I joined LoveFilm on the 27th of July, after my 14 free days I started paying on the 11th of August and it seems now I will pay on the 11th of every month. I am paying £12.99 per month which allows me to have 2 DVDs at home at once.

I have been watching the DVDs on the day I recieve them and posting them the nexst day. This means that I should roughly be getting through 2 films every 3 days. It doesn’t quite work like that though as Love Film and the post office don’t work on Sundays. So, about 4 films a week or 16 films a month, in theory.

I’ve actually received 13 films and I’ve been a member for over a month. So, how did I lose out? Well partly through once or twice forgetting to post it the next morning. However most of the loss was from Love Film not receiving a film I posted the day after receiving it for nearly a week, it was overtaken in the post by one posted 3 days afterwards. Their policy for processing DVDs that has gone missing in the post is quite good, but they are quite threatening in the way that they say the Post Office will contact you and that if you don’t respond to the Post Office you will be charged. Furthermore they don’t contact the post office until 5 days after you post it.

LoveFilm and indeed all postal based DVD rental services need to sort this issue out because the customer is definitly getting a bum deal, granted it’s not entirely Love Film’s fault however they will end up losing customers if they feel they are missing out and I don’t feel I lost out, I know I lost out.

So roughly 13 DVDs for roughly £13, it’s been â…“ and ½ of the price of your average walk-in video rental shop. The big difference between walk-in and postal DVD rental is the way they are chosen, instead of choosing 1 film on each visit you choose a list of films (over 30 is what Love Film reccomend) and then they select what is available to send to you. Obviously this means they can reduce their stock of certain films. The problem is you won’t get to see the new DVD releases for months after they come out.

The list of DVDs is prioritised, however the priority doesn’t seem to affect the choices that are made for you very much. In fact none of the films I have been sent were in the top 10 priority. It’s not like the films in my list are popular films or especially recent, I wish they’d send me the ones at the top rather than always the ones from the middle.

1. The Terrorist (1999)
2. La Nina Santa (2004)
3. Das Boot (Director’s Cut) (Superbit) (Disc 1) (1981) (IMDB rank: 45th)
4. Amelie (Disc 1) (2001) (IMDB rank: 26th)
5. Raging Bull (1980) (IMDB rank: 63rd)
6. Mississippi Burning (1988)
7. Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
8. Brazil (1985) (IMDB rank: 200th)
9. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) (IMDB rank: 123rd)
10. Man With A Movie Camera (1929)

So, only 3 of the films were made in the last 5 years, so the new-release-rush should have died down. Of the 5 that do appear in IMDB’s top 250 movies (which they should have higher stocks of anyway) only 2 are in the top 50. I really don’t see why after a month none of my 10 highest priority movies haven’t been sent.

Pull you socks up LoveFilm. I’m going to use it for the next month at least, after that I will have to review the situation again.

This is probably old news to most devoted Hunter S. Thompson or Johnny Depp fans, but I only just found this out.

Hunter S. Thompson, who died at 67 in February this year of a self-inflicted gun shot wound to his head, wrote The Rum Diary in 1959 although it wasn’t published until 1998. Next year a film version of The Rum Diary is due to be released in America, currently there is no date for release anywhere else in the world. It seems Johnny Depp will being playing Hunter S Thompson again starring alongside Benicio Del Torro (The Usual Suspects, 21 Grams) who was originally going to direct the film. After Del Torro withdrew in 2004 the role of director went to Bruce Robinson, writer/director of Withnail & I. I haven’t yet read The Rum Diary, but I shall make sure I do before the film is released.

Johnny Depp certainly likes to keep busy, he’s working on 3 other films at the moment, a computer game and the film of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which he plays Willy Wonka. It is coming out next month (UK release: 29th of July).

Currently I am aware of only three companies offering online DVD rental: Amazon, Blockbuster & FilmFour. Each offers to post you DVDs you want to watch, you get to keep them as long as you want then just post them back. None of them seem to offer you the latest DVDs, just some off a list you would like to see.

Personally I think I’ll stick with paying between £2 and £3 per film from the local video shop to make sure I get what I’m in the mood to watch. I’d need to be sure I’d watch 4 DVDs a month to make it worth while, I probably wouldn’t, so I’ll leave it for now.