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The Complete New Yorker is pretty cool. Kind of easy to describe, too: it's every single New Yorker scanned and archived on 8 DVDs. You can get a tour of the interface here.

Yep, I bought it more or less instantly. Come on -- $65 on Amazon (or Barnes and Noble)? Sure thing.

It's cool. The interface is a tad clunky on the Mac, but it's easy to flip through an issue and it's very very readable. The search is slowish. I'm not sure how well it's indexed; a search on Red Sox for the last five years or so returned nothing. On the other hand, a search on Cronenberg was quite successful. I imagine each article is tagged with key words.

For Rob: yes, you can search on department and author so all the Anthony Lane movie reviews are at your fingertips. This is awesome.

I'm curious as to the copyright issues. I don't know what kinds of contracts the New Yorker signed with its writers; right of first publication? Rights in perpetuity? This came up as an issue when Dragon did their compilation on CD, and I seem to recall an unrelated court decision that opened the door for this sort of thing regardless of the original contract terms. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, speak up and I'll write more on it when I have some real facts.

Either way, this is a way cool product. Mmm, history.

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The answer to the question "how does filmed entertainment reach the eyes of the viewer" continues to change, as per this article on direct to video movies. This isn't anything new, of course; Disney has been doing this for years and years. Just ask any parent. Still and all, it's significant that the direct to video market in the US is gaining... aha. Legitimacy is the word. Direct to video Disney releases is one thing; a direct to video sequel to Carlito's Way is more interesting.

Huh, that movie had a great cast, didn't it? Sean Penn, Al Pacino, John Leguizamo, Luis Guzman, and Viggo Mortensen. There's some acting chops for you. Anyhow.

The sales figures quoted at the beginning of the article are probably misleading. Sure, only 35% of DVD revenue may come from new feature films, but the implication that the other 65% is direct to video stuff is wrong. Warner Brothers clearly finds their line of classic movies profitable, and DVD releases of TV series are huge. (Which is in itself a signal about how entertainment habits are changing.)

Bubble comes out soon. I'll be really curious about the sales figures.