Buy, Buy Black Dog...

...to the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," of course...

Having stood in line for over three hours on the first day of the Black Dog stock sell-off on Sunday means not having to go back until maybe mid-June - I grabbed a few desired upgrades and while I did forget to check a couple sections, I feel like I have sufficiently scratched my itch for now. 

The lines are probably dropping quite a bit by now, and it's unlikely to ever again be as bad as it was that first day, but if you do plan to go down on a day that is likely to be busy - on the weekend, say, or whenever they put their new arrivals or TV series up for grabs or announce a price drop, or so forth:

a) wear sunscreen or bring an umbrella or something.

b) bring water (or some other beverage) and tissues, so you can hydrate and/or blow your nose.

c) evacuate your bowels beforehand, or get friendly with the person behind you, so you can duck out if an emergency hits...

d) Have a clear idea of what you're looking for, because they may have a time limit for browsing. They did that first day! 

Some observations from that first day, this past Sunday:

There was TONS of great stuff left by the end of the first day. Mostly on DVD. I hadn't spent a lot of time previously looking at their rental stock, since I've been out of the video rental market for over ten years, electing just to buy what I want (or occasionally get it for free out of the library, or see it streamed, or such) - so I was surprised to realize just how much of it was on the older format, which seemed no barrier to people buying it. So many people were happily leaving with fistfuls of former rental DVDs that you'd never know that physical media was dead.... 

People who are on the "I only want blu-ray" page should note that blu-rays are gathered together on the left hand side of the store (except for a few sections like animation, where they are merged, I gather)

The pricing scheme basically has $10 as the baseline and goes up from there. I presume that will be subject to change, but the store is open and selling off stock through June, so it may not change that quickly!

Stickering is minimal, and in most cases all the art is included - the one case that it wasn't, of the films I bought, was Lords of Chaos, which looked like they had split it up, selling the DVD and blu versions separately, each one getting half the art; the blu I bought had the cardboard slipcover, but not the insert. Everything else I got was complete - blu and DVD combo sets for more common items included both discs but added five bucks to the price. If you're concerned about booklets or art, check before you get to the till.

The stickers that ARE on everything are velcro patches that they use to attach their "rental" tags to, and number-stickers taped on the spine. The latter are easy to remove, but some of the velcro seems to be very firmly stuck to the case, so don't try ripping it off unless you have a cutting tool with you (or maybe some Goo Gone or such - I didn't try that myself, electing to just try to rip off the velcro of the items I bought, but my coarse, impatient ripping ended up stretching/ tearing a couple of the blu ray cases, so it is not a recommended method). 

If there is a "rented" tag on the case, it means just what it says, and as they aren't holding titles for people, you'll just have to come back another day and hope that the disc gets returned. 

There was a 20-item limit per purchase, so hungry, rich, but budget-conscious sharks couldn't come in and buy the whole collection. This was very considerate of the Black Dog people. One guy I chatted with doubled his haul by dragging his wife with him, having her join him in line late in the game - he left with a box of forty discs. Again, the rules might change as the sale progresses, but best to bear it in mind during these early days.

High-prestige filmmakers, people with huge "brand recognition" to their names seemed to be the main targets - people were still hungrily snatching up the Kurosawas, the Bavas, etc. A Facebook friend reported that somebody got to the Greenaways and cleared them out. Personally I would be cautious about buying things that had high cache on DVD, especially if they've been on the shelf for ten years or more, since they're more likely to be worn and/or potentially have been subject to a lot of resurfacing. I remember renting a few discs like that from Limelight, out on Alma, back when I was taking a few film studies courses at UBC; Limelight used to buff the hell out of their discs, I believe grinding a layer or two off a disc every time it got returned. You can't just buff off layers ad-infinitum, so the older things I rented off them had all sorts of digital distortion on them. I don't know if that's the case with Black Dog's stock - they do resurface discs, but hopefully less obsessively than Limelight did - but people who actually want to be able to WATCH the movies, who aren't just trying to "accumulate prestige" for their shelves, might want to just shell out the new prices for things like David Lynch or such, rather than paying $20 for a disc that has had a long and busy rental history.

For the deal-hungry, the real action is on the common, second-tier stuff, the populist crowd pleasers or the sleepers. Marvel blus were in the $10-15 range, for instance - half what they cost new. Older arthouse films that don't have a huge cult cachet were priced reasonably, too - I was happy enough to pay $20 for a used DVD of Soderbergh's Schizopolis, which I've never owned, because I was never gonna pay $40 for it, which is about as cheap as it can be had otherwise. I'm assuming - compared to The Seven Samurai, say - that Schizopolis didn't ever get rented enough for it to be worn, even though the disc was probably 20 years old. There's probably a ton of stuff like that left on the shelves. I wonder if someone has grabbed their Highway 61 yet? 

If you figure that "half what it costs new" is a good calculus for pricing a used movie, there were, in fact, a few unreasonable prices that I saw, mostly for in-print Criterion blu-rays, maybe because the name "Criterion" still evokes a Pavlovian response from people with a need for prestige imprints; with apologies to friends of mine who shelve their Criterions separately from their other discs, so they can show'em off - I know a couple of people who do that, and one person who also has separate sections for Scream Factory, Arrow, Severin, Indictator, etc - I am fine on Black Dog taxing that demographic, exploiting their irrationality or vanity or hunger for prestige a bit; I don't begrudge them for having done this. But I am not interested in paying more for a used rental copy of something than I can get it for brand new on Amazon.ca, and that's exactly what I saw on the Criterion blus I examined. I would have been very happy to upgrade from DVD to blu for a few Criterion titles - namely The Thin Red Line, Blow Out, and Quadrophenia, for example, but the blus for those were, if I recall, all in the $40-50 range, while they sell for $30-40 new. No thanks! (Someone probably bought them all without blinking, though, salivation triggered by the mere brand). 

On the other hand, the high-end OOP items that they did have seemed, on later investigation, to be priced reasonably - like, they were asking $40 for Cronenberg's eXistenZ, which might seem a lot for a used rental disc; it was certainly more than I wanted to pay, so it was still there when I left - but I see now that it is unavailable new in R1 and Amazon and eBay sellers are asking upwards of $200 for used copies of that same disc, which has been out of print for awhile. Personally, I am confident it will come back into print someday and am in no hurry to upgrade - the DVD is totally watchable, until then. 

In the end, I grabbed a fistful of cheapish Marvels, Eggers' The Lighthouse (which I had never seen and was delighted with), Schizopolis, and Lords of Chaos - nine vids, total, for which my combined savings was maybe $100. It was barely enough to justify the wait and the concomitant sunburn, but it was also all I could afford right now). I'd let y'all know what I forgot to look for, but who knows, maybe I'll get the chance to pop in again, and I don't want to give anyone any ideas. 

BTW, here's what my neck looked like when I got home... photo by Erika! Looks worse than it felt, I am happy to report. 

Post-script - okay, so after writing that, I went for a nap and actually kind of dreamed about going back to Black Dog, where I discovered a lot more of their stock had sold, and that they'd brought in VINYL RECORDS to add to it - including a solo record by Brian Ritchie, the bassist of the Violent Femmes. I am partial to Ritchie - mostly his album The Blend - but they were asking $100 for this record (not one Ritchie ever made, btw) because the shrinkwrap, which was still on it, had been signed by Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live creator, who as far as I know has nothing whatsoever to do with Brian Ritchie. So I was rehearsing my pitch to them - maybe you could take the shrinkwrap off and put it on another record, because all I want is the Brian Ritchie album, I don't care about Lorne Michaels' signature - I'll give you ten bucks for the record?

BTW, they do say "no negotiation" on their signage for the sale. So don't try to talk'em down on those Criterions!