$20 project: The pure joy of film

X sells DVDs, most of them rare and classical films, to his regular customers. He doesn’t have a shop anywhere in Chennai. He operates mostly by word of mouth. His customers are assured of two things: The DVDs that X sells are of a certain quality both in their content – films and documentaries – and the quality of the DVD itself. This means that not only do you get good films to watch simply by approaching X, but you are also assured that the DVDs play smoothly.

I decided to buy from X for my $20 project. This simply means that I spend Rs 800 from own pocket and then blog about that. With little time that I had, this is was the easiest project I could come up with.

For Rs 800, I get 10 DVDs. Here are the films I bought.

1. Blue
2. Jules and Jim
3. Day for Night
4. F for Fake
5. Nights of Cabira
6. Annie Hall
7. Children of Heaven
8. Uthiri Pookal
9. Palaivanacholai
10. Oomai Vizhigal

My choices are based on what X had with him on that particular day and are not indicative of their quality. Many of the films, in my humble opinion, are excellent. There are few Tamil films because X doesn’t sell that many and doesn’t have a wide choice to offer.

10 Comments so far

  1. chander (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 10:08 am

    i don’t reckon X(i hv no idea who u might b refering to) is the only person who’s doing this,there quite a few dealers in chennai who deal in world class movies…korean,iranian and the like..i know a certain Y for instance…

    for all we know X might be equal to Y..IF the X you are refering to is a ‘S’…which of course disproves my statement…:)


  2. Arun (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 10:20 am

    Is X selling actual DVD copies, or just avi files downloaded from the net written on DVDs? Could someone tell me about these alphabet dealers? I’d love to deal with them – there are quite a few movies I’d like in DVD format for the commentaries and other goodies… Does this still qualify as word of mouth?


  3. Balaji (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 11:45 am

    Interesting. The non-Tamil ones sound like Criterion Copies; I am very interested in getting my hands on some of these. I own many original Criterion DVDs, would like to see if I can complete my collection. Pls drop me a line w/ contacts of Mr. X (or Y or Z) – if an only if these are copies of Criterion, Fox Lorber or Kino originals. Muchos Gracias, Nanri.


  4. Subbu (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 11:51 am

    Can You mail me or jus put X’s contact number… I dont mind spending 800 bucks for 10 good films…


  5. sanju (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 1:28 pm

    I need DVD’s …..pls email me details


  6. donthecat (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 3:59 pm

    Nandu, is this X actually selling legal copies ?

    If he isn’t, then I request you to pull this post down, sine MetBlog’s credibility cant be at stake.


  7. donthecat (unregistered) on November 26th, 2007 @ 3:59 pm

    Nandu, is this X actually selling legal copies ?

    If he isn’t, then I request you to pull this post down, since MetBlog’s credibility cant be at stake.


  8. Sanjeeva (unregistered) on November 27th, 2007 @ 1:18 pm

    I would like to advice caution when dealing with issues like this which could have potentially troublesome consequences.


  9. Govar (unregistered) on November 27th, 2007 @ 10:07 pm

    If all you want is movie DVDs for 80 bucks, head to the plaza directly below Gemini Flyover. I don’t recollect it’s name – its the complex with the bunch of electronic shops inside. The ‘blossoms’ DVD store there will give you English, Russian, japanese, chinese, arabic – you name it for 100 bucks. You get those for 80 bucks since I’ve become regular. It’s a shop – they really don’t run out of good movies… they’ve got bundles of these.


  10. Vivek (unregistered) on November 29th, 2007 @ 9:24 pm

    Is chennai.metblogs.com officially promoting PIRACY?



Terms of use | Privacy Policy | Content: Creative Commons | Site and Design © 2009 | Metroblogging ® and Metblogs ® are registered trademarks of Bode Media, Inc.