Nettle: One User's Experience

The GreenCine Review

Over a year ago, I started a series of reviews on the Netflix DVD rental service. I was a customer, I liked the service, and it become a long-running series that's still ongoing with occasional installments.

At the time, I considered writing reviews of other DVD rental services. My first target was to be GreenCine, a San Francisco-based outfit that has positioned itself as the alternative to Netflix, for those who prefer unusual, rare, foriegn, and especially indie film rentals. Sounded interesting!

I remember surfing through the GreenCine site last year, and performing the famous Nettle "Z test" on them. The Z test, you'll recall, is where I simply type in the letter "Z" into the search box, to see if the site returns with Costa-Gavras' famous film, "Z". Netflix passed the Z test with flying colors, and I rented the film from them, and all was good.

GreenCine failed the test, returning a bunch of meaningless results. That was August 2002. I mentioned this fact to one of the founders of GreenCine. He begged me to hold off reviewing GreenCine as they were a tiny outfit without the financial deep pockets of Netflix, and they knew their databases were weak and their site needed work. So, I held off.

Fast forward ahead more than a year. I felt enough time had passed, so I signed up for GreenCine's trial service. Did the "Z" test. It failed. Nothing had changed.

I explored the site for several weeks. Actually rented a few titles, well, tried to. Nothing seemed available. Nearly everything was marked with a red indicator in my queue indicating, "fuhgeddaboutit."

Nevertheless, I did screen-grabs of the site, jotted down notes, collected observations, wrote up a list of suggestions. And I thought, I'm just not in the mood to do this.

So instead. Here is my review of GreenCine, based on my experience trying to find DVD titles that I could actually expect to get in the mail before the trial period ran out. Apologies to Monty Python.

Customer: Good Morning.

GreenCine: Good morning, Sir. Welcome to GreenCine!

Customer: Ah, thank you, my good man.

GreenCine: What can I do for you, Sir?

Customer: Well, I was, uh, surfing the web just now, skimming through FilmCritic, Slate, and Salon, and I suddenly came over culturally benighted.

GreenCine: Benighted, sir?

Customer: Cinematically nescient.

GreenCine: Eh?

Customer: 'Ee, ah wants a movie!

GreenCine: Ah, a movie!

Customer: In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, "a little French farce will do the trick," so, I curtailed my websurfing activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your site of webitude to negotiate the rental of some fine unusual cinematographs!

GreenCine: Come again?

Customer: I want to rent some DVDs.

GreenCine: Oh, I thought you were complaining about the user community!

Customer: Oh, heaven forbid: I am one who delights in all manifestations of the purple-haired facial-pincushion convergence!

GreenCine: Sorry?

Customer: I dig the users just fine my man!

GreenCine: So they can go on listing their favorites, can they?

Customer: Most certainly! Now then, some DVDs please, my good man.

GreenCine: Certainly, sir. What would you like?

Customer: Well, eh, how about starting off with a little Costa-Gavras.

GreenCine: I'm, a-fraid we're fresh out of Costa-Gavras, sir.

Customer: Oh, never mind, how are you on Bunuel?

GreenCine: I'm afraid we never have that so early in the month sir, try next month.

Customer: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, one Wong Kar-Wai and one Kubrick, if you please.

GreenCine: Ah! It's beeeen on order, sir, for two weeks. Was expecting it this morning.

Customer: 'T's Not my lucky day, is it? Aah, Tarantino?

GreenCine: Sorry, sir.

Customer: Jarmusch?

GreenCine: Normally, sir, yes. Today the server's acting up.

Customer: Ah. Cuaron?

GreenCine: Sorry.

Customer: Ichaso? Kunuk?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Any Bergman, per chance.

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Wachowski?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Godard?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Polanski?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Ah. Welles?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Cassavettes?

GreenCine: (pause) No.

Customer: Ken Russell?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Tony Scott?

GreenCine: (aghast) Certainly not, sir!

Customer: Yes that would be a Netflix pick, wouldn't it. Hmm. De Palma, Borzage, Mankiewicz, Burton, Hawks, Peckinpah, Mamoulian, Fuller?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Sayles, perhaps?

GreenCine: Ah! We have Sayles, yessir.

Customer: (suprised) You do! Excellent.

GreenCine: Yessir. It's..ah,.....it's a bit scratched...

Customer: Oh, I like it scratched.

GreenCine: Well,.. It's very scratched, actually, sir.

Customer: No matter. Fetch hither the scratched digital disc of John Sayles! Mmmwah!

GreenCine: I...think it's a bit scratchier than you'll like it, sir.

Customer: I don't care how fucking scratched it is. Hand it over with all speed.

GreenCine: Oooooooooohhh........! (pause)

Customer: What now?

GreenCine: The SuperDrive's eaten it.

Customer: (pause) Has it.

GreenCine: Yes, sir.

Customer: (pause) Sirk?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Ray?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Zinnemann?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Kurosawa?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Coen Brothers?

GreenCine: No, sir.

Customer: You...do *have* DVDs, don't you?

GreenCine: (brightly) Of course, sir. We're an online DVD rental service, sir. Specializing in independent, foreign, and unusual titles for the discerning film buff! We've got--

Customer: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.

GreenCine: Fair enough.

Customer: Uuuuuh, Erich von Stroheim.

Owner: Yes?

Customer: Ah, well, I'll have some of that!

GreenCine: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Ulrich Van Stroheimer, that's my name.

Customer: (pause) Spike Lee?

GreenCine: Uh, not as such.

Customer: Uuh, Kramer?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Keaton?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: De Mille?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Truffaut.

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Lars von Trier?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Curtiz?

GreenCine: No.

Customer: Corman?

GreenCine: Not *today*, sir, no.

Customer: (pause) Aah, how about Spielberg?

GreenCine: Well, we don't get much call for it around here, sir.

Customer: Not much Sp-- he's the single most popular director in the world!

GreenCine: Not 'round here, sir.

Customer: (slight pause) and who IS the most popular director 'round hyah?

GreenCine: David Lynch, sir.

Customer: IS he.

GreenCine: Oh, yes, he's staggeringly popular 'round these parts, squire.

Customer: Is he.

GreenCine: He's our number one best rental, sir!

Customer: I see. Uuh... David Lynch, eh?

GreenCine: Right, sir.

Customer: All right. Okay. 'Have you got any?' he asked, expecting the answer 'no'.

GreenCine: I'll have a look, sir........nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno. All rented out.

Customer: It's not much of a web service, is it?

GreenCine: Finest on the net!

Customer: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

GreenCine: Well, it's so easy to use, sir!

Customer: It's certainly uncontaminated by DVDs....

GreenCine: (brightly) You haven't asked me about Tarkovsky, sir.

Customer: Would it be worth it?

GreenCine: Could be....

Customer: (slowly) Have you got any Tarkovsky?

GreenCine: Yes.

Customer: Excellent. I would like to rent The Sacrifice, the original Solaris, and this Andrei Rublev here.

GreenCine: Fine choices, sir. I'll just put them here in your queue. You should see them in your post box sometime in mid-2004, sir.

Customer: Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:

GreenCine: Yessir?

Customer: (deliberately) Have you in fact got any DVDs here at all.

GreenCine: Yes, sir.

Customer: Really?

(pause)

GreenCine: No. Not really, sir.

Customer: You haven't.

GreenCine: No sir. Not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.

Customer: Well I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot you.

GreenCine: Right-O, sir.

(The customer takes out a gun and shoots the owner)

Customer: What a *senseless* waste of human life.

More on Amazon's Search Inside the Book

WIRED News is reporting that Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" service does not allow users to "print pages from within books."

Technically, it appears what Amazon has done is fool browsers into not showing the scanned image of a book page when you try to print from your browser. For instance, when using Safari on MacOS X or Microsoft's Internet Explorer in Windows, if you try to print a "Search Inside the Book" search result page, you get everything from the Amazon web page except the scanned image from the book itself.

Interestingly, Amazon has added a noRightClick() JavaScript function on these pages, so you can't Right-Click on a page image and save the image to disk, something that was doable ten days ago when I first wrote about Amazon's new search service in Nettle here (I guess someone at Amazon was paying attention!).

Of course, the NoRightClick thingie can be defeated by simply disabling JavaScript (at least using Safari). The RightClick menu works with JavaScript disabled, and you're able to save the image to disk or view in a new window. And if you open the image in a new window, you can then print it no problem.