 |  | By Bruce Stevens Staff Writer Friday, 25 January 2008 |
IT’S a sombre affair this week, as Bruce Stevens rounds up the latest DVD rental and games rental news and looks at how some DVD rental sites are treating the death of actor Heath Ledger, while on a brighter note PostaDVD shows off its new design.
Lovefilm pays tribute to Heath Ledger
IN a touching piece by Lovefilm’s Tom Charity, Australian film star Heath Ledger is lauded as an actor who “lived his life in pursuit of the creative expression and artistic truth”.
Former TimeOut film editor Charity, who says he met Ledger at the release of The Patriot in 2000, describes the 28 year old actor – who was found dead this week in his New York apartment – as both humble and unassuming.
“He impressed me as a serious, centred young actor, and it was already obvious that he was going be a big star,” says Charity.
Charity’s article draws reference to the many fine films that Ledger was involved with, including The Dark Knight, Monster’s Ball, A Knight’s Tale and Brokeback Mountain, and links directly to them in the Lovefilm catalogue so that you can rent them now.
And Blockbuster DVD Rental adds their Heath Ledger obituary...
AS you’d expect from the other big player in the world of UK DVD rental, Blockbuster was also quick off the mark in producing a reference-filled obituary to the late young star.
This time Blockbuster’s Mal Simons writes a far more in-depth tribute to Ledger and somehow manages to mention – and link to – what feels like every single film Ledger was ever involved with.
A more cynical person than me would suspect that Blockbuster is taking advantage of the Heath Ledger tragedy to push rentals of his films, but we feel this is something that the public would want and Blockbuster has done well to highlight some of his lesser known roles which fans may now, tragically, take more interest in.
PostaDVD gets site design overhaul
WE’VE always been a fan of the smaller players socking it to the big boys of the DVD rental industry in the UK, so we’re thrilled to see that instead of lying down and whimpering, sites like PostaDVD have stepped up a gear and redesigned the navigation and face of their site.
The new PostaDVD design is a tasty mix of blue and purple on a field of crisp white. The site is not super-fast, but it is easy to navigate around and it definitely looks nicer than before.
A new addition to the PostaDVD service is the ability for customers to earn loyalty points by being active members. For example, simply returning a DVD (which is not too hard!) will earn 1.5 loyalty points, while writing an accepted review will earn you 0.5 points. Once you reach 250 points (ie. write, er, 500 reviews) then you can cash them in for a £20 voucher!
Good to see the little guys realising that it’s the little things that count.
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