by Shane Hnetka
Heads up! Snowpiercer is coming to the RPL for a short time. From Sept. 4 to 7, it will play in an actual theatre, not just on your Playstation’s VOD (or similar-type device). And hey! I think Jorge even has a review on this page. As those who occasionally follow this column will know, I’ve been a big supporter of this film since it was released last year and I’ve ranted and ranted about how evil Harvey Weinstein tried to cut the film so it would “play” better in the U.S. Weinstein lost his fight and the film is quietly playing in select theatres and on VOD. This movie should have played in bigger venues than Weinstein allowed, though. What a jerk.
The Scarecrow Still Stands
In the city of Seattle there’s a video rental store. Not just any video rental store, although I was shocked to see a few stores still around in the States when I vacationed there recently. No, Scarecrow Video is a legendary video rental store and one of the largest independent stores in the U.S. It contains tons of rare and out of print movies on every format from DVD and Blu-ray to VHS, laserdisc and Beta. With the decline in video rental sales over the years, the business, not surprisingly, is in trouble. So the staff, with the approval of the current owners, are going to turn the store into a non-profit video archive/film preservation operation.
To do this they started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $100,000. With over 22 days left to go when I wrote this, The Scarecrow Project had already met its initial goal. Now it’s raising some extra cash to increase its already impressive library. Not every movie is on digital or even on DVD, and it’s awesome that there are still places that try to carry everything.
Not Dead Yet
Speaking of physical media, Kodak has made the decision to keep making film for the movie industry for the time being. As digital becomes the norm, film is seldom used by the studios anymore. There are still filmmakers who prefer film over digital: Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams and Judd Apatow all stood up for the format (Apatow is a weird one though). Word is that Tarantino is going to shoot his next, The Hateful Eight, on 70mm film, which would be awesome.
With technology advancing it’s a nice to see that there’s still some support for physical film. Like records, you just can’t beat the real thing.
Shane Hnetka is a Regina film and comic book nerd. He also writes Dog Blog’s weekly “Sunday Matinee” column at prairiedogmag.com.