Lovefilm: Faulty Rentals, Guaranteed.

The idea of lovefilm.com and their online rental service is a great one. They send you DVD's, and when you're done with them, you send them back. This part works wonderfully. The part that doesn't work so well is when you put the DVD's in your player and attempt to watch them.
It can be quite exciting trying to guess when the rented DVD will freeze. Will it be whilst navigating the menu system, will it be in the opening minutes - or will it be just before the film reaches its climax? This is the genius of lovefilm; you never know when the disc will freeze.

Lovefilm offer a variety of discs. Most common is the 'Scratchtastic' disc. When Lovefilm order their stock, before sending discs to members - they invite four year old children to sit in their warehouse. They supply them with knives, scissors, and anything else that may be able to produce interesting scratched designs on the data side of the disc. The kids then get a few hours to make a ridiculous mess, scratching up the discs as much as possible. It is believed that 75% of all discs posted by the online rental service, LoveFilm, are in fact Scratchtastic.

Another popular disc type is the 'Liquid Disc'. Not only will Lovefilm send you a latest release; but the disc will also be discoloured due to a strange dried liquid on the underside. Potential liquids include tea, orange juice, and salad dressing. It is rumoured that Lovefilm invite top chefs from around the country into their DVD disc storehouse and allow them to experiment with adding various sauces to the surface of the discs. You may not be able to play them in your DVD player, but they will sure taste nice.

The 'Smashomatic' DVD was once a rare thing to find - but due to increased popularity, Lovefilm now commonly send out DVD's which have many cracks and are occasionally smashed up in various ways. Lovefilm promise that they check all discs before sending them out. But the question remains: how thoroughly do they check them? If a disc looks playable, do they immediately make a crack and urinate on it, or do they hope it will get damaged whilst passing through the postal system?

My current recommendation is: do not sign up for a lovefilm.com rental account. Lovefilm is a wonderful idea, and they have an incredible selection of DVD's available. On the plus side, they do have a good customer service team who always offer to replace DVD's and may even discount you for the following month if you've had consistent problems. However, the quality of DVD's are constantly getting WORSE. Of course, members of the public are often terrible at looking after them; but the fact that someone called Joe in Manchester has to put his grubby finger prints all over a disc should not affect the service I receive on the other side of the country. It's time for LoveFilm to seriously look at ways to improve their discs and provide a more consistent quality of films to their ever-growing base of customers who have made them the UK's leading online DVD rental service.

I am CONSTANTLY having DVD's freeze and skip; I rarely get to finish a film received from Lovefilm. What is your experience with their service?

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Planes, Auschwitz, Nowa Huta, A Short Story & UK Elections.

I am on a plane, flying from Krakow to London. I have no particular reason to blog, but then, I figured it'd be good to blog for no reason like a thirty five year old housewife in Minnesota blogging about her conversation with a man in a clothes store. You know the kind. Or maybe the real reason I'm blogging is to avoid an article I'm meant to be writing for a magazine. Planes are not the time to be doing real work, especially when listening to Augustana, and talking you.

Krakow is a fascinating place. On the one hand, it's a sweet old town full of picturesque buildings and lovely people. On the other hand, it's still dealing with it's complex history. I was in Krakow for five days. I visited Auschwitz and saw the terrifying scale the Nazi's went to towards exterminating the Jewish race. I visited Nowa Huta in East Krakow, a town built by the communist government surrounding the steel mill there. Communism in Poland ended in 1989, and now-- much of the town is out of work and poor. The older folk long for things how they were, the younger people turn to crime. Everything about Nowa Huta is grey and depressing. The oppression of Communism is still present in strange ways. I was also privileged to be on this journey through Polish Communism with a guy from Belgium, who spends four months a year in Cuba. He had a lot of amazing insight into the situation there which was really eye opening!

We saw a field which was advertised by the Communist government as a holiday place with a beautiful lake with space to put up tents. The lake was a piece of propaganda magic; there was no lake. Many citizens around Poland believed there was, and even travelled there for holidays.

It's funny how people so often say, "don't worry, it's in the past." It's normally said by people with privileges, people who are not the oppressed. You might hear "Stop going on about the Holocaust, it's in the past, what has it got to do with me?" We've all come across attitudes like this. If Poland teaches you anything, it's that history is always present with us and there is a lot to learn from it.

My time is Poland came only weeks after President Lech Kaczynski was killed whilst en-route to Russia to commemorate the Katyn tragedy. I arrived after his funeral but there were many other services taking place for people who were on the plane. The pride and passion the Poles have for their nation is incredible to see. A nation invaded and oppressed by the Nazi's, followed by half a century of communistic rule... It's incredible how strong a sense of individuality you get being there. Poland is Poland, you can't mistake it for anything else.

There are still things to be answered about Katyn. Bodies to be found, acts to be accounted for and compensation sought, more than 70 years later. The disaster on the 10th of April with President Lech Kaczynski may have been a one off accident, But it feels like just another in a long line of Traumas to hit this wonderful nation. His body now lies in Wawel castle, Krakow.

I'm listening to Van Morrison and Sinead O'Connor sing 'Have I Told You Lately' I just realized; in the process of avoiding writing an article about Krakow, I've written extensively about the topic here.

I have decided to drastically alter my sleep patterns. I don't sleep well, I have no pattern--- but it's getting to the point where I realize, life isn't about lying in until 11am on a Tuesday. I am going to get up early, consistently-- and I think it will force me into having earlier nights and in the process my days will be more productive by taking control of my sleep rather than my sleep controlling me, or pulling the random crap that it often does.

Here's a short story I started but got bored of. I do this a lot. I could publish a book of single paragraph things written for no reason, for nobody to read. So here's the most recent:

The girl buried herself under a sea of tasks and problems as a way of convincing herself that life had meaning. She always wanted to believe the friendships in her life were special and that her part in others lives was profound. It was the only way she could distract herself from the fact that deep down, she knew only too well. The fact was: she was ordinary. Completely ordinary. Pains in her feet, an ache in her heart and a frown on her face; she was just like everyone else - and all she could do was reject this knowledge.

The UK elections are pissing me off. They're all bad mouthing each other and launching fresh new promises each day. It's all so ridiculous and all we can do is go along for the ride and vote for whomever seems the least fake come the end. I'm still planning to vote for Jed Bartlet.

Okay, time to stop writing. And here's one more picture from Krakow.

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20 Word Film Blogathon TODAY!

The task: In NO MORE than 20 words, explain WHY you LOVE the MOVIES!

Everyone who takes part will have their entry linked to from the Facebook Fan Page!

The Blogathon will run for 24 hours. Starting NOW. Get blogging!

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Visiting Oscar Schindler's Factory

Oscar Schindler's factory is difficult to find and pretty much in the middle of nowhere.


We got there, and it was completely closed. Apparently they are doing some preservation/rebuilding work.




However, I am not one to let a few fences and pinned up notices stop me from doing what I feel I have a right to do: explore history. So I did a small piece of trespassing, and took these pictures.







What I'm looking at, I don't really know. Had I not known that this was Schindler's factory, I wouldn't have even had a second glance at it.



Anyways, this is the famous Schindler factory as it looks today, at least in the eyes of a trespassing iPhone.

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Facebook Fan Page

Kid In The Front Row now has a Facebook Fan Page, and I'd really appreciate it if you could join it. The page has become another great way of building a community of people who love the films I love, with posts getting comments on the fan page as well as on here.

I will be scrapping the Google Follow function on this site soon and introducing an email subscription service instead. However, in terms of communication between readers and contributors (i.e guest writers, other bloggers), the page is becoming a great way to keep in touch.

Please join and invite some friends too (using the 'suggest to friends' function).

Join the page here:

Kid In The Front Row Fan Page

Thanks :)

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