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Strangeness of economics

Apropos of nothing, let’s say you want to buy Gidget: The Complete Series (1965) (32 episodes):

* Download from iTunes: $21.99
* Video on Demand from Amazon.com: $17.99
* DVD from Amazon.com: $39.95 $14.99

Those are, at least, a more-or-less direct comparison. Acquiring the films is another story. There were three films: Gidget (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). The first was shot in CinemaScope (2.35:1 aspect ratio), the other two in regular widescreen (1.85:1).

* DVD from Amazon.com: $19.94 $14.99 (all three films, in 1.33:1 pan and scan, Amazon reviewers are uniformly upset about this)
* Download from iTunes: $14.99 (first film only, 2.35:1 widescreen)
* Video on Demand from Amazon.com: $9.99 (first film only, 1.78:1 widescreen)

For the sake of being really geeky, let’s compare these by price per volume of picture. Imagine each frame of film was printed out as a photograph, and placed in a stack. The space taken up by that stack is the amount of picture we are buying. Thus, we can define “volume of picture” as the area of a single frame multiplied by the running time of the film (the height of the stack).

The original film has a runtime of 95 minutes and was shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Thus it has a volume of 2.35 x 1 x 95 = 223.25. (We could turn the aspect ratio into a unit, like inches, but then we would have to choose a specific size of screen, and in the end it would be the same as multiplying all of our numbers by a fixed amount; the comparisons wouldn’t change.) That’s the format that iTunes carries, at a price of 6.71 cents per unit.

The Amazon download is cropped to 1.78:1, reducing its volume to 169.10. So it’s a lower price but for less picture, at 5.91 cents per unit.

Finally, the DVD set has clipped the picture to 1.33:1, reducing its volume to 126.35. But it also includes two other films, at 101 minutes and 104 minutes, for a total of 300 minutes in the set. That’s a volume of 399, at a price of 5 cents per unit.

Drunken Cops and Bad plots

As the title says its really bad, some of it is funny. It is a polish film i don't really know what to make of some of the things i seen in this film. Apparently it takes roughly 8 police and 2 civilians and a witness to examine a crime scene. Doesn't help that the police are swilling vodka like its going out of style, also one of the cops has a baby during this movie. None of these things tie the storyline together or really have anything to do with anything really. It was entertaining to see drunk people/cops get smashed and fight each other and act like general retards. The murders are equally silly and the people doing that part were generally unbelievable as the police. I'd stay away from this movie unless you like watching drunken people on screen acting like tards

My aim was to make it look more like an indie coming of age film; perhaps the kind of film Sofia Coppola or Godard might make.

"Harrison Ford played in His Finest Role. These kind of True Movies make you think and dream about."

Amazon buyer wrote:Collection 3 was even better than collection 2. I love the Twilight Zone.

Boring doing sane [sic] thing over and over again and same thing every time u start the game. Fun game.
....

Murdoch wrote:I just noticed under Actor it simply says "Dead People." Classy.

The film is visually stunning, a little too stunning for my money. In this it recalls a Bertolucci film, 'Red Desert'. That film was so relentlessly artistic it left me feeling beat up at the end. No question, the director is an artist and the show is well done. However, the piece screams propaganda to me. The US defeated the Japanese with a home front campaign featuring gross racism. "We'll slap the Jap right off the map!" etc. We had also defeated Germany and Italy. France was in ruins and the US took it upon itself to 'rehabilitate' its former enemies and friends, Particularly through the cenema. The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems. This is a nice cozy Halmark hour that got really bloated. Not my cuppa.

Steven H wrote:Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The film is visually stunning, a little too stunning for my money. In this it recalls a Bertolucci film, 'Red Desert'. That film was so relentlessly artistic it left me feeling beat up at the end. No question, the director is an artist and the show is well done. However, the piece screams propaganda to me. The US defeated the Japanese with a home front campaign featuring gross racism. "We'll slap the Jap right off the map!" etc. We had also defeated Germany and Italy. France was in ruins and the US took it upon itself to 'rehabilitate' its former enemies and friends, Particularly through the cenema. The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems. This is a nice cozy Halmark hour that got really bloated. Not my cuppa.

Steven H wrote:Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems.

*CG* wrote:

Steven H wrote:Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems.

What?