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Welcome To The Cutting Edge Of Online Movie Rentals

Welcome To The Cutting Edge Of Online Movie Rentals

The past few years have brought us the online movie rental revolution. No more trips to the video store in the rain, waiting in long lines, or paying late fees. Now the cutting edge of this revolution is making online movie rental easier than ever. Somewhere between Napster and Netflix is the new wave of movie downloads straight to your PC!

Such services allow you to browse their selections by using the easy-to-navigate menu of categories until you find the movie or movies you want. Once you have found your movie, you just pay with your credit card and download straight to your computer. You are ready to watch it when it is convenient to you.

Once you’ve downloaded a movie, it stays on your computer for 30 days. There is no need to watch it the same day you rent it. During the storage period, you can watch the movie any day you wish. See it as many times as you want for 24 hours!

All your favorite genres are available on such services including: comedy, drama, horror, Sci-Fi, romance, and more. These services thrive on always providing the latest new releases.

Would you rather watch your movie on television than your small computer screen? No worries! These services provide you with simple directions for using your PC to watch the downloaded movie on your TV.

Downloading straight to your PC isn’t the only way that such cutting edge services are different from other traditional online rental sites. Most traditional sites out there require you to choose a plan—for example, you can have 3 movies out at a time for $20 a month. Cutting edge services don’t require you to choose a subscription plan because there aren’t any! How many movies you rent each time is totally up to you.

Obviously there are no late fees, and there aren’t any membership fees, either. You pay for the movies you watch—the way is should be! Rental fees begin as low as $1.99. Some also have a daily 99 cent surprise movie; it is different every day.

With traditional online rental companies, what comes in the mail is what you watch. It is hard to know in advance what you’ll be in the mood for when the weekend rolls around. That’s not a problem with this approach. You get the movie you want when you want it.

Another thing that makes this cutting edge is that it is great for travel. Next time the in-flight movie is something you have seen before or don’t care to view, power up your notebook and catch a movie of your choosing. One of the best things is that you can store movies for up to 30 days, so you can plan ahead what you might want to see. Even better, no internet connection is needed during the viewing.

You can even purchase movies through the such services. It works much the same way as renting, but when you download a movie, it stays on your computer forever. Also, it’s no problems to burn a copy to a disk for backup.

Some of these services allow you to try one of their free downloads. There are typically several to choose from. Try one today for free, with no obligation. The only downside to such services is that they often require one of the latest versions of Windows and don’t support Macintosh computers.

Have you seen the future of movie rental? You can find the latest deals on such cutting edge movie rentals at www.discountsonline.com/category/entertainment. It is hard to envision anything more convenient and easy when it comes to viewing your favorite movies!

The Magic Of Classical Movies – A Complete Review

The Magic Of Classical Movies – A Complete Review

Undoubtedly the production of the classical movie has got to be one of the finest “inventions” since the stapler. In fact, the classical movie is one which we had the benefit of when we were kids, when at that time there were only three television channels restricted viewing opportunities were given reprieve as Saturday afternoons and Sundays—when Dad wasn’t sucked into The Wide World of Sports —held movies from the times of the past; movies that feature glamour girls and fearless males that had long since passed out of our way of life.

Although there is evidently a clear distinction, between classical movies and classical movies with only classical period elements (music, costumes, storylines, etc.), I would like to address the delight of the classical movie of yesterday and today that does involve only a particular period of history and does, then feature only classical period elements.

Let’s first start with my favorite classical movie of all time, Impromptu. This film portrays a few years in the lives of George Sand, Franz Liszt, Freiderich Chopin, as well as the royal and prosperous people who took the artists in, thus permitting them to compose, write, paint, create…this was in exchange for enjoyable company and entertainment. The focus of the film is Sand, who is obsessed on partnering with Chopin…her aggression as great as his weakness (physical instabilities). In addition the costuming, the music (for sure), the dialogue, and the setting are all as dramatic as the direction, the technique, and the delivery of words and emotion. What’s more there is even a theme or two that every person from the beginning of time until now can identify with or appreciate- the love/hate, good/evil and longing/belonging motifs that are as classic as the film itself.

There are other classical movie choices that I enjoy, and these are also the more marginal (or less mainstream popular) ones. I personally find Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (though evidently POST-classical periods), Wilde, and Jefferson, for example, as creditable of classical movie acclaim as Amadeus, Emma, The Piano, and any number of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson brilliant [re-]productions.

When you think classical movie, what comes to your mind? For some, may think black and white, or big powdered wigs or perhaps maybe classical music? Do you often think about fanciful dresses and formalities? Or do you think classic movie in terms of it being colossal in popularity? Or just maybe do you consider classic movie is as any individual might determine it—according to appeal, accuracy and aesthetics? As for me, I tend to take in the black and white flicks with the beauties and the beaus, the comedies with the curmudgeons, the histories with the insight into who people were then…like us but with an added je ne sais quoi that we must investigate, discover about, and appreciate in as great a depth and as wide a breadth as we might.

Europe’s Theme Parks

Europe’s Theme Parks

War – especially coupled with a globally sluggish economy – has a contradictory effect on the consumption of entertainment. Disposable incomes plummet curtailing the sales of medium to big ticket items such as cruises and resort vacations. But people – besieged by anxiety and bad news – also wish to be diverted. As the conflict rages, they stay indoors and tune in. Home entertainment booms. But once physical insecurity abates, consumers go out in full force mobbing movie theatres and theme parks, making up for lost time and frayed nerves.

A Solomon Smith Barney report, published in December 2002, concluded that large cap entertainment stocks plunged by 32 percent during the previous skirmish in the Gulf. Stocks of destination travel sites and cruise lines took an even harsher beating, plummeting by 52 percent – this despite the counterintuitive resilience of amusement parks to military and political unrest.

In anticipation of the next round of fighting, these stocks are trading at valuations below even the traumatic tail of 2001. Though quicker than other types of equity to recover postbellum, this holds true only for short and decisive conflicts.

Analysts often monitor the performance of theme and amusement parks to divine trends in the industry as a whole. This would prove impossible in Europe where the culture of theme and entertainment grounds is still in its infancy.

Denmark has Legoland and Tivoli. France boasts the recently recovering Disneyland, Vulcania and Futuroscope. Germany has Phantasialand. Italy sports Gardaland. Spain joins the continent’s minimal offerings with Port Aventura and Terra Mitica. The Dutch De Efteling spent the last decade “Americanizing” its facilities.

Only the United Kingdom has more than a smattering “pleasure beaches” and “worlds of adventure”. A recently mooted Dracula theme park in Romania was shot down by irate citizens and an overweening bureaucracy. “New Europe” is no better than “Old Europe” when it comes to entrepreneurship.

In both market penetration and spending per visitor, Europe is at least a decade behind the USA. Indeed, the eerie paucity of theme parks is symptomatic of the generally moribund, rigid and hyper-regulated economies of the European Union. The continent has less than half America’s number of parks per 10 million denizens and one third its visits per head per year.

Only 20 major European attractions garner more than 1 million in annual attendance. Another 50 or so attract less than 1 million patrons. With revenues of c. $2 billion, Europe’s parks combined amount to one third the sector in the USA and underperform many parks in Asia as well.

European firms are still woefully primitive when it comes to marketing and educating their public. According to the Economic Research Associates, a consultancy, venture capital is rare and usually squandered by developers on wages and other “soft”, non-productive costs. Management is inexperienced and peripatetic.

In Asia, theme parks are considered the magic pill. Japan has Disney World and the Tokyo DisneySea Park. Disney is slated to open a giant franchise in Hong Kong in 2005. Mainland China is eyeing the experiment favorably. Universal Studios countered by inaugurating a themed playground in Osaka in 2001 and by embarking on three feasibility studies in China.

From Jakarta, Indonesia (the Taman Ria amusement park) to Vietnam – everyone is climbing on the bandwagon. There seems to be a dearth of American interest in Europe despite its far higher purchasing power and the existence of a single business address – the European Commission.

Theme parks are multifarious businesses. They provide work to thousand of small suppliers in a virtuous ripple effect. Hosting and gaming experts, marketers, managers, on-site employees, suppliers of logistics, food retailers and caterers, entertainers – all benefit mightily from the presence of such grounds. The park’s brand is often parlayed into trinkets, toys, clothes and souvenirs sold by locals to tourists, both domestic and foreign.

Destination travel is a growth sector.

The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, a trade group, reported that worldwide park attendance was up one quarter between 1991-2001 to 319 million people. During this decade, revenues perked up by 50 percent to almost $10 billion annually. This was largely due to a rise in per capita spending within the grounds from $23 to $30. Returns on – usually massive – investments are impressive even in saturated markets such as the United States.

The profitability of theme parks frequently balances losses spawned by more glamorous bits of entertainment groups. Amusement grounds – themed or not – are astoundingly immune to geopolitical upheavals. Attendance in Disney’s US parks declined by only c. 5 percent during the 1991 Gulf War. Even September 11 failed to dent it measurably.

EuroDisney is partly to blame for the scarcity of themed parks in Europe. For many years it was perceived, quite correctly, as an insatiable white elephant gulping rivers of red ink. Reality moved on but impressions – fostered by smug pundits – lasted. Wary investors and governments throughout the Old Continent confined themselves to the mostly family-operated “garden parks” and “carnival grounds” built during the 1960s and 1970s.

The truth is that Disney’s Parisian adventure is flourishing. The entertainment behemoth is planning to invest c. $540 million in Walt Disney Studios, an annex of the French outfit. This is projected to add 5 million visitors to the current 12.

Another satisfied investor is Six Flags. The operator recently expanded to Mexico and Europe where it runs the six sites of the former Walibi Parks and Movie world, an erstwhile Warner Bros. property in Germany. It soon added a Spanish Movie World to its portfolio. Non-US operations already account for 15 percent of its sales.

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Europe is staid and serious. It prefers indigenous high-brow culture to American low-brow imports. Or so the French would have us all believe.

Movies, Marketing And Media 2007

Movies, Marketing And Media 2007

If there was ever a summer designated as the year of the blockbuster, super-hyped, mega, big-time movie packed with amazing special effects and will make a gazillion dollars by the end of its first day of release, well, 2007 would be it. With highly anticipated sequels like Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and the latest Harry Potter movie (which might be a 3, but who knows) mixing with other big time movies like the Transformers, it’s a safe bet to assume that 2007 might go down as the most profitable year in movie history. And, of course, those big profits aren’t exclusive to the big screen itself.

You can bet that as soon as those movies are released, and maybe even before hand, that the cross-promotional marketing will begin. There will be the hit theme song for each movie available for download on your iPod Nano. There will be the home video game ready to play on the Xbox 360. For those on the go, they will more than likely be able to play that same video game on their Sony Playstation Portable. And for those people who simply can’t wait, they can download the movie trailer and watch it on the digital camcorder feature of their phone.

Even though all these movies will be playing in theaters, people are simply going to see advertising and marketing for them wherever they go. And more interestingly is that people will be exposed to movie marketing as well, regardless of what type of electronic device they decide to use. If you are always plugged into your iPod, you won’t be immune to any movie marketing mayhem. If you visit your favorite store or refurbished electronics retailer looking for the hottest game for your Xbox 360, you’ll see posters promoting the official video game of the movie all over the store. And the same rings true for the Sony Playstation Portable as well.

Today’s technology aren’t just vehicles for entertainment, they also serve as potential locations to reach target customers. The new Transformers video game for the Xbox 360 will probably have live scenes from the movie interspersed into it, in order to entice the game player to check out the movie, if he hasn’t done so already. Conversely previews for the new Shrek film will probably have an advertisement in it targeting iPod Nano users to download the new hit theme song. And don’t forget the constant barrage of ads that ask people to text a phone number in order to get the latest Harry Potter trivia game sent to the digital camcorder display feature of their cell phone.

In today’s world, it’s all about being connected. That’s because if you’re connected online, either with an iPod, Sony PSP or an Xbox 360, you’re a member of the target audience and you will be reached. Now, being subjected to all these advertisements and media messages are one thing, but reacting to them altogether is a subject best saved for another day.