walmart Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you are the type of person who likes to get their Christmas shopping done early, I've got some good news for you, because now is your chance to buy some seriously cheap DVDs. Variety is reporting that the online stores for Walmart, Target, and Amazon, have gotten into a DVD pricing war and passing those savings on to you. But don't worry, these aren't your usual discount bin selections, instead, big name titles like Star Trek, Night and The Museum 2, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be going for the low price of only $10 each.

It all started when Walmart announced last Thursday that they would be offering titles like Angels & Demons, Julie & Julia, and Terminator: Salvation at a lower price (but you were only guaranteed the discount price if you shopped online). The reason for the discount according to Walmart was to, "help families holiday shop during this difficult economic environment.", but most have just speculated that the retailer was suffering online and this sale is just the latest attempt to drum up flagging business.

It didn't take long before Target and Amazon jumped into the fray and now an all out 'pricing war' has begun between the three retailers. But before you get too excited, keep in mind that this isn't a shift to a new price scale for DVDs, and the discount is simply to drive new customers to shop online. Prices are expected to go back to normal by the time these titles go into wide release later this month -- so if you love a bargain, you're going to need to act fast.

It took long enough, but Wal-Mart now has its own movie download service online. The retail company has been whining about this alternative to DVD consumption for over a year, and it may even have halted the progress of iTunes and other services. But there was no way that it couldn't follow the format into the future; in November it officially entered the download game with a single title, Superman Returns.

Of course -- as if we didn't see this coming -- Wal-Mart is offering some movies and TV shows at a cheaper rate than the competition. It also has titles from all of the major studios, though it is missing most of the major television networks. So far it only has 3,000 titles, with newer movies sold for a higher price than older movies, just as other services do. The site launched today is also only in a Beta stage, so it could have some glitches (it won't work at all in Firefox) -- though hopefully none as bad as the recommendations scandal.

Wal-Mart could be hurting itself a bit by giving in and selling movie downloads, as this will only contribute to the problem of decreased DVD sales, which the company depends on so dearly. But the decision to finally launch a download service may be in relation to news that Hollywood is permitting download-to-burn technology, which will likely be used in download kiosks that will be located in Wal-Mart stores. With these kiosks, Wal-Mart could still attract customers the same way it currently does with low-price DVDs. Still, Wal-Mart isn't yet allowing its downloads to be burned to a disc. It hopes to allow this later in the year -- probably after it figures out a definite kiosk game plan.

What if you could make your own film presenting your take on the Harry Potter character (someone in Georgia might be interested) or your opinion of what should have happened in X-Men: The Last Stand (comic book geeks everywhere wish they could)? Unfortunately, most fictional films involve intellectual properties and copyrights and other things that (legally) cannot be messed with by just anyone.

The same isn't true for documentaries, which tend to present facts or deal with truth, concepts that people don't regularly own or control. These facts and truths are often debatable, though, and can be argued or debunked via other documentary films. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was answered with Alan Peterson's Fahrenhype 9/11. Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me led to both Bowling for Morgan and Me and Mickey D. Robert Greenwald's Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price was responded to with Ron Galloway's Why Wal-Mart Works: And Why that Drives Some People C-r-a-z-y.

The latest rebuttal doc is aimed at Al Gore's claims in An Inconvenient Truth. Steven Hayward has begun work on An Inconvenient Truth ... Or Convenient Fiction?, a documentary that will be formatted in the same way as Davis Guggenheim's award-winning doc on global warming. Hayward, like Gore, will present his own thoughts on the issue through a similar lecture and slide show. But he isn't going to disagree with global warming altogether, just specific points that Gore supposedly got wrong.

Last year I actually went into a Circuit City on Black Friday. I still wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while, so obviously you won't see me pawing through the DVD stacks the day after Thanksgiving. Or doing anything that involves the words "retail," "lines" or "doorbusters." But that's not to say you can't have a ball struggling against a ceaseless mass of bargain-hungry human flesh if you want to. As a matter of fact, I'll even help out: Here's what you'll find at the big stores, movie-wise, come post-Turkey Day. And if you can get in, snag some good flicks and get out with no hassle -- then you've earned your goodies.

At Circuit City you can get any of the following for $2.99 apiece: The Cat in the Hat, Charlie's Angels, Dance with Me, Godzilla, Hulk, Intolerable Cruelty, Natural Born Killers, Red Dragon, Spy Game, The Sweetest Thing, Total Recall and Wimbledon. For $8.99 each you can also pick from Chicken Little, Click, Grey's Anatomy S1, The Little Mermaid, Monster House, The Office S1, The Polar Express and X-Men 3. CC is also offering a pretty solid sale that lasts over the weekend, one that includes several 2 for $8 titles, several excellent $5.99 choices and a whole bunch of multi-disc sets that are a lot cheaper than usual.

OK, so by this time you've already spent about 3.2 hours struggling to grapple some DVDs at Circuit City, which means it's probably about 8:10am and you can now head on over to Best Buy, which is where you'll find...

Last week, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the announcement that Harvey and Bob Weinstein are producing a gala event to honor Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. After all, the Weinsteins are known for their support of the Democratic party and for their distributing liberal-sided docs like Fahrenheit 9/11 and the new Barbara Kopple film Shut Up & Sing. So, what are they doing hobnobbing with the enemy of their friends? The official reason is that the Weinsteins support Scott's new efforts to sustain environmental friendliness, but a number of people are pointing out other reasons the brothers might desire a good relationship with the retail company.

Radar has a report on some of these reasons, which include the Weinsteins' hopes for priority placement in Wal-Mart's stores and their need for Wal-Mart to go easier on movies depicting sex and drugs. Variety more specifically addressed the Weinsteins' recent control of Genius Products, which will be making straight-to-video, family-friendly films that cater well to Wal-Mart's demographic. Wake-Up Wal-Mart has gone so far as to write a letter of disapproval to the Weinsteins.

So, now what happens when Michael Moore, who is already a critic of Wal-Mart, decides his next activist doc is against the stores? Will the Weinsteins still support their golden boy?

In related news, SpielbergFilms.net is pointing out that Wal-Mart is now selling Poltergeist on DVD for less than $5. It's things like this that make it hard for moviefans to keep up a hatred for the stores, but I think we can all hold out for next year's 25th Anniversary edition, right?