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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: 4/22/23: Films you'll never see again, even if you want to [1]

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Date: 2023-04-22  

The last DVD rental shop closed in my area decades ago. It was a sad moment as I’d spent many pleasurable hours there, browsing among the shelves to find some old film that few in this country would have ever seen. Commercially popular films used to be available at Blockbuster, but that, too had long since disappeared, leaving us with only a subscription to Netflix by mail if we actually wanted to see something that hadn’t been churned out of the standard studios. Most of those rare, largely unknown films are still available on specifically curated websites, but the opportunity for the public to see them — or even know about them -- is largely curtailed by subscription fees.

And much like recorded music, browsing online to find something you want to see is not comparable to physically having the thing at your fingertips, a specific section to reference, and possibly above all, packaging and artwork to inform you of the contents. Sorry, it just isn’t.

Netflix announced Tuesday it would end DVD sales and rely solely on its streaming network. At first blush that seems to be a sensible business decision since practically no one owns DVD players anymore. But as a result, as pointed out by Ty Burr, writing for the Washington Post, a staggering number of the best films ever made will, for all practical purposes, soon be impossible to find.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/22/2165323/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-4-22-23-Films-you-ll-never-see-again-even-if-you-want-to

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