It seems surreal, but it’s true: IFC and Blockbuster Video have cut a deal. Blockbuster will carry the exclusive rights to rent and then sell IFC Films movies when they hit the home market. Blockbuster gets the first 60 days of release to rent the movie, and in that 60-day period the movies will not be available anywhere else, to rent or buy. After that 60-day period passes, any retailer can then sell the movie—but Blockbuster still retains exclusive rental rights for 3 years after street date. In theory, you will not be able to rent any IFC movie that hits DVD from any place besides Blockbuster until 2011. At the earliest.

Yes, that’s IFC and Blockbuster, shaking hands on a deal. This would be the same Blockbuster that regularly cuts and edits NC-17 films to be more acceptable (though mainstream “unrated” DVDs generally get by just fine). No problem, says IFC, we’ll cut our own movies and let Blockbuster decide which one they want to make available to their customers, which must thrill its stable of directors all to pieces. Considering Blockbuster is the company that wouldn’t carry Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ until the launch of its online service, we can assume which cut they’ll go for.

No, I don’t know what the hell is going on either. Only people with titles like “Vice President of Sales and Marketing” can think that restricting the rental and purchase avenues of a title will increase its exposure and market presence. But PR people are in the business of selling you crap and calling it gold.

Now, for Blockbuster, this makes some sense . . . and actually reflects their long-standing corporate policy of trying to stall the advancement of the movie rental market. The company fought widescreen DVDs tooth and nail until they turned around and declared it their “preferred” format—in 2004.

Blockbuster also actively tried to stop or slow down the production and release of DVDs for sale, ostensibly because their cheapness compared to VHS videos—that often cost upward of $90 per copy—undermined the rental market. This was in the late 90’s and early 00’s; The Matrix had just come out at an astonishing sub-$20 price tag and DVDs were officially coming into their own. I was a teenager then, working at a Hollywood Video directly across the street from a Blockbuster (in Blockbuster’s hometown of Dallas!), and I can tell you it wasn’t the DVDs hurting them. Their troubles were easily diagnosed, and still stand today: Lousy selection, restrictive rental windows, and the not-unjustified concern that the movie you rented may not be the edit that showed in theaters.

And now Blockbuster is sticking its fingers in its ears and going “LA LA LA” all over again. I hate to use the cliché, but it holds here as it did for the baloney HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray “war”: This company is simply re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Brick-and-mortar video rental places are on their way out, ground under the heel of vastly more convenient (and diverse) digital and mail distribution methods like Netflix and OnDemand. (Not to mention the less, mm, legal methods for acquiring TV shows and movies.)

I’m not saying video stores will disappear altogether, but it’s clear the days of B&M hegemony are gone. And have been, for several years, as Blockbuster may have noticed while annually closing hundreds of stores in favor of their online service. The less said about this online service the better; imagine a second-rate Netflix with a worse selection and you’re there.

(And it’s true: Thanks to the first sale doctrine, Netflix et al can simply purchase the videos from other sources and then rent those second-hand, and the law will smile on them. Blockbuster has plans to deter that, however.)

But what of IFC’s involvement? What are we to make of that? They have to know that their audience above all others is the one that will care about where they get the videos. As Jim Emerson puts it, IFC folks are exactly the ones who will make a conscious choice to avoid a place like Blockbuster, just as they wouldn’t order a Domino’s Pizza or shop at Wal-Mart.

There’s some indication that IFC may be doing as poorly as Blockbuster, and that the two are essentially clinging to each other as a sort of mutual buoy in the storm of their increasing obsolescence. To Blockbuster I can only say “good riddance”; they ran almost every video store worth a damn in Dallas out of business and put pressure on filmmakers to cut genuinely artistic NC-17 films in the interests of being “family-friendly” while having no qualms about carrying a wide variety of soft-core porn and gory horror movies. To IFC I can only say . . . damn, man. I remember when you used to be a contender.

Where does that leave us, the consumer? A little more put out, but no more inclined to shop at Blockbuster. I spent some time in one recently, on a Friday night—and believe me, the rank and file there aren’t interested in Lust, Caution or The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and an enthused voice-over running on perpetual loop won’t change that. And what do the artists—you know, the people whose work is being shuffled around by their distributor like the Red Queen in a game of three-card monte—have to say about it? We don’t know yet. But likely we will know soon.

Oh well. Think I’ll pull The Proposition from the red envelope and pop it in. Or maybe I’ll download a movie and hook my computer up to my TV? Or I could just browse OnDemand, or the truly silly number of movie channels I have on cable. Or just hit Amazon and buy a cheap, used DVD . . .

Or read a book or hit up iTunes for some music, or check the hundreds of stations on satellite radio playing 24/7. Life is pretty good in the 21st century, where we can watch or read or listen to what the hell we want when the hell we want to.