DVDs were introduced over ten years ago, and of course I knew that digital presentations of movies would make my video tapes look sick.  So I’ve kept track of DVD releases in order to replace my tapes with digital copies.  Most of you understand why I do this, although it took a long time to get my wife to stop asking why we needed a copy of something on DVD when we already had it on tape.  I knew that most of the older movies I wanted were popular enough to be released on DVD eventually, and of course they were.  These included Indiana Jones, Superman, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Star Wars, among others (although I’m still waiting for a good DVD release of the original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy, before George Lucas decided that he wanted to play with his digital crayons).

But there were other, less popular films I wanted that I believed the studios would be in no hurry to release.  I referred to these as “Holy Grails”, and while comparing movies to the cup of Christ might strike some as blasphemous, I thought it made sense.  These were movies that would be hard to find, just like the Grail, and after all, the Grail is only a cup, so please don’t write to complain, OK?

In any event, some of these films have actually arrived over the past couple of years, making me one very happy fan.  One of these movies was Royal Flash, released by Fox in 1975 and never (to my knowledge) released on video tape.  While I was a DVD buyer at a retail chain, I mentioned this to my Fox sales representative, and he told me not only had he never heard of the film, if it’d had no VHS release it’d never show up on DVD.  Which turned out not to be true, to my extreme surprise.  And with the release last month of Howard the Duck (which I wouldn’t mind seeing executive producer George Lucas play with a little) one more title is off my list.

Which brings us to this recent development.  Warner Brothers, which is generally recognized as the studio that does the best job of bringing movies to fans in versions that do the films justice, is beginning to make their library available to all on a per-title basis.  In other words, if there’s a Warner’s title that you want that hasn’t been released yet, their new Warner Archives collection may be just what you’ve been looking for.  All you need to do is go to their site and see if your movie is one of the 150 currently available.  If it is, order it, and Warner’s will burn you a copy and send it out to you.  You should know it’s a bare-bones DVD, with only the movie and theatrical trailers (if there are any) but you’ll have your movie.  WB will be adding more titles every month, and will be including TV movies and series in the future.  And if the movie you want was released after 1975 you’re currently out of luck, as that’s the cutoff year they’re using.  On the plus side, you can look at a clip of the movie you want so you can see the picture quality, as they haven’t restored these films for this release (the ones I’ve looked at look great), and the film is in its original aspect ratio.  So now I get to knock 1975’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze off my Grail list, and you may well be able to find that rare item you’re looking for.

Of course, I’ll keep hoping for a retail release of  Doc Savage with extras (”why do we need that when you have it on DVD already?”), and if The Shadow and George of the Jungle were to be released by the studios in the original aspect ratios, I’d be ecstatic, but I’ll take what I can get!

Not really, but that got your attention, didn’t it?

When I started this, I intended it to be a business-oriented blog, and in many ways, it still will be.  But since I’ve been really, really bad about updating, I’ve decided that I’m also going to write about other things that interest me.  A number of posts will still be about business, but no one’s going to be reading if there’s nothing here, so I’ll be running some more general stuff as well (as you’ll see in the next post).

Don’t know if this is going to make a difference to anyone, but it’ll make me happy!

I guess there was a problem with the RSS feed here, but given that I’ve been pretty bad about updating this blog, I didn’t know about it.  At least until my son told me he fixed it and then yelled at me for not updating it.  So, here’s an update, and I’ll be better at keeping it more current.

And, if by chance you’re a comic book retailer who’ll be attending the ComicsPRO convention later this month, be sure to come see the two presentations on various business-related topics I’ll be doing there.  Along with said son, who, if it were to be known, is no great shakes at updating his blog (which you can find here), either.

…is 101.9, The NY Rock Experience, and my new favorite DJ is Matt Pinfield (weekdays, 6:00am-10:00am).  That’s because they’re very supportive of small businesses, and they just featured mine on their show.  It’s a very nice thing for them to do, and it’s great that they’re willing to use air time to give a boost to business (and right now, who couldn’t use a boost!).  But besides the self-serving angle, they play great music and have a very entertaining show.  So, even though you’ve already missed my appearance, check them out at 101.9 FM!

I know I promised the next post would be something amusing and uplifting, but sometimes the real world comes crashing down.  According to this press release, Circuit City is dead.  They will be asking the bankruptcy court for permission to liquidate their assets.  This will mean another 30,000 jobs lost, and by the time this process is over it’s likely that anyone holding CC stock will have a great new source of scrap paper.  So now the only question that remains is how much money will the senior executives get for driving Circuit City into the ground?

Boy, the fun just never stops.  According to government data, retail sales fell more than expected last month, as shoppers cut down on spending for the Joyous Holiday Season™.  According to the Commerce Department, sales were down 2.7 percent in December, and November sales were revised down even further, to -2.1 percent (the November number was originally reported as -1.8 percent).

OK.  I pledge that the next post I put up with be amusing and uplifting.  I think we all need something a little light at this point!

The Labor Department is reporting that 524,000 jobs were lost in December, and the official unemployment rate is now 7.2%.  This makes the annual jobless rate for 2008 5.8%, which is significantly higher than 2007 and is the highest jobless rate since 2003.  A total of 2,600,000 million jobs were lost in 2008, the higest job loss since 1945 (while 2.6 million jobs is a far smaller percentage of total jobs than 2.8 million was in 1945, none of that matters if you’re one of the 2.6 million looking for work).  To all those out there (like me!) who don’t currently have a steady paycheck coming in, keep your head up.  This will turn around… soon, I hope.

Turns out the Joyous Holiday Season™ was indeed joyous for one retailer.  GameStop is reporting that their “total revenue jumped 22.3 percent to $2.856 billion and comparable store sales were up 10.2 percent” over last year (as reported by Game Daily).  It used to be said that people would still spend money for entertainment in tough economic times - that’s still true, but now they’re buying video games instead of movie tickets!  (And yes, I know Hollywood’s been doing well, but that’s in box office dollars.  When you consider that ticket prices have been going up consistently, theaters are selling fewer tickets to each movie than they used to.)

OK, so it’s not business oriented, but once in a while you have to show respect to your childhood icons.  And in that spirit, happy 83rd birthday to Soupy Sales.  Soupy’s show in the 60s was equal parts slapstick and subtly subversive, and I loved to watch it when I could (and I knew it was really cool when my Mom wouldn’t let me watch).  If you’re interested, there’s a great article on Soupy on Mark Evanier’s blog here, and if you want to see Soupy in action, check out YouTube.

Here’s some interesting information from a site called What’s My Pass?.  They’ve posted a list of the 500 most common passwords that people use.  Unfortunately, they don’t list their source, but in perusing the list it looks pretty valid.  So, take a look (be aware that some of the words used are NSFW) and, if you find your favorite password on here (I didn’t), change it, for crying out loud!