To be honest, i suspect they are both true. Blockbuster films are terrible these days, and its more convieniant to use an online rental to rent titles. Add into the mix its not worth spending a penny on a lot of films and people downloading and it all makes sense Blockbuster rentals are down.
Quote:
HOLLYWOOD isn't what it used to be, according to video rental chain Blockbuster, which is blaming a string of box office bombs for its poor quality sales.
Blockbuster, which this week reported massive sales losses for its second quarter, said its poor performance was the result of a wider downturn in the industry as a whole, which meant people were no longer renting as many DVDs as they used to.
The statement is supported by recent falls in box office sales at cinemas across America and the UK.
Box Office and S4C film critic Gary Slaymaker agreed there had been a general drop in the quality of films being released.
He said, "The standard has been dropping in the last few years.
"Even among the big movies there has been nothing that stood out.
"If you look at the charts, family movies tend to mean big sales as parents know they'll keep the kids entertained. But this summer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been the only major family film."
Rob Driscoll, film guru, said the growth of movie-making as a multimillion dollar industry, meant studios were now more focused on making money than producing good quality films.
He said, "So many of the films being released now are indistinguishable, it's important films such as Lost in Translation and Sideways continue to come out in order to provide a good mix."
But Mr Slaymaker said the companies which market DVDs should also accept some of the blame.
He said, "The problem is really a combination of quality and the way the DVD is put on to the market.
"Nowadays a DVD will be released and then six months later after sales have started to drop they will release an extra edition.
"I was about to order the Sin City DVD until I realised it didn't have any extras on the disc, and I decided I might as well wait until the proper version comes out. People want value for money."
He added, "Lots of people are also now just downloading films from the internet on to disc, it is just so easy to do."
But Dan Jolin, reviews editor for Empire magazine disagreed. He said 2005 had been a good year, producing a number of good quality films.
He said, "Blockbuster are talking a lot of rubbish. It's got nothing to do with the quality of films. DVDs are still as popular as ever but now people are either going out and buying them or they're signing up with online rental companies such as screenselect.com. Online rental has become something of a phenomenon in the UK.
"More and more people are getting hooked on it because they're realising you don't have to plod down to Blockbuster and then find they don't have the DVD you want. Instead you just subscribe and get sent films which you can keep for as long as you want."
He added, "Quality rarely has anything to do with how popular it is. Just look at 1997. It was an awful year.
"We had The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Batman and Robin but I don't remember Blockbuster complaining about the quality of films back then."
This month Blockbuster's top five films in its film chart are Alexander, Stander, Blade Trinity, Dead Man's Shoes and Man on Fire.
But the company, which has 22 stores in Wales, said they would not comment on the statement which had been released by the US branch of the company.
Incidently, Empire are the magazine that gave Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 5 stars, which kind of puts into perscpective "good year" and "quality films".
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