The Digital Movie Collector

 General 2024 has seen the end of many of the rewards programs that I have used over the years. Whether due to the economic times or other reasons, below are all the programs that have come to an end. I find this extremely disappointing since many have provided me with free movies or extremely affordable movies. Universal All-Access Rewards While not the first program to notify users of closing, Universal All-Access Rewards was the first to close on June 30. When you would buy a Universal movie, the digital card would have a code for the movie you purchased and generally included a code for 1000 points in their rewards program. These points could be used for a free digital movie or other digital items. You could also earn points on their site by watching movie trailers or taking trivia challenges. They would generally have five to ten digital movies to select from each rolling couple of months. If you didn't like the selection, you could save your points for the next batch of digit...

 Goodbye 20th Century Fox This movie is an appropriate send off to the 20th Century Fox Marvel Universe. I am sure this will be the last Fox Marvel movie ever. I will try to keep this spoiler free but there are a lot of cameos in this movie. This movie was definitely for the fans. Review This movie starts out with action and is pretty non-stop action throughout the two hour run. The story focuses on the main characters journey. While the movie has elements from the Loki series, Deadpool's fourth wall breaking explains it enough for those who have not watched the series. This was a welcome departure from recent Disney Marvel movies like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness where Wanda is a villain with no summary of what was missed from the WandaVision series to explain her change. While the Fox Marvel movies are heavily referenced in the movie, long time comic fans will notice many references as well. As a comic fan from the 80s and 90s, I appreciate all the references in t...

General With my self published book, I understand the cost benefits of digital over physical copies. I kept my price low for the book so that it was affordable. I get about 67 cents for each physical copy. Even with the price a dollar less, I get over twice that amount for digital. Is it a wonder why companies are starting to scale back their physical media for profit. So this scaling back keeps the physical costs high. I recently learned this lesson when I started looking for a music soundtrack. Turns out the company never made a physical copy. In fact, they have only released the music to streaming services (I will talk about that later). So I was unable to get the soundtrack. But this made me start to do some research. I was in Best Buy recently with my daughter and her husband. This was a good size store unlike the one in my town. I was surprised to find no movie section and at the time, I didn't notice an audio CD section either. Records are apparently the new craze so everyon...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CWYHTMSB I started this blog back in January 2019 because of my love for movies and my desire to write. It didn't matter to me how many read it. What mattered was sharing information. Over the years, I got busy and wrote less often. One thing, that I started working in 2023, was my Common Sense Finance book that I finished and was able to get self-published in February 2024 on Amazon.com. The book uses real examples of what you can do to get out of financial debt so you can live in financial freedom. My son was especially a strong motivator on writing this book as he saw where I was and where I got to with my finances in six years. My father was also a great influence on me writing this book. He had so many ideas and stories that he shared. He was busy supporting six kids that he never got a chance to write them down.  He passed at the end of 2021 thinking he would be forgotten. I promised him he would not and mention some of the wisdom he passe...

  In The Beginning I have to admit it have been a long time since I saw the original  Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and I have yet to see  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . From the tone and the costumes, I believe Wonka  is the origin for the Gene Wilder version. What I do remember of that film, this movie does an excellent job of recreating the magic and tone. I know Timothée Chalamet from the latest Dune  movie. Seeing him in both movies shows how versatile this young actor is. I later realized he was also cast in the Super Bowl commercial as the son of Edward Scissorhands back in 2021. Although initially not convinced of Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa from the trailer, I found his performance surprisingly well done. Calah Lane is another young actor that appears to have a promising career ahead.  Review For those not familiar with Wonka, the movie is a musical. Don't let that stop you from watching it. It has a very good story that is l...

  https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/ Read the Fine Print      My first experience with loosing digital content was back around 2013. I had bought a digital game for 99 cents from the Apple App store. The content was not updated for the latest OS so it was digitally removed from the store. I never went after the company because I was not playing hardly at all by then. I had another time where I may have gotten digital codes from an online company and noticed a few weeks later that the content was back in my wish list. Fortunately, the online company gave me new codes that are still working today.     So what is the fine print? If you read about digital content, the companies  license and distribute from the studios. While this relationship has gone on for years with hardly any notice, Sony PlayStation users are taking notice now of the fine print as their purchased digital content from the Discovery Channel will be removed at the en...