$0.53 Movie

So I was hanging out with Tania yesterday and we decided to rent a movie. For some reason I had remembered a movie I saw in class one year at UCLA (for a GE cluster about artificial intelligence and evolutionary design), The Thirteenth Floor. In my opinion, it's very underrated in general because it came out the same year as the Matrix, and the synopsis / theater trailer made it seem like a matrix-copycat movie, when in fact it's quite different in many regards. In any case, it's a really good movie I felt like seeing again, and Tania had never seen it, so we went to the local Hollywood Video store to go rent it.

It's been what seems like ages since I've actually rented a movie. In college I tended to lean toward the "see it in theaters or just download it instead" route, or even just buying the movie instead. After all, why pay 5-6 bucks to rent a movie when it only costs a little more to see a movie in the theaters, and only, say, twice that much to buy it permanently. I mean, honestly who needs a movie for 5 days anyway? They should really just charge 1/5th as much and give it to you for one day. In any case, we finally find the movie and head to the cashier and Tania signs up with them, since we're near her place in Redlands, so it's her local video renting place we're at.

After the girl at the counter finished registering Tania in the system or whatever, she turns to us and says "53 cents." We both stood there for a second. I said something to the effect of "huh?" and the girl repeated that it was $0.53 to rent the movie. I pull some change out of my pocket. "So I'll buy the movie if you buy dinner," I said to Tania with a grin as I gave the girl two quarters and three pennies for our rental.

It's not like it's always that cheap there, but they were having some kind of special promotion that day for really cheap rentals. Noramlly it would have been 2-3 bucks. Still, not as bad as I remembered. Maybe video rental places finally realize not many people will pay 1/2 the price of the movie to see it once and not while in the theater.