There's a silence surrounding me...

Apt.

Previously I mentioned Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" had been released in a box set, complete with surround sound, high resolution version of the album. Conveniently priced at the rate of "a complete frigging rip off". 

Out of the blue, they then released said album in surround on a stand-alone DVD, which I confidently ordered from the Pink Floyd website. Expectations were high. 

A fortnight later they cancelled my order, announcing they weren't pressing any more discs. That was the end of that. Of course all this did was piss me and others off and provide an immediately lucrative new product for ebay skelpers (or is it scalpers? I think I prefer the former) to profiteer from. It is now possible to buy this single disc for more than the already extortionately priced deluxe box set. 

Either way, and I know they don't need the money, Pink Floyd lose. They don't get a sale from me and the others who wanted the disc, they don't get any additional cash from the skelpers, and they end up just forcing those who wanted to buy the thing, to investigate the deep recesses of the internet in the off-chance an anticipatory back-up might appear. And who knows what else they might find, that they could have alternatively bought? 

It is utter folly. 

This is to certified that this post has been passed

So I took advantage (if "advantage" is the right word) of a discounted subscription* to Empire, the self-styled "World's Leading Movie Magazine". There's £18 I'm not getting back. It has a routine it slavishly sticks to; preview the movie, then ramp up the hype until, in the the month of its release, they print a series of oleaginous interviews with the director and the "stars", before delivering a four star review, which will be revised upwards or downwards depending on how the wind has blown in the intervening months between its cinematic and home video release. Interspersed between the emptiness are cuddly, thumbs aloft, yet somnolent interviews where never a critical word is issued or a pointed question is asked, "funny lists" and retrospectives of films they now pretend they liked.  

And repeat until the Universe is a dilute gaseous stew of decaying protons 

 

*They produce a "Limited Edition Collectors Cover" magazine especially for subscribers. It usually features a photoshopped PR still from the film they've just spent the last couple of months plugging. They are marvellous. No. Wait. That's wrong. What's the opposite of "marvellous?"