Digital media and gadgets has definitely revived my interest in music and movies. I have since dusted off my CD collection and ripped a good portion of them into iTunes. This time round I have joined the DVD rental by mail company GreenCine. I am very excited in its movie treasure trove.

At the peak days around my final years in college, I watch about 60 movies in theatre a year and many more from rental and from TV. Now I go to a cinema perhaps two times a year. There are many reasons for this decline. But enough to say movies has always been a part of my cultural life and I look back fondly to those days. What online rental give me is access to virtually any movies I'm interested, whether they are new releases or years old. I no longer have to wait for the chancy encounter when the programmer decided to put something on a local cinema on a certain day.

How does GreenCine stack against the better known, original DVD by mail company Netflix? I check against their inventory and find little differences. Bear in mind my interest is mostly in artsy, relative little known flicks. If anything is unavailable it is more likely because they are not release in DVD yet (or not released for North America, darn regional code). Perhaps it is best to look at GreenCine's top 250 movies list. Dominated by decades old movies, it is nothing like you average movie rental shop. I received my first DVD about 24 hours after I joined. So you can say I am fairly satisfied. But then I am living in San Francisco, where the company is located.

So bye bye my local rental shop. I still love you, but you don't have what I'm looking for. And I still wish to go to cinema more. The sound of curtain rolling and light projected on screen still mean something to me.

2006.08.08 [movie] - comments (3)

The original Thai "Hello" actually means "Have you eaten rice yet?", says this short article about travelling in Bangkok. It brought a smile to my face because this is identical to the Cantonese greeting <食咗飯未> that I have grown up with. Have you eaten rice yet? Its use has long since faded and it sounds funny today to greet each other with this. Who care about the boring rice when you can have any fancy food throughout the day? This phrase really takes you back to a time when after a hard day at work, people would enjoy the simple pleasure - a meal with a bowl of rice.

2006.08.07 [culture, language] - comments (1)