Why video on demand might be popular

It may be a coincidence that services like Netflix and the other video on demand providers are becoming more popular when a night out at the movies no longer considered a cheap evening out. Or maybe it’s because the theater chains aren’t even trying anymore.

Witness this shot taken at Oakridge Centre a few days back. You can see which movies are playing. Good. You also get the ratings. Er, handy if you have young kids and are wondering if Saw 8 is appropriate for a five year old, I suppose. But where are the times?

Look at all that white space on the sign, it is mesmerizing in its starkness, like gazing upon the fields of permafrost at the Arctic circle. At one time this white space was filled with the times they were showing the movies. Now they don’t bother because I guess they figure you’ll just look up the times on your ‘Aren’t you fancy?’ smartphone. Or maybe they figure you’ll actually schlep to the theater box office and check the times there and if they don’t line up for you, you’ll just shrug and walk away, happily thinking about how you were glad to get that little bit of extra exercise walking over to the box office for what turned out to be no reason!

Anyway, lazy theater owners. Bad Empire, bad. Not evil, which would actually sound much cooler, but still…bad.

To take my mind off the weather…

I rented the legendary classic1hahaha The Day After Tomorrow through iTunes.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Movie Photos and Stills ...
Dennis Quaid reacting to reviews of the movie

I’d never rented from iTunes before. The $3.99 price probably comes out to half a bar of gold given current exchange rates and the 640×480 image has artifacts o’ plenty when stretched across a 1920×1200 screen so overall I am kind of meh on it. Handy for impulse viewings. I’ll try the Xbox Live movie rentals next and see if I can cause a Red Ring Of Death by watching a bad comedy.

EDITOR'S NOTE, March 13, 2022: I swapped out a broken image link from imdb.com and tweaked the first sentence a bit. 14 years on and with streaming services crowding each other out, the idea of renting a movie seems downright quaint now, right there with rotary phones or buying CDs. Also I actually recently re-watched The Day After Tomorrow and yes, the science is mostly junk, but Jake Gyllenhaal is kind of adorable and the set pieces are still good. The cast is actually pretty engaging, so the movie is better than it has any right to be.