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The bad news is that the last video store in town is going out of business.

The good news is that they are having a going-out-of-business sale. For the low-low sum of about fifty bucks, I picked up:

• Tremors
• Hard-Boiled
• The Evil Dead
• [REC]
• The Hunt For Red October
• The Shining
• Robocop
• The Descent
• Zombieland on Blu-ray

Frailty and Event Horizon were also in my hands at various points, but I ended up putting both back on the shelves. I’m sort of regretting the decision about Event Horizon now. It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but I have always had a soft spot for it in my heart, in the same place that I keep Starship Troopers.

I will admit that I feel somewhat conflicted about this haul. On the one hand, the last video store in town is going out of business, and the first and only time I step in the place, I am a vulture picking at its corpse. On the other hand, I got some pretty great movies for not much money.

It seems like video stores are the new independent book stores—local businesses that are being run off the road by big corporate villains. In this particular case, the store was a Movie Gallery (formerly Hollywood Video), and the entire chain is being liquidated across the country as part of its parent company’s bankruptcy filing. Lest I take any solace in the fact that this isn’t a case of the local independent shop shutting down because I didn’t give them my business, the company points to Netflix (and other similar services) as the primary reason for its bankruptcy.

Netflix, of course, is where I have been getting all my movies for the last 5-6 years. The selection and convenience was just too good to pass up, and when I *did* feel guilty and go into an actual video store, I was always disappointed. I suppose the worry is that, once all the bricks-and-mortar video stores are gone, Netflix will be free to reduce its selection, up its fees, and trim back the services it offers. However, by that logic, I guess I should have kept shopping at Movie Tyme Rentals on the south side of Indianapolis instead of going to Blockbuster for their much bigger selection.

Alright, enough conscience soothing—I should go watch [REC] or something.