The Boston Globe put up a good editorial on the Blockbuster bankruptcy case this morning, noting that “the video chain’s troubles are still sad for anyone who discovered a love of movies on the amply stocked aisle of a Blockbuster store.”
Its not often that a major newspaper shows some love for a chain store, but the Globe acknowledged that Blockbuster “stores were generally large. And the selection was rich enough that it spanned the film world from the Farrelly brothers and Jerry Bruckheimer to Akira Kurosawa and Pedro Almodovar. Just as Starbucks, for all its venti-skinny-latte absurdity, brought better coffee to vast swaths of America, Blockbuster’s expansion brought solid entertainment to many a quiet night in the ’burbs.”
In any case, this much-maligned company deserves credit for offering movies that would never play at the typical six-screen cineplex — and for making movie buffs out of millions of customers.
By Doug Beaton