that mile long list of pet peeves you started

Why are movies so secretive about the year of issue? They hide the information in Roman numerals, tiny at the very end of the credits. Unless you are watching a movie made in the year 0015, the number (why is it “Roman numerals” instead of “Roman numbers” ?) will be full of confusing Cs and Qs . Those are hard to decode quickly in the theater or even if you are squinting at a small TV with the movie freezed and a bath sounding good compared to finding an old envelope and a pencil. Why do movies do that?

The movie DVD or video box is equally mysterious about dates. That makes sense; they don’t want to lose the customers who think a movie from 3 years ago is stale and might have the kind of worms that get into 3 year old cheerios. But about the credits thing: by the time you are watching the credits you already watched the movie. The credits could say “HAH. Made in 1986 in case you were wondering!” as big as a cow and they already would have got you as a customer.

In video stores, the computer or books you can look movies up in are going to give you multiple movies by the same name with...the date the movie was released, to distinguish the choices.