I didn't realize that Ride the Pink Horse was so hard to get on DVD, though like the programmer I'd been trying to find it for years and then they finally showed it on TCM.

(I realize it sounds like a porn title, but it's actually a gritty little noir that's set in Mexico. It's a movie that haunts your imagination a bit. Certain scenes and shots linger in your head.)

Barry Gifford published a great collection of reviews for B-movie noirs titled The Devil Thumbs a Ride and he was the first person to articulate to me that particular fascination for those short, cheapie noir movies like "jagged like chunks of the psyche."

In a bit of synchronicity, this is the third article I've read today talking about the problem of living in a culture where all songs and all movies are instantly available. Which, of course, we all love, but it's also had all these unintended side effects which damage institutions of culture: bookstores, record stores, film series.

I saw Simon Reynolds interviewed for his new book called Retromania and he talks about the value of boredom, how his son never has a space to daydream because he's got a stimulating environment on and available to him at all times. You don't go out and seek culture or hunt it or form relationships about finding Italian giallos from the 70s, or rare punk singles, or whatever. It just comes to you with a click, and so your attention tends to be cursory. You don't sit through a third-generation dub of a tape because you can scan through it in seconds on YouTube or a shared file.

In a way, not having things Right There made you think about them and obsess about them for years before you could get them. So you'd take a bus across town on a rainy night just to see some Seijuin Suzuki movie that didn't even have subtitles (as I did in the 90s).

And I'm not interested in the issue as a matter of fogeyism ("It was better in those days when we were deprived!") or nostalgia ("I miss the smell of record stores...") But in a non-judgmental way, just curious about how taste is formed, and culture is fomented. There seems to be the same positive effect of having structure in formal poetry, or limited resources in filmmaking which forces more interesting solutions. Limiting the palette can liberate a painter, and narrowing the scope of interest can, I suspect, focus it and make it more intense.

I can't quite imagine going back (and do remember how arduous it was to research something pre-internet, which involved much time in libraries with microfilm, or academic journals or browsing through bookstores). But there is also something deleterious to having Everything All The Time.

I predict a Noiry autumn this year.

You're in for a treat. Those are some of my favorite noirs, particularly The Killers, and Out of the Past are top ten in the canon for me. Also, I'm fond of the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake trilogy of noirs, including The Glass Key and (especially) This Gun For Hire.

Yes, I have seen at least one of the Ladd/Lake ones, but again it's been so long that I can't recall which.

In a way my post nicely ties in with yours about availabilty, David, and I do agree with a lot of those points. But I've been seeing a lot of "what's happened to boredom?" articles recently, which suggests something of a meme.

Also, it's one which apparently hasn't quite reached my kids, as I still hear "I'm booooored" reasonably often.

Heh. Coincidentally my Film Noir Collection Boxed Set arrived on Friday with 9 DVDs: The Killers, Double Indemnity, The Big Steal, Crossfire, Out of the Past, The Blue Dahlia (Region 2 FTW!), The Glass Key, This Gun for Hire and Murder My Sweet (aka Farewell My Lovely).

What a great set. I love The Killers and Out of the Past.

If you can access it there, I highly recommend the "Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir" podcast by Clute/Edwards on iTunes. It's from a few years ago, but all 50 episodes are still free on iTunes here. They have an episode each for The Killers, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, and Murder My Sweet.

Drop Everything; Saw one yesterday. A Bronx Tale Also, for much of the movie, the kid's high-school-aged

In a bit of synchronicity, this is the third article I've read today talking about the problem of living in a culture where all songs and all movies are instantly available. Which, of course, we all love, but it's also had all these unintended side effects which damage institutions of culture: bookstores, record stores, film series.

I've been writing up a blog post (for work) about this very thing. I'm also referencing Bowling Alone which makes many of the same points.

I've been writing up a blog post (for work) about this very thing.

It's in the air, right? I really think we're undergoing a huge sea-change in how we receive culture and we really don't understand the implications. But we're starting to see some of the downside along with all the positives.

Some of the articles about DC's reboot have noted that they'll also make download versions available on the day of release, and what's going to happen to comic book stores then? Those of you who had holds at your store and talked to the clerks and browsed for stuff for your nieces and nephews and got cool buttons for The Umbrella Academy. That's going to be in jeopardy just as record stores and book stores have become scarce.

Wasn't it a Patton Oswalt piece a few months ago about how everything available all the time ruined being a geek or some shit?

About movies, specifically, a bit of Ebert's recent column for Newsweek/the Daily Beast gets at it also.

Ebert laments the communal joy of going to a movie theater to see a great movie (vice watching quality TV by yourself) and a commenter points out that Ebert's movie-going experience is not the usual.

A lot of folks would rather watch a movie by themselves than risk the shared experience happen with jerks (like the Alamo Drafthouse girl); I'm not sure, but it's possible that hiveminds like the Buffistas will spring up around watch-and-post or other types of communal experience.

These will still be curated, though - the magic of meeting new people, being exposed to new stuff? Crazy random happenstance? Not sure how that is going to happen.