>>You may be more lucky with buying, though - I have bought Cimino's "Heaven's gate", even though I never met anyone here who remembered hearing about it, not to mention saw it.
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>Living in a bigger city helps a lot. Potomac Video, a Washington area chain, will have two or three bookcases full of foreign films and a British comedy section in a typical store.

Even Hollywood and Blockbuster have about ten feet of shelf with rest-of-the world movies, average age 10 years. Not that bad, I got to see some things I never thought I would see again, but then that's not much either. Very limited.

>I don't buy new recorded movies or TV shows much, but it probably helps to know of certain specialized sources. One source that I do know is Trash Palace, which is at www.trashpalace.com and carries old B movies. That probably isn't what you are looking for, but it's an example.
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>By the way, I know about Trash Palace not because I watch a lot of women-in-prison movies but because I am acquainted with the owner.
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>If you really want to be Mr. International, and if you don't need subtitles, get a multi-system VCR (or multi-system DVD player, if such exists) and start digging in Europe.
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>I have a couple of friends I could ask about where to find stuff.

You proved my point. The promise of "all the cultural treasure of the world will be available" comes down to "start digging". It's not really available.

>>Cable TV was supposed to bring choice and a multitude of channels, and the blossoming of the local TV, because now you didn't have to build or rent a network of repeaters to cover the territory. Which actually happened, except for the choice. You can't choose channels, you choose packages. I once asked Adelphia why aren't there channels a la cart, why can't I choose which channels do I want and which I don't. The answer was "it would be more expensive that way".
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>Some of those channels probably cost you very little.

They still come in packages, or you still have to have the basic package, and there's no way to opt out of anything from that basic package. Just imagine being able to pick a channel of your choice, and having a teletext to find out what's playing where in a few seconds, without having to wait (almost four minutes now) for the list of channels to scroll, and paying only for what you really watch. The technology is available, and if it was mass distributed, it would be cheap. It's just that it would shatter the rating system, so it won't happen, regardless of any "popular demand" or anything else.