The Global Gap
My 2600th Blog
Long term readers to this blog will know that I mark every 100 posts with a small article, piece of art or, as of late, full blown rant about an aspect of the film industry or other pop cultural phenomenom. And so, on the occasion of my 2600th blog post, I think it’s time to turn my gaze onto the, once much embraced but now sadly tolerated, dependence on the global marketplace for basic physical media purchases and the short sighted reasons behind the increase in importing said items for myself and others in the UK (and quite possibly the US, I suspect).
Okay, let me remind you of the fairytale era known as the dawn of the DVD age, when the serious cinephile and casual viewer alike would own a multiregion DVD player easily bought from the local Tesco (we knew from the internet which players could be hacked with a few numbers typed into the remote... just as we all do today with our cheap, multizone Blu Ray players). The reasons for doing this were many and here are a few I remember...
The first being specific to the UK... most of the films and TV shows etc were just not available in a UK version (unless you wanted to wait 6 or 8 years down the line until popular taste in this country caught up with you... oh, look, gialli are now popular in the UK after I had to buy them all from the US decades ago) and, even if they were, many of them would be harmed/cut/molested by the UK censors, so you would need to get it from another country in order to get a real version of the film anyway (this, sadly, is in some cases still true... I’m looking at you Aquaman... and films of your ilk).
Another reason was availability of new titles. I could often get them on a nice Region 1 DVD way before a film had gotten a cinema release in the UK and, if it’s one I knew I was going to like, why bother waiting all those months (sometimes a year) to get a version from my own shores which, as it happens, might have been cut anyway. I remember sitting in a UK cinema watching Josie And The Pussycats for the umpteenth time (if you know the brilliance of this movie then well done... an absolute classic ripe for rediscovery or, even a basic acknowledgement) even though the US DVD was had arrived through my letterbox that very morning.
And then, coupled with this and the dollar being so low against the pound (in those days), even with the import/postage fees you would still be paying only half of what you would be paying for the barely adequate UK release months later. And there were also shops in London which were doing a roaring trade in US Region DVDs at the time... if you knew where to look (I can remember at least four of them).
As the decades passed, things levelled out a bit. Especially by the dawn of the age of the Blu Ray (and I’ve not gotten into 4K UHD and will resist that route for as long as possible).
The biggest problem these days is the postage which, with the pound having had a reversal of fortune against the yankee dollar, means you will often be paying as much as the value of the goods again (if not double) on top of the purchase price. However, in what is technically a new golden age of physical media (as directors and producers try to get the best physical release of their films on the shelves to be remembered by, before low quality streaming versions are the only other reference point), it is still sadly necessary to get stuff from boutique labels abroad, since there are no equivalent versions in the UK (or sometimes they are coming out a year or two later than the US version). So beautiful editions like Severin’s Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, All The Haunts Be Ours, House Of Psychotic Women, The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle or Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli series of boxed editions, to name just a few, are only available to the British consumer by throwing our grappling hooks farther afield than this small minded country’s boundaries, in terms of what the studios... and the censors... want us to have available over here.
So, yeah, you take a hit because it’s the only way to get certain stuff.
That being said, it’s all gone horribly wrong of late... because new, Hollywood first run films are not getting physical releases over here (and often in their home country in the US) due to streaming rights issues. And talking of the evil of the streamers... there are films on these ‘stations’ which don’t even make it to a cinema release when they should do, let alone a physical companion. I’m looking at films like Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F, for example... reviewed here.
I was in a venue I won’t name the other day, somewhere related to a certain form of entertainment where I and a friend had popped into the accompanying café to get something to eat. I was served my hot chocolate and cake by a person who, it turned out, was one of the big physical media buyers for a set of stores and dealt with the various companies who put out blu rays and DVDs. Well, not anymore because there were horror stories to be told, it turns out. I don’t know if, as I was told, Sony have now decided to stop physical media for UK release but, if true, then things are only going to get grimmer for people who, you know, actually like the art of film and want to see it treated with respect. In a time when HMV were only just recently telling everyone that their physical media movie sales were growing...he told me that all of the conversations with the companies at the moment were about streaming rights. Nobody was interested in pursuing physical media and, even when he proved a point to one company by getting them to release a physical edition of a certain set of films in the UK (a direct port over of a US edition) which promptly sold out... he just couldn’t get said company to realise (or perhaps, to quote Clark Gable, “give a damn”) that there is actually a buoyant market for Blu Rays and even DVDs still out there.
It’s something which the boutique Blu Ray labels such as the likes of Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, Criterion, Arrow, Melusine, 88 Films, Imprint, Indicator, Umbrella and various others have known for years... but for the big studios I’m guessing the attitude is... ‘that’s not enough quick return money for me to bother investing the time to reap that particular reward.’ So, yeah, when it comes down to it... here he was instead filling my cup and saucer and making sure I knew where the serviettes were. It’s absolutely crazy.
And so it comes to pass. I’m shocked at how hard it’s getting to get the newer, recent films on physical versions not so long after their initial release (either cinematically or on a selfish and uncaring streaming service). Over the last year, four of the releases I’d originally just assumed I could grab in domestic or even US releases have caused me a lot of stress and, it has to be said, three times the amount of money to buy. But I’d still rather do that than stream these things (for however long company X decides to make them available for) and, some of them were for gifts...
So... Glass Onion I had to procure as an Asian bootleg Blu Ray (which, I have to say, is absolutely amazing quality, as good as any commercial Blu Ray transfer I’ve ever seen). Ditto for Mr. Monk’s Last Case... which I suspect still hasn’t even aired on television over here yet. Reality (reviewed here) which I was hoping to get for a Birthday deadline didn’t make it (although it’s still on the way), because I had to get a German edition (English language, at least) imported and, yeah, it keeps getting delayed. And again, I was completely shocked to see that one extremely successful independent horror film from much earlier this year, Late Night With The Devil (reviewed here) has not had any kind of physical release in either the UK or US and I’ve had to set things into motion to get it shipped over to me from foreign shores in a ridiculously expensive edition (thanks to the wonderful geezah in Fopp who informed me that, as far as he knew, no UK distributor had stepped in to buy it). And don’t get me started on Godzilla Minus One (reviewed here) which I am, at presently, patiently waiting to get a UK release, even though a much lesser but later film, the US made Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire (reviewed here) is already on UK Blu Ray (I’m just not wanting to purchase my modern films out of their release order thanks very much... if I show my family the latter first then their desire to bother with the far superior Japanese movie will certainly deteriorate, for sure).
And so here I am again... lamenting the absolute lack of respect of the cinematic art form from certain companies and now spending way more money and time researching alternative ways of getting films which, quite frankly, I should be able to pick up for a quarter of the price just by walking down to my local high street store and seeing what is on the shelf.
Anyway, rant over. If you’ve made it this far then, thanks for reading my 2600th blog post and if you have any other stories of ‘the violation of physical media’ then please post a comment below (I have to clear the comments once submitted at the moment because of crazy Russian blog spamming but, yeah, I will read and then publish every genuine one for sure... whether I agree with it or not). And, as always, thanks for wandering onto here and taking a look. It’s always much appreciated.
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