As Blockbuster tries to catch up with it’s main competition, Netflix. It is making it even easier to rent movies online.

In 2004, Blockbuster started offering customers its own service for online movie rentals. Before that, to rent movies online could only be done through Netflix who was doing much better than bricks and mortar type rental stores.

For example, Hollywood Video, which was once considered a leader in the industry, has seen it’s business go down since online movie rentals came along.

Lucky for Blockbuster, they were able to adapt to the changing landscape of the online movie rental business fast enough to stay in business.

What does Blockbuster offer that the others don’t? Today, it’s Netflix that has to do some catching up to Blockbuster. Blockbuster customers can rent on Blu-Ray at no extra cost. Netflix charges extra for this benefit.

The other major advantage Blockbuster has over Netflix is its brick-and-mortar stores. While traditional retail outlets seemed at first to be an old-fashioned handicap for people looking for movies to rent, today Blockbuster markets their stores as an added perk that Netflix doesn’t have.

And it’s true: with 7,000 stores in 21 countries, Blockbuster makes it easy to return movies locally.

So if a customer feels like renting a movie for the weekend but doesn’t want to venture out to the store, they can rent online from Blockbuster, then drop it by the store on their way to work on Monday morning.

Blockbuster also offers one more benefit over Netflix: game rentals. Netflix offers its customers only movies and television shows, and although it has a wide variety of these, it still doesn’t offer video games.

Blockbuster’s inventory has long included video games, so it was a natural choice to include game rentals when Blockbuster started offering online movie rentals.

To rent 1, 2 or 3 movies at one time costs the same. The fixed monthly charges are $8.99, $13.99 and $16.99.

Do these benefits make Blockbuster a better choice than Netflix? That depends upon your perspective. If you’re a Blu-ray owner, then yes, it’s better to rent movies online from Blockbuster.

If you’re a gamer, then yes, it’s better to rent movies online from Blockbuster.

If all you’re looking for a good selection of movies and don’t mind mailing DVDs back to Netflix, then the two services are basically equal.

By: J. Pal

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Kansieo.com

Presented by Eros Entertainment, Ad film maker Kunal Shivdasani’s debut feature film Hijack starring Shiney Ahuja and Esha Deol is ready for release on 5th September. Produced by Kunal Shivdasani and Dinesh Vijan of Aleya Motion Magic – Hijack is a fast paced action thriller with some exceptional mid-air action and stunts by Allan Amin.

Hijack is based on the Kandahar incident of 1999. “A film like Hijack should be seen by people to understand how to react when they are caught in the midst of a real life hijack. It can happen to anyone. Moreover, Hijack does not just talk about terrorism. It’s a film about love and relationships too,” says the actor. He also told about his special tranining for the upcoming film. According to him “I had to work a lot on my arms. I had to hang under a chopper for about seven days. You need really strong arms and shoulders to be able to do that. So I specifically trained a lot for my shoulders, arms and upper and lower back. It takes a toll on your lower back as well.”

Ahuja’s description of Hijack indicates that terrorism may not work for long as an enduring theme in Hindi films. But till a new text grips the cinema industry, the terrorist rules.

The new girl in the Hijack promos dancing in Shiney Ahuja’s arms is Kaveri Jha. A beauty queen aspirant a couple of years ago, Kaveri is a popular and busy actress down south. In Hijack, her Bollywood debut, Kaveri plays wife to Shiney, who is a ground maintenance officer at Chandigarh airport. Esha Deol plays an airhostess who helps Shiney save his daughter who is on a hijacked plane.

By: Samit Nandi

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The parable goes that there were three men chopping wood all day. Two men worked steadily and never stopped to take breaks throughout the day. However, one man stopped working several times during the day, and from what the other two observed, was walking around, whistling, smoking cigarettes, and in general, lallygagging. Yet, at the end of the day, when it was time to get paid and settle accounts, the first two men were surprised to find that the latter had the most wood chopped, therefore, received the most money.

In amazement, they couldn’t help but ask, “We don’t understand how you got more wood chopped than we did. Just what were you doing when you were taking those long breaks?”

The last man paused and laughed. Finally, he answered. “I was sharpening up my ax.”

This moral could apply to writers today. In this busy world as we know it, everything is fast-paced. We use computers to cut our time in half. We fax or email
documents to save time. We fly so that we can get everywhere faster. So time is of the essence. But at the rate we move during the new millennium, we seldom have enough time to introspect, or to “sharpen up our ax”–a very necessary tool for writers. And actually, I made this discovery through happenstance.

The summer of 1997, time delays notwithstanding, I decided that taking a train on my vacation would be a desirable mode of transportation. And ironically, during my travel from Los Angeles to my hometown, Detroit, I spoke to many like-minded travelers in my midst who were of the same mind. At any rate, as a writer, I found that during this period of “downtime,” there were other serendipitous benefits, more spiritual in nature, which were a payoff in this trip. Trains, for my ancestors, have always held the connotation of freedom. In general, in African-American literature, trains have been a symbol of freedom.

Consider “The Underground Railroad.” “The Freedom Train.” Furthermore, trains have played a significant thematic role in the works of great writers, such as James Baldwin’s “Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone,” or August Wilson’s play, “Two Trains Running.”

And true enough, as the train rocked from side to side, lulling me with the same soothing emotions that a cradle gives a baby, I somehow felt free. Free from the demands of my social work job. Free of the pressures of my day-to-day writing life. Free from the hurry-sickness.

On the way back to Los Angeles, I pondered over my first visit home since my mother’s death in 1993. I had read somewhere that the death of a parent is considered a watershed in one’s life. I also read, that as a writer, our censorship often ends with the death of a parent. Given the fact that I didn’t finish my first novel, The Ebony Tree, until a year or so after my mother’s death, perhaps this is true. As I considered the promotion done on my novel while I was at home, I wondered if I would have had the nerve to do this before my mother’s death. I don’t know. But trying to stay grounded and know that this experience has happened in some form to other humans, and that other humans have dealt with it, has helped.

Due to the slow pace of the train, I found myself reflecting over being at the crossroads of my life, career wise. Just as a train is often used as a metaphor for the journey of our lives, the delays, or the derailments, often happen to clue us as to when we are on the wrong track. Crossroads are the paradox we face when two desirable courses are presented to us. The paradox is that we can only choose one.

Will we always wonder about the road untraveled?

As a writer, I had reached this fork in the road. Should I pursue my writing full-time, or was it possible to continue writing in the evenings and the mornings, while working a job which involved writing court reports, dealing with the most complicated of family lives–families involved in the court system for child abuse and neglect?

My answers didn’t come easily. As I watched the Colorado River unfurl and snake behind the train window, I saw people riverboating. Suddenly, I decided I want to ford rivers, scale mountains, even, if only in my writing. Then, I realized that, as I overcome my fears as a human being, I will do so as a writer.

Staring out the window at the Rocky Mountains, I thought back to a lifetime of experience. Juggling the demands of small children and working as a social worker during the seventies, before it was commonplace for mothers of
preschoolers to work, wondering if I had made the right choice, but pushing forward, because nothing else felt right. I remembered the loss of all my comfort zones and trappings when I left Detroit and relocated to Los Angeles in 1981.

How, in addition, to the unexpected, cataclysmic nature of earthquakes, the figurative ground of my life kept shifting under my feet. How there were days when I didn’t think we would pull through as a family, or how I would be able to survive one disaster after another without reprieve.

I had spent my twenties conforming to the ideas of what others thought that I should do. During my thirties I began my forays into the writing world, first through poetry, then short stories, and one failed novel. My early forties dealt with my first true self-invention, as well as confronting some of the larger issues of life.

Getting older. Being a grandmother. But then, on December 1, 1993, without warning, my mother died of a sudden heart attack. All prior crises, all previous adversities, were suddenly eclipsed by this tragedy. The demands of life continued on, while my grief enshrouded everything I touched. From then on, everything was measured in its importance and usually diminished by this “Bigee.” Nothing could daunt me at work or at home. What used to register on the Richter scale of stress for me, no longer caused a ripple. So what? If the court is going to sanction you, and you’re in contempt of court at work over a subpoena you never received, “So be it.” Of course, no such disaster ever became of it, and I’m now wondering if my new attitude had something to do with it. My motto at work has become, “There is no emergency. The only emergency is death.”

So somewhere, in this twilight-zone, state-of-being, I discovered my right to be heard as a writer. To say my truth, unapologetically and without censor. Through the darkest days, teetering on the very edge of endurance, I survived. In time, I healed. And my writing returned. Renewed. Stronger than ever.

Sweet adversity. Lesson learned. We are all mortal. It is out of our mortality that we created immortality–our art, our writings, our music.

Recently, at a small book signing before a women’s group, a reader paid a compliment to the main character in my story.

“Jewel (the protagonist) reminds me of myself. I have a sister who is a president over an advertising agency. I have another sister who sings. I am the
plain one. But after I read this book, I realized, ‘It’s okay to be ordinary. We can’t all be center-stage. It’s usual those of us in the back ground who hold everything together.’”

The main character, Jewel, was loosely based on my mother, who was a connoisseur of people. In addition to the legacy of love that she left her children, she left behind a batter recipe for homemade waffles which I understand has traveled to Zaire, Japan, Thailand, and Paris via my sister, who currently lives in Japan. This was another insight gained during this train trip.

After our deaths, we live on in so many little ways.

In retrospect, my train trip and the time it gave me to reflect, helped me to understand why the last woodsman had chopped the most wood. For it was during a time where I had had to move slowly, that I found my answers. Yes, I can continue to work for now and write. It is generally during my working–my downtime from writing–that my material comes.

Because I had slowed my pace, I discovered something else, too, which had, heretofore, eluded me. And that is, that out of the depths of the blackest grief I’d ever experienced, I found the strength to recreate a facsimile of my loved one, my mother, in my writing. For it was through her death that I learned that love does not die. It continues. And it is the only thing that matters in this life.

By: Maxine Thompson

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Violence in video games, on TV and even in cartoons has been a sore spot of concerned parents for decades. Unfortunately, nothing has changed, well, that is not exactly true, as things have gotten a lot worse. In fact, consumer rights activist groups have formed and lawsuits have run on for years in our court system over these issues.

Movie rating systems, video game makers and TV language have been at the forefront of this on-going saga. Recently, in a discussion at the Online Think Tank a concerned educator noted that celebrating violence in entertainment is driving down our society.

Violence in entertainment is a reality, many people who are frustrated or wish they could do those things, would rather watch them than do them, unfortunately, there are some who are imprinted with this behavior through that visual experience and seek to do those things in the real world. As the entertainment world blurs with the regular world with 3D holographic living room entertainment, it will really become a problem. Virtual Reality will be so real that the difference will be next to nothing.

So, is this our future more of the same only worse, more real and a blurred reality between violent acts and real life? Exactly how are we going to counter act this problem, because as it stands now we are headed the wrong direction and we need to consider this issue, or we will pay later with more criminal activity, deranged minds and devious felons in our midst. So, please be so good as to consider all this.

By: Lance Winslow

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It seems perfect timing. Columbia Pictures has announced plans to release “Men In Black III” in May of 2012, and in 3-D no less.

The premise of the “Men in Black” movies is that aliens from outer space live among us, and the government not only knows about them but is tapping into their knowledge for the development of new and astounding technology, some of which is being gradually released to the public but most of which remains top secret.

Starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the MIB movies have been immensely entertaining. Well, the first one was, anyway. The second one was a bit scattered, plot-wise. Still, the special effects were great.

It is probably pure coincidence that MIB3 will be released in 2012. Then again, it is interesting to note that many of the prognosticators are claiming the government is readying us for the disclosure that flying saucers are real and that aliens have been visiting earth at least since the 1940s.

One of the interpretations of this coming disclosure is that, whether or not aliens are in fact real, the world’s string-pullers will use the threat of extraterrestrial invasion to frighten the populace into giving up their national sovereignty to a world government.

It could be that movies such as the “Men In Black” installments are part of an effort to soften us up for Disclosure Day, as it is already being referred to in the UFO community.

As you watch the news and attempt to interpret world events in accordance with what I hope you are learning about the 2012 prophecies and predictions, I urge you not to neglect the entertainment parade. Movies, TV shows and popular songs are all potentially embedded with hints, clues and even overt messages about what is to come.

By: Jer Bosky

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