Buying Watchmen Blu
Since WB didn’t manage to cough up an early copy (“it’s not my department”), I went out today to buy the extended cut of Watchmen on Blu-ray. I am not unwilling to expect that I will prefer it considerably to the original. We’ll see.
What fascinated me was that, looking for a quick fix, I ran to Barnes & Noble, the closest DVD retailer, and I girded myself to pay $6 or $7 more than I would on Amazon… that would make it $26.49 or $27.49. A part of setting that price was that on B&N Online, it was $22, a couple of bucks more than Amazon. Storefronts cost money, so….
What I found was a retail price of $35.49, discounted (ha ha) 10%. So, $31.95.
And I turned around and walked out of the store, drove the 15 minutes in traffic to go to Target, and paid my $25.49 there.
The $6 wasn’t important. The idea of paying more than $30 for a mainstream Blu-ray that costs $20.49 ion Amazon, free shipping, no tax… well… just wasn’t gonna do it.
Moreover, why would the studios ALLOW B&N to put a $35 retail price on Blu-rays that people walk by every day. Where is my incentive to buy a player and the discs when as an otherwise unaware consumer, I am assuming that the discs cost double – or more – what regular DVDs retail at. It is horrible promotion of a still fragile emerging technology.
If B&N doesn’t want to use the space for Blu at $25 or $26, I can understand that… so keep the Blu-rays out of B&N.
As much as this industry obsesses on piracy, it really has to start obsessing on how its future is branded, because dumb stuff like this is the kind of thing that sticks in consumer minds, along with the parade of idiotic “reports” from “experts” that we will see throughout the next 6 weeks of dead summer news time.
TOTALLY agree with this. Best Buy even stinks for Blu-ray prices, and they used to be a haven for great deals. I buy everything from Amazon these days, and with my Prime membership, I get it in two days. Plus, the sales have been insane lately.
ID-PR probably could have sent you a copy, by the way.
Studios don’t “allow” retailers to put various prices on their items. They give a recommended retail price, but once retailers have bought the stock they can effectively do what they like – it’s illegal for suppliers to enforce the conditions of how retailers sell it, or threaten not to supply in the future.
This creates a HUGE problem with discount retailers – a brand manager for Dom Perignon told me about the time CostCo decided to put a huge discount on their stock. Not only was Dom Perignon pissed, because it was destroying the premium value in the brand, but all the other retailers were pissed at Dom because everyone was ignoring them to go to CostCo instead and saying “Why aren’t you doing anything?”. (The brand manager refused to tell me how they resolved the situation though…)
The “Grey Market” (goods that are sold outside guidelines of the supplier) is a huge problem for branded goods, media or luxury, and no one really has a good solution that is both effective and legal.
MALIN AKERMAN makes me shoot a WHITE RAY.
If you know what I mean.
I have had pretty good luck finding some random/older Blu-Ray titles for cheap at Best Buy recently: EASTERN PROMISES and CASINO for $14.99, TOTAL RECALL and BASIC INSTINCT for $9.99.
Barnes & Noble has always been a rip-off for recorded media and books. I’m surprised they’ve been able to stay afloat this long.
Dave, is this the first time you’ve tried to buy a DVD or Blu in B&N in, like, 10 years?
I’m not knocking, but they’ve been pulling this shit forever on standard def DVD, charging full retail on new releases, discounting 10 percent and acting like it’s some kind of deal when Best Buy, Target and others have been knocking around 30-40 percent off retail for at least the first week. B&N should always be the last holdout of brick-and-mortar shopping.
Unless, that is, they’re offering 50 percent off all Criterions (both Blu and Standard). Like they are now. That shit hurts.
bmcintire, this relates to what people were discussing on the other thread about DVD purchases. Are Eastern Promises and Basic Instinct really movies you need to own?
Did you own them on DVD (and if so, especially on the former because it is newer) is the upgrade worth it?
Barnes & Noble has always sucked for this kind of thing and I resent any business model that it predicated on consumer ignorance. On the other hand, there’s an “M” in “MSRP” and if the M wanted prices to be lower, it’d set them lower.
Dave the reason is very simple. B&N storefronts are built around impulse buying. The reason they can add a few bucks to the online price is that you want it then and there. Web stores are for more discerning shoppers, those who are willing to pre-order or don’t need it right away and can wait a couple of days for it to arrive in their mailbox.
Nice rant, but would it have killed you to order it online and have it by Friday? I highly doubt you’re going to watch it before then away right?
Meanwhile, the longer version of “Watchmen” does make some improvements. I still don’t care about the last hour, but the Rorschach stuff seems stronger and the film holds for more emotional beats.
I’m new to the BD world, but I saw some pretty good deals at Best Buy yesterday, including The Shining for $14.99, which I bought, and which looks fantastic (by the way the audio commentary reveals some pretty fascinating and funny stuff). What annoys me is all these “special packs”, ie Star Trek Trilogy (??) and Godfather restoration 3-pack (no thanks, Part 3). These will all come out as single discs in due time, but not before they milk the impulse buyers. Luckily I’m a patient man.
The whole movie should be Rorschach.
I wouldn’t watch a longer version of this insipid horse shit if I was paid $35.49.
WATCHMEN ORIGINS: RORSCHACH
You know WB has considered it.
Mutiny, there have been many worse comic-book movies than Watchmen. I haven’t seen the longer edit of it, but I imagine it’s a step up from the middling theatrical version. I take it as a film that didn’t work, but at least had greater aspirations than many of the typical blow em up comic tripe that passes for entertainment these days.
To paraphrase WG:
There are 3 types of movies:
1) Movies that are meant to be good and succeed.
2) Movies that are meant to be good and fail.
3) Movies that were never meant to be good in the first place.
Watchmen is definitely in category 2. Thing is, category 2 tends to be worse than category 3 because of the ambition. I haven’t read the book, and I’m sure it’s great on the page, but I think virtually everything about the movie — plotting, cinematography, FX, dialogue — was terrible. Only thing I liked about it was Patrick Wilson’s ’80s hair and costuming.
You thought Jackie Earle Haley was “terrible”? If you give me a ruler I can prove that theorem wrong.
The cinematography was fine.
And it was better than Transformers 2, for whatever that’s worth.
A very good friend of mine just started a blog (sorry to whore it out here), and his first post is about movie adaptations, Watchmen being the main topic of discussion.
theregimen.wordpress.com Please take a look, it has an audio podcast with the post that covers it.
Yeah, what was wrong with the cinematography and FX? Even if you hated the movie those technical aspects were solid.
I know Jackie gets all of the actor props (and he was great), but personally I liked Patrick Wilson best. He sucessfully portrayed the “boy scout” type of hero but wasn’t a boring sap about it.
Agreed, i’d call Watchmen a 2-star movie with some 4-star elements. Jackie Earle Haley and Patrick Wilson were excellent, as was the cinematography.
Dave, Warner sells the movie to retailers at a set price (pretty much the same across the board with some obvious exceptions). They dont care how much the retailer charges as long as its above a minimum and as long as they don’t get a ton of returns. B&N sells at a price that hits their desired margin and limits returns.
Warner calculates their P&A ultimates based on shipped goals (not actual POS) with a 25%-25% unit return expectation.
You don’t like it, don’t buy it there (which you didn’t).
What is the subtext of this piece? DP, is it that you feel Barnes & Noble and WB aren’t doing their job to sufficiently position Blu-Ray within the market as a viable product?
Watchmen i was slightly puzzled with when i left the theater in March, but the DC has won me over. Like Almost Famous and Kingdom of Heaven, this is a great movie that needed the extra breathing space to truly flourish. Like Mann’s Public Enemies, flaws aside, this is one that’s going to still be watched and valued a decade from now.
Just my opinion. But the cinematography didn’t work not because it was technically deficient in any way, but because it was a misapplication. I thought it did more to harm the storytelling than to help it by pushing the style too hard — all that 1999 speed-ramping made the picture feel like I was being sucked under water in slo-mo.
If the conceptual base of the story is that super heros exist in the “real world,” then shouldn’t the world look real? It needed less desaturation/under-exposure/slo-mo and more Patrick Wilson dorky, clumsy mid-80s everyday.
And the FX were bad, particularly in the snow finale because the camera moves were amateurish. It mostly looked like they set the Z-coordinates at one point at the beginning of a shot, then another point at the end, and did nothing more to it. So basically, you have this perfectly straight pull-back (or forward) that’s too smooth to be real and effectively renders the buildings and glaciers as 2D. The old HBO intro with the model city looked more realistic.
For a good comparison, consider the shot in A.I., in the future, when the camera first swoops in on the ice, then swings into the canyon where we find David. If you watch it closely, the “camera” actually wobbles a bit as it pivots into the canyon — solely to sell the shot and make it feel more believable like it might’ve been captured by a helicopter.
Thanks for the Criterion mention, MarkVH. Just picked up “Fallen Idol” for a low, low $12 (using my Reader’s Advantage card to make it 60 percent off).
Mutiny, I can agree with your appraisal, but I’d add that the criticism should be focussed on Snyder’s direction and not on what Larry Fong did because he was, after all, just doing what his director told him to do, and within that framework his work was effective and more than competent. Misguided, sure, but that’s not his fault.
No problem with that.
Kamikaze – these were both first-time purchases (though I could have sworn I already owned EASTERN PROMISES). CASINO (which I have not yet watched on Blu-Ray) was the only one I already had on DVD. TOTAL RECALL looks pretty bad, but certainly not as terrible as the original Blu-Ray release of THE TERMINATOR. I am very glad that MGM and Fox are doing a brand-new 4K scan reissue of that one.
I will fully admit that I am exactly the type of consumer that impulse point-of-purchase buys were created for. Complete junkie. But even I have been able to control myself at places like Barnes & Noble.
“Dave the reason is very simple. B&N storefronts are built around impulse buying.”
10% off $35.49 for Watchmen is to impulse buying what a Kathy Bates upskirt photo would be to one of Lex’s oft-mentioned boners.