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Useful Film Related Links

There is only one site I ever use to read up on a film and that is www.imdb.com.  It is my favourite web site.  It can be slow and it does have annoying noisy or flashing adverts on some pages but ...  It seems to have details of every film and TV show that has ever been made or is in production.  You can click on the directors or actors to see what other films they have made, you can read the reviews of other film buffs. It is an amazingly useful site.

The cheapest way to watch films is to rent DVDs over the internet.  I have been signed up to www.lovefilm.com since January 2003.  They were called www.dvdsontap.com.  They pay the postage both ways.  When I was a "gold member" :-) i.e. 3 DVDs at a time I managed to rent and watch up to 23 DVDs a month.  I needed to watch the DVD within 24 hours of receiving it and post it back.  At £20 a month for gold membership, that's less than £1 a DVD and there is no time or petrol wasted going to blockbusters etc.  You can actually keep a DVD for as long as you want, it's just the longer you leave it, the longer it is before you get a replacement.

I now very rarely buy a DVD until I have seen it before and I know its really great, usually through www.lovefilm.com.  I definitely recommend this service. I used this service to see the vast majority of films I have reviewed in the Quick Reviews section.    

To be fair the service does rely on the Royal Mail.  Over Christmas and when the Royal Mail strike (rarely) the response time is affected but its not the fault of www.lovefilm.com. Sadly I don't have the time to watch over 20 DVDs a month so I'm on the £15 a month Silver service, i.e. 2 DVDs at a time.

There are many places to buy DVDs, my favourites are as follows (in order of preference):

www.play.com - This is the cheapest DVD site for Region 2 (Europe) DVDs, postage is free, the selection is huge and the service is very good.  Proper DVDs currently start at £6.50.

www.cd-wow.com - This is sometimes cheaper than www.play.com and postage is free.  They sell DVDs from most regions, usually popular ones only.  Region 3 DVDs are usually extremely cheap from here but I usually stick to region 1 (USA/Canada) or region 2 (Europe).

www.dvdboxoffice.com - This is an Canadian site which sells region 1 (USA/Canada) DVDs and posters, postage is free.  Three or four years ago this was usually cheaper than www.play.com, now they are usually more expensive and it can take a week for DVDs to arrive from Canada.  There was a time when the vast majority of films were only available on region 1 DVDs, luckily this is no longer the case.

www.playusa.com - This is the branch of www.play.com which sells region 1 (USA/Canada) DVDs. This is only very rarely cheaper than the three sites above.  Again postage is free.

Copyright © 2003 John Read. All rights reserved.

Revised: April 04, 2004

John@JohnsGreatFilms.com