BobO'Link

My issue is that they are charging *more* for a former rental than *new* titles! If they'd price the rentals at $3 or less I'd pick up a few, but for $5... I can get 'em new for that price so why bother with a rental?

jwstl

Because the former rentals are relatively new releases.

BobO'Link

Those arrived here this morning. Several you mention were not on the rack *but* I also saw a couple of employees digging through the display (a 2 sided cardboard affair). One had a copy of "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans". I found no more of that one on the display.

I saw:
"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" (1 each FS and WS)
"Forbidden Kingdom"
"Quantum of Solace"
"Cloverfield"
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" (Brendon Frasier - 1 copy)
"Blades of Glory" (had to laugh as WM can't unload this one at $3 for new copies)
"Semi-Pro"
"Incredible Hulk" (newest one)

Picked up: none (see above).

valhalla7

Weighing in on the Herzog & Godard box set prices. Two weeks ago when I first found them, they were $2 each. Last week, stumbled upon another Godard, price was now raised to $5. Same store. So, both prices are out there.

Also, my 3 pack of the Bronx is Burning contained the bonus Walmart disc, just said 3 disc on the front, nothing special. Time to make another Big Lots run tonight in different store, c'mon Incubus (sound off shaking dice).

BobO'Link

Plus the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" BL is selling is S1/P1 - *half* the first season. WM has this same half-season set in a regular keep-case, also $5.

g

I found only 1 pack with incubus and had to buy some crap movies to get it. too bad I couldn't find a good package with it.

Quatermass

A ton of stuff at the Midwest City, OK store tonight.

Got 3 $3 3-packs
1. ESPN:"Derek Jeter", "Barry Bonds","Bronx is Burning" (3 disc+Walmart bonus disc)
2. "The Intruder","Voice","Muslims Against Jihad/Islam vs Islamists" (propaganda double feature)
3. "Strings","Tarnation","Incubus"(Shatner!!) - they also had another movie called "Incubus" for $3
that was not the Shatner Esperanto version, but the one in the 3 pack definitely is.
also got
HomeRun Derby Vol 1 1959 $3
Get Shorty Collectors Edition (2-disc slipcase) $3

They had a lot of ESPN 3 packs, mostly the same collections, and a lot of 3-movie packs but there were only about 4 configurations and they were all the same. No Hard-Boiled or Breathless or other art house stuff except "Incantato" which was bundled with two crappy looking direct-to-video horror films. I should have bought that one and the sports set with "Black Magic" and just given away the other films in the set. I probably won't even watch the Jeter and Bonds discs but maybe someone will want them at Goodwill.
No new $5 used discs yet, but we're running about a week behind.
Also got 2 books "Exquisite Corpse" about the Black Dahlia murder and "What Goes Up" about the stock market crash for .50 cents each.

bobwil54

Does anyone know whats on the Walmart Bonus Disc for Bronx is Burning? Is this in all the 3 disc sets or does it say on the cover? Thanks

darkhawk

I only bought:

Kate & Alley S1 (only 6 episodes)

Gatherer

I bought a bunch of former rental DVDs over the past few months directly from Hollywood Video/Movie Gallery (both in-person and online), and I think about 65-75% of them look like new or nearly so, most of the rest are still pretty good (some non-worrisome scratches, the amount of wear I had expected most of them to have), and only about 5-10% have a potentially-worrisome amount of scratches (the amount of wear the rental-paranoid people expect most of them to have). I watched all the way through the worrisome ones right away, and the result was that only 1% of my former rental purchases actually had any problems playing (on my particular player, at least; I hear some players are less tolerant than others).

So unless you or your player can't stand any scratches at all, it definitely is a great way to save money. Overall average pre-tax cost per title for my HWV shopping was about $2.75! Even if 10% of them had problems playing for me, that would only increase the effective average cost for the good ones to $3.03. All things I like/wanted, not just random "at least it's cheap" stuff. All with proper cover art, too (they did have some that didn't have the cover art, but there weren't a lot and I avoided those). (I got many $1.50ish ones, averaged against some that I bought earlier at higher-but-still-cheap prices because they were more at risk of being sold faster.)

Former rentals that end up being resold at other stores such as Big Lots likely have all the worrisome ones culled out before they're redistributed, further increasing the success rate.

However, with the recent surge in "Rental Exclusive" versions with all the extra features stripped out, former rentals may be much less attractive purchases in the future for 2009/2010-onward releases , only acceptable to people who don't mind that and only want to watch the movie.

MrSmearkase

/\ Yeah, I haven't had any problems with PV discs so far either, other than filing stickers on the spine of the artwork. The only problem I see with Big Lots' $5 price point on these titles is that many of them can be found cheaper at a rental store, like Blockbuster's 5 for $20 sale. Of course, if you only have you're heart set on one title, that's another story.

Agreed, there are a few WB titles that I want to pick up, but I'll wait until the retail price drops in order to have the special features.

hasslein

The Wal-Mart disc has two of the features that are on disc five of the five disc set.

1. The Bronx is Burning Anecdotes
2. The Handshake Controversy

The only way to tell if its in there is by weight. If you have the five disc you don't need it.

bobwil54

Thanks for letting me know.

ElleSol

I finally found the 2-disc "Get Shorty", but both discs are disc 1. No point in trying to exchange it since it's the only copy I've seen there. Guess I'll just have to look on the bright side and figure it's better to have 2 discs of the feature film and no extras than 2 discs of extras and no movie.

Brian T

One movie in the three packs that I haven't seen mentioned here is the Korean fantasy-action picture THE RESTLESS, easily one of the best of many such movies churned out by the country over the past decade.

bobwil54

Found this today: Margaret Cho Collection (I'm the One That I Want / Notorious C.H.O. / Revolution)
and also noticed that some of the Dirty Sanchez 3pks had barf bags not if thats included in all of them.

BobO'Link

I just opened my 2-disc copy. Same results as you. Both disks are labeled "Feature Film". As I never watch "extras" (life's too short and the unwatched pile is too big) it doesn't bother me. I'd imagine all copies at BL are the same. Any one else see this? Anyone get the "Bonus Disk"?

Drake

I just double checked mine and it's reads Special Features.

Quatermass

Same here. I also popped it in the player just to be double-dog sure. For a second it looked like the feature film disc, but then I saw the Special Features menu.

After reading some of the stuff others are finding, I was compelled to go back to my BigLots tonight since I felt I didn't do a thorough search last night . I didn't see anything new EXCEPT... I found a lone copy of the 2-Disc Centennial Edition of Chinatown. Don't know how I missed that. These were showing up in some places a couple of months ago. Back then, I settled for the Special Edition, which I never opened, so I might try to take it back.

mike07

Just opened mine, and see Disc 1: "Feature Film" and Disc 2: "Special Features".

MooMooMooMoo

Spoke with several stores today. They are continuing to roll out the $5 previewed "Father's Day Assortment" quite heavily, at least one store is getting a second batch of them.

JohnIan

Should anybody run into it. I recommend "Strings" packed with those three DVDs for $3.00 bundles. Watched it today. Impressive.

MooMooMooMoo

Regarding the "pre-viewed", perhaps part of my bad attitude is from seeing so many trashed Net Flix dvd's. I also feel the same very negative way about scratches that some others here do about punches/slices in the case, which other then some of the GIANT Warner slices don't bother me at all.

CVB

At the Casselberry FL location, I saw the following:

Mean Streets special edition ( Martin Scorsese - WIDEscreen - in keepcase )

A bunch of Dirty Harry movies ( all in keepcases - not the old versions in snapcases )

Also saw a bunch of Batman movies ( all in keepcases )

I think all of these had five dollar price stickers on them

illennium

Living in NYC, I don't get to go to Big Lots except when I'm out of town. Today was one of those days, so I got:

The Science of Sleep (Gondry) $3
Art School Confidential (Zwigoff) $3
Diner / Liberty Heights (Levinson) $3
Funny Games (Haneke) $3
L'Enfant (Dardenne) $3
The Butcher Boy (Jordan) $3
Henry Fool (Hartley) $3
Grizzly Man (Herzog) $3
Duck Season $3

Also got something called The Unknown Lives of Great Comedians (Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers, Jonathan Winters, Jimmy Durante) for $5. It's a 4-disc set put out by Wellspring.