Weekly DVD Rental News Roundup (18th April 08)

By Anna König Staff Writer Friday, 18 April 2008

Featured DVD Rental Sites This Week Read our reviews of: Lovefilm DVD Rental Games Monster Games Rental Blockbuster DVD Rental Other DVD Rental News See our other recent related DVD rental and Games rental news stories: Games Monster launches new website What's that coming over the hill? It's Games Monster Games Rental's swish, new-look website. Anna König takes a closer look at the sites new features for games renters. Is Lovefilm any good? They're clearly wearing the yellow jersey, but is DVD rental giant Lovefilm any good? We take a good look at the best and worst things about this DVD rental juggernaut. Weekly DVD Rental News Roundup (11 Apr 2008) Anna König looks back at the week's games rental and DVD rental news, including stories about Why Buy Games's introduction of more Blu Ray titles to rent, Games Monster's facebook application and games for a bargain via Games Frenzy's ebay store. Weekly DVD Rental News Roundup (04 Apr 2008) Anna König's weekly roundup of DVD rental news (and games rental news!), including CD Wow DVD Rental's free CD giveaway, Blockbuster's tribute to Denzel Washington and which DVD rental site is giving away a flat screen tv?

THIS week's DVD and Games rental news round up (quite possibly the highlight of your Friday morning!) is all about Facebook. Both Blockbuster and Games Monster have launched applications on the social networking site, and we investigate to see how they’re getting along!

LoveFilm’s Fantasy Remakes

IT would seem like there is a strong sense of déjà vu in the air this week.

The 2003 Japanese horror flick One Missed Call has been given a Hollywood makeover, and Michael Haneke has unleashed an English language remake of Funny Games, starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.

LoveFilm’s Tom Charity is paying homage to the recent remakes with a fantasy list of films he would love to see remade.

Topping his list is the 1942 classic Cassablanca, which incidentally was almost remade in the 1970’s by Francois Tuffat. Charity would like to see Bruce Willis and Demi Moore starring as Rick Blaine and IIsa Lund. Hmmmmm….

Mr. Charity also has his fingers crossed for a remake of the marathon that is Lawrence of Arabia, noting that ‘it’s too long, and just too damn big for the iPod generation.’

Charity is hoping for a more intimate approach the second time around.

Finally Charity hopes to see Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining being revamped in the near future. After all, Stephen King was never happy with Kubrick’s interpretation of his excellent novel.

Charity would recommend Frank Darabont take on the project, after his fantastic work directing The Mist. For a different interpretation of Jack Torrance, Charity would nominate Ryan Gosling.

Games Monster; Facebook Flop or Stalled Success?

LAST week we brought you the news that Games Monster (specialists in online games rental) had launched a Facebook application, allowing customers to manage and update their playlist from the comfort of Facebook.

One week on, we checked out the application to see how well it was going down with Facebook users.

Unfortunately, out of the 69 million users worldwide, only 13 have added the application to their profiles.

Even worse news for Games Monster is that out of those 13 uses, only 2 are using the application on a regular basis. That is about 0.000003% of the total Facebook population!

However the application is only a week old and its popularity is likely to rise by word of mouth.

LoveFilm’s online marketing manager Jason Norris commented to us exclusively that Lovefilm put in a lot of effort to promote their games rental packages last year and that they are “getting ready for the next step soon…”

Fighting talk there from Lovefilm. Does this mean that the battle of the Facebook applications is on the horizon…?

Blockbuster Bust Facebook

IT appears that everyone wants a slice of the Facebook pie.

While Games Monster’s application has got off to a slow start, Blockbuster DVD Rental’s Movie Clique application seems to be proving more of a hit with Facebookers.

Movie Clique lets Blockbuster’s customers add movies to their rental queues, make lists of their all time favourite films, and review films recently watched.

So far the application seems to be going down pretty well.

11 people have reviewed it, and it has been awarded 4 out of 5 stars.

35,000 people have added the application, and 350 of them are using it daily.

Maybe Games Monster could learn a thing from Blockbuster, which currently has 0.0005% of Facebookers using the application daily, compared to Games Monster’s 0.000003%.

Jesse James Still Flying High at LoveFilm

CUSTOMERS of online DVD rental giant LoveFilm are still loving Brad Pitt’s latest flick, The Assassination of Jesse James.

This is the second week running that this fantastic western has been top of the queue adds.

30 Days of Night and Stardust are also residing in the top 10 for a second week, along with the fantastic American Gangster and every little girl’s favourite Enchanted.

Russell Brand’s attempt to make cinema history doesn’t seem to be making much of an impression on LoveFilm’s customers, sliding down to number 15 this week.

However the ChooseDVDRental team DO love a bit of Brand, and are wishing him every success in his bid to crack America!

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