Love film, hate scratched discs

I have recently swallowed my pride, recognised my role as a bottom-feeder in capitalist society, and resubscribed to Amazon's dvd rental service.

I had cancelled my subscription in a self-satisfied grump six months previously, haven been driven half mad by scratched discs skipping, slowing and just plain crashing during a key scene.

Exercising my consumer 'power', I jumped ship to Lovefilm.co.uk - the largest of the internet rental players and Amazon's arch rivals. I fantasised about Jeff Bezos staring at customer service reports, re-reading my farewell f*ck you email and kicking arse all around Seattle.

There would be melodramatic wailing, recriminations and counter-accusations. There would be an immediate, top priority investigation into the scratched-disc culture and heads would role. All too late for me, of course, but it was of some consolation.

Then Lovefilm let me down, too. No scratched discs this time. Just a complete inability to send me anything remotely resembling the dvd I had asked for.

Like all the sites, they ask you to populate a list of the top 20 films you want to borrow. 20 films? Now, I consider myself a card-carrying film buff but ask me to name 20 films that I want to see and haven't seen (anything I have seen and would want to see again I already own) and I start to flounder after half a dozen.

So you start naming films you thought were cool when you were seventeen. Or an Iranian movie about the plight of women in society that Philip French said was better than the director's debut effort. Or 1941, because nothing Spielberg could have done could ever be as bad as they said that was and you want to see for yourself.

After a while you finally make 20-odd. You weight it up - the list has the right mix of arthouse, cult and Hollywood Movies It's Ok to Like. The list looks good.

Your first package arrives in the post. It's not the latest release that came out on Monday that you missed at the cinema. Nope, it's Kar Wai Wong's latest low-budget snore-fest. Looks beautiful apparantly but I wouldn't know because I started reading a magazine after the first act and gave up any pretence of being interested soon after.

You see,Lovefilm doesn't believe in sending you any of your top five films. That would be far too predictable. No, they say, if you want to see a recent movie then go buy it, or see it in France where it's just coming out. Lovefilm's about watching all those movies you weren't sure you wanted to see at all until you saw them when you realised it really is the hopeless, overrated tat you thought it would be.

So I'm back at Amazon. I'm embracing the scratched-disc policy - it's a good opportunity to put the kettle on or go for another beer (and the disc-cleansing kit).

Somewhere in the upper echelons of Amazon's executive headquarters champagne corks are popping all over the place.