Today I noted three just released films, The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and Emma have been released digitally for “rent”, ie for $19.99 you get to rent and see one of the films for a certain amount of time (I’m not sure how long, I tend to just go ahead and buy the films I want and haven’t really investigated the whole digital “renting” thing all that much).

I read that Onward, which was just released to theaters on March 6th, may show up in a few days as a digital rental as well.

Further, there will no longer be any box office stats offered for movies in current release. Why? Well, because most -if not all- movie chains are no longer open for business.

Given the Coronavirus, confining a large(ish) group of people in a relatively small space is pretty much a recipe for spreading a disease.

Thing is, there are plenty of movies the studios have ready to be released. These films represent obvious cash investments and the investors are eager to get their money back or (hopefully) make money on said releases.

So it seems for the time being we’re likely to see more and more of these digital rentals appear.

The price isn’t that bad, I suppose, to rent a film. If you and your family, say between 2 and 5 people or so, sit down and watch the film, it comes out cheaper than the group of you going to a theater to see it.

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I headed out to the grocery stores yesterday and early this morning and while I don’t think things are quite as bad as they were a week or so ago (has it only been that long?!), there are still plenty of places where the shelves are bare of certain items.

It’s amusing to see what gets left behind and some have posted images of absolutely bare store shelves yet vegan foods are plentiful and untouched!

I get a laugh out of that but the matter of hoarding remains a stark reality.

At least one thing is for certain: We’re living through a truly unique set of circumstances, one that hasn’t happened in over a hundred years and likely won’t happen again after all this blows through.

I remain reasonably optimistic that more effective treatments and/or vaccines will be developed for this disease and there will come a time when we will finally return to normalcy, but until then, I’ll repeat what I said before:

Take care of yourselves out there.