GreenCine
Submitted by jim on Fri, 06/20/2003 - 11:29
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I've heard good things about GreenCine which is basically an indie-lovers Netflix. Not only does that already sound cool, but they have a great weblog. Here's an entry on The Hulk (which is not an indie film, I know):
You know we may have at last been blessed with an at least interesting summer blockbuster when critics are split as widely as, say, Bradley Steinbacher, raving in the Stranger ("may be the most grown-up - and most emotionally fucked-up - comic-book movie ever assembled"), and Tony Scott, panning in the New York Times ("incredibly long, incredibly tedious, incredibly turgid"). Oddly, it's a pleasure to run across so much disagreement in a season when we're so often subjected to the sight of a zillion critics all struggling to come up with a unique way of saying the same thing, e.g., highway sequence: wow, Zion sequence: snooze.
From the weblog you can also learn that Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet are teaming up again.
Hey, Guys! On a related note, I seemed to have figured out another Netflix foible in the last few weeks.
I used to work in a video store a long time ago. Even though new rental titles were officially released on Tuesday we used to receive our shipment of new titles during the day on Monday. It so happened that the store I worked for was open 24 hours so we would put the new titles out for rent on Monday night, right after midnight.
It appears that Netflix has taken that a little farther. Even if a title is listed as officially being released on Tuesday, if they have the title in their system they will ship it to you. Today I got a notification that Intacto had been received and the movie they queued up to replace it is May (2002). The current status is Shipping Today and from past experience I know it will. They did the same thing with Das Experiment (2001) which I ended up getting in the mail on Tuesday the same day it was officially released.
Perhaps it's intentional, in that, even if it ships on Monday there's no way anyone is going to get it before Tuesday, so it's the same thing as being released as Tuesday.
I'm sure it also helps that right now, except for Gangs of New York (currently listed as Long Wait), the only movies I have in my queue are upcoming releases. So I've been getting some highly anticipated movies very quickly, as long as I make sure that when I have Pending Released DVDs in my queue the one that I am most interested in seeing is at the front of the next-to-be-released group. It's almost a way to avoid the inevitable Long Wait which some New Releases get. I'm actually getting better bang for the buck with Netflix by keeping my queue as short as possible.
Excellent, thanks for the tips! Right now I've been using two of my three Netflix "slots" for TV series (exercise fodder) and only one for movies (hence the big slowdown in my viewing). I expect my movie-viewing habits will return to normal in the fall, when all these damn summer projects have ended. I may have to bump my plan up to four movies out though, if I keep up the TV viewing during my workouts.
You know I might have to give this service a shot because I am getting very angry with Netflix. They are screwing up orders and the latest release stuff ends up on the long wait list the day they are realeased.
Hey! Just to give you guys a little feedback on Netflix...
My queue on Netflix was huge, over 200 movies, and almost unmanageable. Many things which I really wanted to see were Very Long Wait from the first day of release.
I ended up offloading my queue (all stuff which I wanted to see) over to my MyMovies account on IMDB. I offloaded everything until I had it down to less than 20 titles. Suddenly things which had a Very Long Wait all of sudden jumped to down to Long Wait, Short Wait and, god forbid, available.
I highly recommend reducing your list down to it's bare essentials, e.g. a short list of 10 or 20 movies, of the movies that you really want to see soon and you'll start seeing a much better availability.
Of course, when I say 10 or 20 movies I'm only talking about movies that have been released. It seems you can still have as many unreleased titles as you like. Just keep your "released" titles list short. This is how I managed to gain a foothold on 24 (the TV show) on DVD from them. Also, Talk to Her and Spirited Away.
Also, GreenCine does sound neat!
Cool, thanks for the tips! I may give that a try if I start getting annoyed by the lags. As it stands now, as long as they send me *something* quickly, it doesn't matter so much to me what it is, and it's awfully convenient to only have one place to manage the list. But it would be nice to watch new releases at approximately the same time as everybody else...
I once swore that the shorter my queue was, the faster I got my films on top. Your experience confirms it. Thanks!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
You'll have to let me know what you think if you give them a shot. I'd be particularly curious to hear how GreenCine's turnaround time is. Ever since Netflix opened that Worcester distribution center my turnaround time has been great. I haven't had many order screw-ups, but availability is all over the map for me too (I've seen some interesting analysis of why this is so).