

I lived in a pretty small town, too, something like 90,000 people, but we had three independent video stores within half a mile of Blockbuster that all had better selections and a fourth I never really went in that probably did too.

Maybe the average Canadian Blockbuster was better than the average U.S. Blockbuster for older & niche movies? I was able to rent most of what I wanted to see as long as it wasn't too obscure.

By "niche movies". I mean the more mainstream side of "niche", of course. Stuff that played at major festivals and the arthouse circuit in North America. I rented a decent amount of foreign movies from Blockbuster but obviously a suburban video outlet's not going to get nearly every domestically-released-on-home-video foreign film, especially if it was made outside of a handful of European and East Asian countries.

Oh, and also at the same time, they started with their aggressive upsell pitches that almost rivaled Gamestop. Play twenty questions at every checkout trying to sign you up for stuff, sell more shit, or push bulk rentals. It got to the point where if I was even slightly on the fence about renting something, I wouldn't bother at all because I didn't want to go through the fucking checkout hassle. Same exact thing that drove me away from ever setting foot in Gamestop or Radio Shack.

Why do clueless executives still think those policies increase revenue?

Also how funny is it that the Onion video on Blockbuster went from making fun of an out of touch national monopoly to the complete unadulterated truth in such short a time?

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=54133