GreenCine Gets Some Love from Salon.com

Beyond the Multiplex
By Andrew O'Hehir

Jan. 10, 2008 | When I posted my lovingly crafted year-end article about the state of the indie-film business a couple of weeks ago, several of you wrote in -- in the loveliest possible way -- to point out that I was a mainstream media hack who had missed a major element of the story. Well, that may be true, but you know what? It's hard out here for a pimp.

Readers observed that the people in the movie biz whom I interviewed indulged in a lot of bellyaching about how "specialty films" are moving gradually but inevitably out of the theaters toward some not-yet-specified home-delivery mechanism. There was a lot of talk about IFC's move toward video-on-demand as its primary mode for distributing art-house films, but none of my interviewees even mentioned the more old-fashioned elephant in the room. "Have you heard about this revolutionary new service called Netflix?" one reader inquired. Hmm, I don't know; do I detect a note of sarcasm there?

This acerbic commentary points out a real phenomenon: Everybody in and around the film business knows that Netflix and its competitors have altered the behavior of film buffs, perhaps fundamentally. But most of us are so deluged with movie screenings and DVDs that we don't often use those services, so we don't experience the change at a personal level. (In addition to the mainstream rivals of Netflix, like Intelliflix and Blockbuster, let me nudge you toward Chicago's Facets Multi Media and San Francisco's GreenCine, probably the two best online sources for renting independent films, foreign films and art-house classics. Other faves? Let me know.)