Montreal Movie Collector's Internet Resource Guide

At the behest of the person who owns this domain, I am forced against my will to do something rather distasteful: talk about myself. Ah, well. So be it.

My name is Eric (last name withheld for security reasons). I am (age withheld for security reasons), and am currently a Computer Science major at Concordia, with a minor in Professional writing. I am also a bit of a movie nut, so when the teacher told us to make a site about something you know about I decided my site should be movie based. 

I have a movie collection of over a thousand films. But in interests of total honesty I should point out that about 150 of them are in a "50 Martial Arts Films" set, "50 Sci-Fi Invasion " set,  and a "50 Sci-Fi Classic Films" set. But that's still a lot of films, and sets like those do fit in with the whole "Cult/B-Movie" nature of this site. I've been collecting films since before some people in my class were born. 

My entertainment setup is a PS3 & Wii plugged into a recently acquired Vizio E3D320VX 32" 3D TV. It was on sale at Walmart in the States for $300, and it is sweeeet. You can find it here, although if you want it you'll have to go to the States to get it. It uses "Passive 3D", which basically means it uses the cheep 3D glasses you get at movie theaters instead of the $70 glasses you have to buy at somewhere like futureshop. The only problem with it so far is that the built in Wi-Fi is too advanced for the internet router I got from Bell. But I can now watch the Loki / Hulk debate from The Avengers in 3D.

And that's about it. If you have any questions leave them in the comments section and I will answer them if the teacher says I can get extra marks for them.

Note: In my mind, a Dystopian future is one where the world is still working, albiet badly. A Post-Apocalyptic future is one where the world has gone straight to heck. "Battlefield Earth" is Post-Apocalyptic, "Tank Girl" is Dystopian. They're both terrible so they won't be appearing on any lists.

Other Note: If I haven't seen the movie, I probably won't include it on the list. "A Handmaid's Tale" may be awesome, but I haven't seen it so it's out.

Honourable Mention - Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

This one gets an honourable mention because of its  terrifying, nightmarish vision of what webbrowsers will be like in the future. You have to put on 3D glasses and gloves, and when you go to a site you fly across a virtual reality vista instead of the web page just opening. The horror!

Number 5 - Death Race 2000 (1975)

This movie is goofy fun. Picture a world where the United States has been taken over by a fascist government and the the population are kept pacified by reality television. Crazy, right? And the popular show at the moment is a cross country race where the object is to rack up points by hitting pedestrians. And the villian is a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone.

Number 4 - THX 1138 (1971)

Way back in 1971, a twenty-six year old director named George Lucas decided to make a movie about repressive government that used medication to separate society from its humanity. It showed a bleak future with occasional glimpses of black humour, and so it bombed at the box office.

Number 3 - Soylent Green (1973)

A police officer in the future investigates a murder, and gets embroiled in an government conspiracy. Trivia Note: The "futuristic" video game that one of the witnesses has in her apartment is "Computer Space". It was created by the people who would later make Pong, and was the first commercial video game. Although it would normally be in bars, not people's apartments. We can only assume that the witness is a retro-gaming collector.

Number 2 - Metropolis (1927)

This is a difficult film to sum up. The rich people live in high rise penthouses, the poor people live and work at street level. The son of the most powerful person in the city decides to go slumming. Meanwhile, his father and mad scientist create a robot duplicate of the leader of the poor people in order to prevent their uprising. 

Much like the matrix, nobody can be told what this film is... you have to see it for yourself. And remember as you're watching it that it's nearly 100 years old. Pre Computers, pre-just about everything. And some of the cityscapes shown in it wouldn't be matched until our Number 1 film.

Number 1- Blade Runner (1981)

My gosh this is a pretty movie. Flying cars, atmospheric rain, neon as far as the eye can see. This movie was made by Ridley Scott back when he was young and crazy enough to insist that they have warning messages inside the futuristic parking meters warning people that tampering with them would result in a lethal electric shock. This movie is densely packed with audio/visual data.

Oh, right. Here's the plot. Harrison Ford plays a bounty hunter tracking down a group of renegade synthetic humans who are on loose on 2021 Los Angeles. 

HMV Megastore (120 St. Catherine West,  Peel / St. Catherine's)

At the bottom of the pile is HMV. They have reasonable selection of movies, although their Sci-Fi and Horror sections are tiny. Their Blu-Ray selection is jammed into one corner of the store, and it is not even organized by genre. Additionally, if you go to www.hmv.ca their prices rarely match the store price, and its "check (store) availability" is usually overly optimistic.  In addition, their prices are quite high, especially compared to Amazon. But, due to the number of movie stores in Montreal, it is the fifth best store in Montreal.

Archambault (500 St Catherine East, Berri / St. Catherine's)

Archambault is a Quebec chain of music and movie stores, and the one on Berri is the largest Archambault store in the Montreal area. The ground floor is music, the basement is movies, the 2^nd (and up) floors are music and instruments. The prices are good and the selection is reasonable. You can see what they have at http://www.archambault.ca.

Movie Land (1616 Sainte-Catherine West, in the Faubourg building near Concordia)

Starting the spring of 2012, Movie Land (a huge video rental place) started selling off about 80% of their movies. They still have a fair number of them on sale, although most of it is now discount bin stuff like the films you would find at inetvideo. However, there is still some good stuff if you look.

iNetvideo.ca (977 St-Catherine West, underneath ScotiaBank theater)

Imagine a DVD discount bin that you could walk around in. The sort of DVDs you might find in the discount bin at Zellers, but in some sort of order and not in a random pile. That is what this store is like. The only downside to the store, other than the lack of new product, is that the DVDs are organized alphabetically and by price. One section of the store is the Ten-dollar DVDs; another is the two for $15 DVDs. Therefore, even if a movie is in the store you might have trouble finding it. But where else in Montreal are you going to find the 30^th Anniversary edition of Network for five dollars along side "The Thing with Two Heads"?

They also have a website at www.inetvideo.ca.  And if you're into anime, the website has an unintentional flashback to the 1990's. They have a section for "Japanimation", and in there you'll find "Heavy Metal". More importantly, if you find something on the site that is not in the store they will have delivered to the store in about a week or two.

Boite Noire (376 Mont Royal)

This is a genuinely good store. It is not at the top of the list because there are so few stores left in Montreal. The prices are good. The selection is good. And try to find another store that has in their front display a set of German Silent Horror Movies... and a collector's edition of Deep Throat. Their website is http://www.boitenoire.com/.

"One-stop shopping. Everything you need, right at your fingertips."

www.amazon.com is like the world's largest shopping mall. www.ebay.com is the world's largest flea market. No discussion of collecting anything would be complete without mentioning Amazon and EBay. If you can't find what you're looking for on either of these two sites, it may not exist (in a legitimate form).

One of the nicest things about Amazon is the product reviews. For example, on the "Roger Corman Sword and Sorcery collection", a reviewer gives a detailed breakdown of what was edited out of "Deathstalker 2" for this release of the film. On the other hand, you have to be careful that the review you're reading is actually for the film you're looking at. You could be looking at a high-def release of "Plan 9 from Outer Space", and the review is talking how poor the picture quality. Look closer and you might notice that the review is actually for an earlier DVD release of the film, which Amazon has pulled up by mistake.

Some tips on using this resource:

• With Amazon, if you live in Montreal and might not be at home to receive the delivery, don't bother with the express shipping. The standard shipping is about as fast. Your delivery will sit at the post office until you are ready to collect it, rather than having to arrange with the courier company to drop it off at a different time.
• When you pick it up at the post office, you probably will have to pay import fees on it. Bear this in mind when you're figuring out how much you will save shopping there.
• There are different versions of Amazon in different countries. So if you can't find something at the main site you might find it at the Canadian site at Amazon.ca or the British site at Amazon.co.uk . Be forwarned, because DVDs and Blu-Rays are usually Region Coded, a DVD/Blu-Ray purchased outside North America might be unplayable in Canada. 

The Ackermonster Lives!

http://famousmonsters.com/ is the website for "Famous Monsters of Filmland", and is a great source of movie news and reviews or both current and classic movies.

Once upon a time, there was a movie fanatic named Forest J Ackerman. In 1958, he started a magazine dedicated to movie monsters, which he called "Famous Monsters of Filmland." The magazine ran until 1983 and it influenced generations of film geeks. He literally created the phrase "Sci Fi". A new publisher re-launched the magazine as a website in 2008 and as a print magazine in 2010. The new incarnation still deals with monster movies, monster toys, monster comics, and pretty much anything with monsters or sci-fi in it.

The main thing this website has going for it is that it is regularly updated. There are other websites that may have movie reviews, but this site is different in that it usually also has current movie news along with the reviews. It also has much better writing than the "Ain't It Cool" website.

"Free movies! Legally!"

The Internet archive, located at www.archive.org , is a website dedicated to storing distributing digital data. In addition to an archive of the internet, it also includes a massive amount of public domain information, including public domain movies. Where this concerns us is that many B-Movies / Cult movies are in the public domain. When you see one of those 100 movies for $20 sets, chances are many of them are in the public domain. Even films like "Night of the Living Dead" are in the public domain, as are "Return of Kung Fu Dragon", "Guy With The Secret Kung Fu", "Vengeance of the Zombies", "Bloody Pit of Horror", and "Zontar the Thing from Venus". The main page for the movies is http://archive.org/details/feature_films

Because they are public domain, you can freely download them without worrying about legal implications. Moreover, the free price it is very handy for the movie lover on a budget. Even if they don't have the full movie, they probably have a trailer for the movie, which can give you an idea if you want to waste your time tracking down the film.

Some tips on using this resource:

• If you are looking for a specific film, it may be in the archive under a different title. This is especially common for public domain films. You could try using the internet movie database at www.imdb.com to see if the film has any other alternate titles.
• A film might be uploaded to the archive several times, each with a different video quality. Check around to make sure you are getting the best copy.