Weekly RoundUp 2/15/05 (1 Viewer)

[Kevin_Lodge]

Anyone who is looking to pick up Fandango, I got it at Best Buy for $9.99.

If you havent seen this movie before, definately good blind buy -- a great flick

 

[DustinLC]

Anyone who has been to the theaters have seen this .

Sorry had to rant and didn't want to start a thread on it.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

Has anyone had luck finding Howards End at Best Buy or Circuit City? You would think that I would've learned my lesson by now when it comes to catalog titles, but apparently not. I went to Best Buy and they said there was a single copy (one!) that might be there by Friday. That was much better than Circuit City, which had no record of the movie at all...anywhere. In both cases, of course, the respective sales persons gave me a blank stare when I inquired about the film and asked me to spell it for them. Ugh. :

 

[EricSchulz]

Woohoo! Picked up Donnie Darko at BB for $15.99, AND got a RewardZone coupon yesterday, so it was only $10.99!!!

 

[Mike Frezon]

"H-o-w-a-r-d-s E-n-d. Do you need me to do it again?!?"

 

[Allen Hirsch]

Howard's End has been out for years on DVD (I have the earlier version)- just not as a 2-disc SE until now.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

LOL...it's both funny and sad. It seems as though I run into similar responses every time I go into one of those two stores and inquire about a movie that's more than ten years old and with an original budget of less than $20 million dollars. Did you ever see the scene in Ghost World where the guy goes into a video rental store and asks for Fellini's 8 1/2 and the clerk insists on directing him to 9 1/2 Weeks? It kind of reminds me of that.

At any rate, when I got back home I ordered it from Digital Eyes, which is probably what I should've done from the beginning.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I've had mixed results with more obscure titles ( not that Howard's End is that obscure ) at my local Best Buy. Sometimes they surprise me with the titles they stock, other times older catalog titles will show up a week or two after their street date, and will disappear months later to never be seen again.

Didn't see Howard's End, Purple Butterfly, or Rendez-vous on the shelf this evening.

- Walter.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

So Mark, are you going to review The Agony and The Ecstasy? "You are a fool, soldier, to look for Michaelangelo in a house like this!" :p)

Speaking of which, here's a question for Mike: does listing a DVD on Best Buy's or Circuit City's website mean that the B&M stores will stock a title? Both list A&E.

 

[TravisR]

Just because it's on their website does not mean it will be in their stores.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Dennis: I wish it were an easy answer. It's basically what Travis replied...there's no guarantee. Catalog titles are extremely difficult to predict. It's a "sometimes they do, sometimes they don't" proposition.

There are those who try the "in-store pick-up" gambit. Order the title on-line but pick-up in-store. Not always successful.

There have also been those here recently that make a Tuesday trip to their store (seems its usually a CC) only to encounter blank stares and a "check of the system' which yields the information they should have gotten one copy in the store but they can never find it.

What is also reported here often is that the catalog titles show up at these stores later in the week and quietly make their way to the shelves.

If I were you and wanted to have A&E in my hands on Tuesday, I'd call ahead to my local Borders or Barnes & Noble and have them hold me a copy. Sometimes their prices aren't too far off mark--especially if it's a must-have title for you.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

One thing I discovered last weekend is that if you do the order-online-and-pick-up-in-store deal at Best Buy, and the website shows an item as being in a store, but the store doesn't manage to dig one up, then they'll ship the item to you for free.

A rare gold star for BB customer service.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

That's a lesson that's taken a while for me to learn, unfortunately. To save myself grief, I think what I need to do from this point forward is go ahead and purchase new catalog releases that are "low profile" from an online vendor. There's the rub, of course. What qualifies as "low profile"? For example, a few months ago I was pleased to find that Best Buy did have Fearless Vampire Killers on street date. I would've considered that even more under the radar than Howards End. I guess that's why I get confused.

Now, in all honesty I only have myself to blame in regards to Howards End, though. Several years ago I went through this exact same scenario when The Remains of the Day was released on DVD. Therefore, yesterday at Best Buy I should have remembered the equation:

Merchant/Ivory film + screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala + starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson = No record of DVD on street date at Circuity City or Best Buy.

 

[Jeff Meyers]

Selected local Wal-Mart (Murrieta, CA) pricing:

Angel: Season 5 $37.88
Control $19.44
Donnie Darko: Director’s Cut $15.87
Frostbite $19.84
Into the Sun $18.88
Little House/Prairie: Season 7 $33.13
Motorcycle Diaries $17.87
Nat’l Lampoon’s Blackball $17.64
Pokemon: Destiny Deoxys $16.98
Raise Your Voice $14.87
Saw $14.87
Taxi $14.87

Picked-up Raise Your Voice for my daughters and Donnie Darko as a blind-buy.

 

[DustinLC]

The Best Buy closest to me ordered only 10 copies of The Great American Hero. Gesh :rolleyes

I guess I'll be ordering from Amazon. Comes out to about the same price anyway.

 

[James_Kiang]

My local Wal-Mart (Brea CA) has Tae Guk Gi for only 19.99. Picked it up blind but haven't had a chance to watch it.

 

[Craig S]

Indeed, you are correct. I see it first came out in 1999. Did it go out of print?? I can't recall ever seeing this in a store, which probably led to my thinking it wasn't out.

At any rate, no HE SE at my BB either, but I did find it at Fry's for the same $19.99 price.