FilmRoar

On December 9th I wrote an entry titled The missing DVDs in which I listed a number of movies not yet released on DVD and solicited feedback on how to ask a studio to feed the fans and release movies that are only available on VHS. I decided that it was time to take action and chose Delicatessen (1991) as a good first target for a new experiment. According to the IMDB the two companies responsible for US distribution are Miramax Home Entertainment for the Video release and Paramount Home Video for the laserdisc (which is reported to be a bad film transfer). Finding contact information for Paramount was easy enough, but Miramax was another story. Their web site Miramax resizes my browser and tries to place it in between my two monitors every time I hit the site annoying me to no end. I prevailed though and searched the site high and low to find… nothing. A Google search did not yield any better results (I tried a half dozen keyword searches) but did give me a clue. Through Google I found a website for fans of the movie The Crow: Salvation (2000) (the third and not well received adaptation of the James O’Barr comic) that encouraged people to contact Miramax and demand a theatrical release. The Crow page gave away Miramax’s home city as New York. One more search, this time on Verizon Yellow Pages for Miramax Films in New York gave me two addresses that matched the ones from the Crow page.

Not sure whom to address my query to or what other contact points may exist I went ahead and wrote this letter:

I am writing to inquire on plans for distribution of one of my favorite films, Delicatessen (1991), on DVD. I have been eagerly awaiting this French masterpiece’s DVD release for some years now and was encouraged by the 2002 German DVD release but have not seen any announcements nor found information for a Region 1 release. I am hoping you may have information you may be able to share on release plans, or if there are no plans yet, that this letter may encourage to consider it. The movie has a strong following, specially since the increased attention received for directors Marc Caro with City of Lost Children (1995) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet with Alien 4 (1997) and Amelie (2001). Based on discussions with the many fans of these two artists and their films I know I am not the only one wanting to own a copy of Delicatessen and that the movie will sell well once it is available in the US in DVD format.
I look forward to a reply from you. Thank you for your time.

and mailed it to:

Paramount Studios
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038
323.956.5000

Miramax Films
11 Beach St
NY, NY 10013
(212) 941-4049

and

Miramax Films
375 Greenwich St.
New York, NY 10013
(212) 941-3800

Now lets see if any of them answer…

Today Geekroar.com was rebuilt on a new server. Dozens of configuration files were updated to accommodate the new setup and the new server. The new server will allow for a number of improvements, mostly enabling the rebuilding of Geekroar’s sister site PWASOH.com. If you notice a dead link or other bug I may have missed please leave a comment on the site so I can fix it.

When I posted a list of 1,447 DVDs in the Multnomah County Library Collection, Dianne, one of the Film Roar regulars, asked how many of the titles I had actually seen. It took a while, but I went through the list and deleted all the titles I did not recognize, leaving me with 540 titles that I know I have seen. That means that out of the whole collection of DVDs at Multnomah County Library I have seen about 37%.
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I seldom buy movies, when I do they are on DVD and I start at www.dvdpricesearch.com and purchase from the seller that has the best listed price. The prices you find by shopping around a bit are quite a bit better than what you get at your local brick and mortar store or by just shopping one of the major sellers like Amazon.com or Buy.com. A few times a month I will rent a movie. My favorite video store for renting videos is Scarecrow Video in Seattle. They have a huge collection including hard to find foreign, cult and art films. In Portland I mainly rent from Movie Madness, not nearly as large as Scarecrow but they still have a very respectable collection including one of the largest DVD collections I have seen.

The vast majority of the movies that I watch are either borrowed from friends with a good DVD collection (like Sven who has over 200 titles in his library) or checked out of the local library. In addition to very friendly and very cute librarians Multnomah County Library allows you to check items out for 30 days at no cost (assuming you are a good citizen and return your material on time) and with no limit (that I have found) on how many items you have out at a time. Most items are in regular circulation so you cannot choose exactly which movies you get when, but what you can do is browse their online catalog for titles to put a hold on. The library sends a notification email when the title comes in and will hold it at the local branch for up to a week. While their collection is not as massive as a video store may be, you likely be surprised with how many movies on the to-watch list can be found at the local library.

I took the time to search for all DVD titles at the Multnomah County Library and prepare a table. There were 1,447 titles listed when I executed this search, and I am sure more are added each week:
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On July 30th the geekroar.com server decided to shuffle off this mortal coil. After an aggravating weekend of replacing parts and geek-to-computer resuscitation I am glad to report that Geekroar.com lives again! Many thanks to Mr. Hall for his invaluable help both in giving Geekroar.com temporary quarters and in performing life saving surgery on the resuscitated computer.

I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so the Film Roar and Lion’s Den blogs will be on a two-week hiatus. I usually keep a travel log, if you are interested check The Lion’s Den for updates. Whether the travel log is posted while I am there or when I return will depend on my access to an internet connection while away from home.