Tsutaya DVD rentals
On Christmas Day I went to my local Tsutaya DVD rental shop near Nakano-shimbashi Station. Maybe a kilometer from my apartment. I usually enjoy the walk, first because of the exercise, and second because it gives me an excuse to check out the neighborhood. I hadn’t been in a few weeks. I was shocked, aghast, sad, and probably a little angry when I discovered the shop gone. Closed. Empty. All that was left was an abandoned, boarded up store front. I figured that declining patronage due to the coronavirus pandemic and the incursion of online movie streaming killed the business. I don’t watch movies online - yet. I watch DVDs, so this is a (temporary) problem for me.
First, many years ago, I lost my old, favorite VHS movie rental shop on Honan dori. I don’t know why it closed, but I found another VHS rental shop not too far away, up the hill on Ome-kaido dori. But that shop failed to make the jump to DVDs, and it closed after a few years. Then I discovered the Tsutaya just north of Nakano-shimbashi Station, across the Nakano-shin Bridge over the Kanda River on a street with no name. I relied on it ever since. But like I said, I hadn’t visited it recently, which might suggest that I and people like me are part of its demise. The reason I hadn’t visited the shop much this year is because so many of the New Movies are absolute crap! The business was not offering me much that I wanted to see. What I rented was more often than not older films I already knew and wanted to watch again. What were they offering in their New Release section that was so terrible? Overwhelmingly it was comic book movies - Marvel and DC comic book superhero movies. I don’t watch that shit. People who like that genre are truly fanatical about it. But they’re morons. I don’t like comic book movies because I’m not ten years old. I appreciate escapism, but I want mine in the form of well-written, acted and directed human drama. I want to watch human stories with depth and depth of character, not dumb stereotypes, bad writing and mediocre acting overly-heavy on computer graphics and special effects. People who like superhero movies don’t even know what a good movie is. Either, 1) they haven’t been trained to spot good films, or 2) they’ve blunted and retarded their senses by watching too much garbage in a society that cultivates it.
I’m a snob because I read novels (lots of them), not comic books.
I don't like comic book movies because I'm not 10-years old.
Eventually, I will move to online movies - Netflix, for example. But before that, I will continue to rent DVDs by moving my patronage to the Tsutaya outlet near JR Nakano Station, which is a less convenient 30-minute walk from home, or a quick bus ride. Either way, I prefer the neighborhood franchise the same way that I prefer the neighborhood school and the neighborhood church. I expect that what I will find in online movies is precisely what I found at the DVD rental shop, a disgustingly excessive amount of stupid action hero comic book movies. Don’t try to explain how it isn’t so. You know that it’s true. It’s like pornography on the Internet. It’s what’s driving the business now.
But I could be wrong.