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By Andrew Wallenstein
Uwe Boll, German director of tender, coming-of-age weepers like "Alone in the Dark" and the upcoming "Postal," is not happy with a petition circulating online begging him to simply stop making his heart-rending films. In the video above, he fires back at his critics with great humility and insight. And I quote his closing words: "I am the only genius in the whole fucking business. Goodbye."
By Gretta Parkinson
Not that Tina Fey would have a hard time finding a volunteer for an inseminator -- I can think of at least a million pale bloggers who'd be happy to put their monitors to sleep in exchange for a night with the reigning queen of comedy -- but her upcoming film with the equally hilarious Amy Poehler, "Baby Mama," dares to ask the question: What if the doctor doesn't like YOUR uterus?
The comedy, which hits theaters April 25, follows a desperate Fey and her clueless surrogate through the adventure of modern-day baby-making ... the kind where you don't need a man! OK, well, maybe for a minute. But it's a great excuse for an online promo featuring that nightmarish "what the disastrous outcome of your sexual union might look like" software. Even if the kind of cute but mostly creepy, bespectacled Poehler-Fey baby deflates the fantasy dream clouds of boys all across America. (Kinda makes that hook-up a little less sexy, doesn't it?) Check out the baby album with 43 pages worth of totally weird looking infant mugs, and maybe rethink that one-night stand.
Peter Safran, eponymous head of Safran Co., has signed up with Microsoft to produce several short form scripted shows for the latter's Xbox console. The first of the new shows debut this fall.
Microsoft just returned my Xbox, after I shipped it in for repairs when it started flashing the red ring of death. Despite being a pretty intense gamer, I've never rented any type of video on the platform. Something about having to purchase Microsoft Points strikes me as highly obnoxious. For now I'm sticking with Netflix, but here's a comparison chart between Xbox, Netflix and Apple TV for those interested.
By Andrew Wallenstein
Come on, Paramount Pictures. Was it really worth it to skimp on paying Mike Myers' just a little extra to participate in the new online promotion that started this week for the June 20 release of "The Love Guru?" For a series of comic insights delivered by the title character -- they call them "sutras," natch -- Paramount didn't get Myers to reprise the role. Instead, they pulled a Conan O'Brien and superimposed another actor's mouth over an image of the Love Guru (whose name is Pitka). Lame. And after watching the first sutra, here's some advice: Brevity is the soul of wit. 3:35 might seem like a pittance to you movie folk, but online it's practically a miniseries.
"Forgetting Sarah Marshall," the latest movie from the guys behind "Knocked Up," is the subject of a poorly conceived viral blog and video campaign. The latest video, released yesterday and showing leading man Jason Segel talking to a handicam about vampires, has about 822 views.
I'm not sure I understand the objective of this campaign. Why amateurize the blog by placing it on Blogspot, but then put Segel's highly recognizable mug all over the place? And why pimp the blog like it's the work of a disgruntled auteur, but then write copy on it that says "click here to see why "Sarah Marshall" really sucks -- but only if you're over 18!" My ability to suspend belief does not extend to MPAA ratings disclaimers.
The problem here is that the blog's purpose is to embellish on the plot, but all it really does is reveal the movie's marketing artifice.
Hate to see this happen to Segel, who should've received every high five ever for the Slapsgiving episode of "How I Met Your Mother."
Vid site Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Uni, is now open to the public. Announced almost exactly one year ago -- and in private beta for the last few months -- the platform offers access to full-length movies and TV episodes with limited commercials and a variety of access options via Hulu itself, distro partners like Yahoo, and via embeds. When originally announced, the site was almost universally derided site unseen as a clumsy attempt by two lumbering congloms to compete with YouTube. But since its beta debut, Hulu has only impressed with a rich variety of features, beautiful vid streams, and a generous sharing and distribution scheme.
When I wrote my first impressions on the service back in October, I was still preoccupied with Hulu's competitive position vis-a-vis YouTube. Since YouTube has been the gold standard in online video -- since it was such a radical and accessible departure from traditional experience -- there's a tendency to consider it THE WAY to distribute video. But that's overlooking the multiple ways viewers consume video, and how preferences change as options expand.
Competition among platforms is a multivalent thing, encompassing content, distribution/accessibility, design and positioning. The latter's the tricky one.
Where once YouTube was a prime destination for all types of video -- full TV episodes, short clips, movies broken into ten part chunks, etc -- these days I see it best used as a short form device. Short, unassociated clips consumed in rapid succession. Like Tic Tacs. Or Twitter. YouTube, to me, is the Twitter of video. It's the status update of the world, delivered through vids that go viral, uploaded clips from "The Daily Show," Olberman's rants, Smosh vids, product debuts, and thousands and thousands of webcam confessionals.
Hulu will never -- and should never, IMHO -- have that degree of social buzz about it. It doesn't need UGC or user uploads. It needs only to be the best as what it does, i.e., deliver long form content with superlative quality and a variety of accessibility options. When it comes to professional vids, Hulu is the gold standard.
By Gretta Parkinson
It certainly helps to have friends in high places. Even better if they're people like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, proprietors at FunnyOrDie.com.
"The Foot Fist Way," the first North American Tae Kwon Do comedy, written by and starring Danny McBride ("Hot Rod") was completed in 2006, but nobody cared. But now that Ferrell and McKay have put their stamp on it by featuring the red band trailer on FunnyOrDie (until recently, probably because of the clip's "restricted" nature), Paramount Vantage is sponsoring its theatrical release May 30.
On the movie's official Web site, fans can watch the trailer, take the "Student Oath," visit the main character's MySpace page and even submit themselves for Student of the Week. Congratulations, Bill Lyon from Pittsburgh, Pa.!
By Gretta Parkinson
First it was M. Night Shyamalan who engaged in a little self-parody via TV commercial for American Express last year. Not to be outdone, another A-list director is doing same: Michael Bay, in a new spot advertising Verizon FiOS and its superfast Internet speeds.
On the subject of Michael Bay, I'm most likely to sympathize with with Kyle from "South Park" who in episode 506 ("Cartmanland") said,"Michael Bay gets to keep making movies and Cartman gets his own theme park; there is no God."
But that was before "Transformers," and Bay's manipulative placement of my surrogate father, Optimus Prime, in the (almost) unforgivably mindless "Transformers." I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little choked up during the shot of the Autobots driving in on the freeway. But I digress.
The point is that in the Verizon spot Michael Bay lets us know that he knows exactly how ridiculous he is, which not only reaffirms my faith in the Divine, but also makes me laugh a little.
On the news of Microsoft's unsolicited acquisition bid for Yahoo this morning, I'm trying to wrap my head around everything Yahoo's been trying to do in the video space lately. What vid props/capabilities would Microsoft get in that space?
Yahoo's current video strategy
"Video everywhere you are on the net." Back in August, Yahoo announced they were re-focusing on video, and planned to offer a single channel for music videos, TV shows, movie trailers and sports highlights. They also planned to offer video through Flickr. IMHO, both sound like uninspired ideas. Over the next few years, I expect destination sites will go the way of the dodo, as younger users learn to navigate meta search engines and apps. Unless the media companies actually prevail in their ploy to cripple search engines -- and they won't: See recent lawsuits against the Pirate Bay and Seeqpod, for example, plus follow the Perfect10 v. Google case -- I see exclusive platforms as a thing of the past. That includes current exclusive distro agreements.
Also: Flickr with video? Ugh. A surefire way of alienating that site's user base, including me. Do one thing, do it better than everyone else, win.
Current video share
Yahoo currently controls 3%-5% of the video streaming market. YouTube has about 27%. Microsoft's video properties have about a 2% share. A combined MS + Yahoo would be good for getting advertising dollars. But as far as mindshare goes, YouTube's still top dog.
Content deals
Off the top of my head: new content deal with UMG to allow user uploads of music/video; recent deal with Belo to enhance local TV coverage; content deals with AP, CNN, and some sports leagues. Many more that I'll fill in later.
Video properties
Not counting video.yahoo.com, Yahoo owns vid-editing platform Jumpcut (I originally saw that as an excellent Flickr-like purchase, but don't think the site's going gangbusters by any means). Yahoo also recently announced they were acquiring vid hosting and distro company Maven Networks, which works with Gannett, Hearst, Fox News, Sony BMG, others.
More to come.
p.s. Forgot to mention Yahoo's extensive, if muddled, experience with producing original video content, e.g., Richard Bangs Adventures, In the Hot Zone with Kevin Sites, Wow House, etc. Definitely expertise that MS doesn't have, but the cultures def would need to remain separate.
By Gretta Parkinson
Tragedy plus time equals money—for eBay sellers, anyway.
Some might argue not enough time has passed since Heath Ledger’s unexpected death Tuesday, but posters featuring Ledger as The Joker in the upcoming “The Dark Knight” are are disappearing fast online, with some bids approaching the $70 mark. After various reports claiming the actor’s death has forced Warner Bros. to rethink their marketing campaign for the film, the movie posters—specifically one with Ledger finger painting “Why So Serious?” on cloudy glass—have become increasingly valuable to Batman geeks and Heath fans, like me.
Does the fact that I desperately want one make me soulless and insensitive? On the one hand, one of my favorite actors just died too young and too tragically, shortly after wrapping what looks like an incredible film from a timeless franchise. I could argue that the poster is not just a collector’s item, it’s an homage, like the iconic James Dean “Giant” and “Rebel Without a Cause” images.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that members of the online community should be capitalizing on the death of anyone...especially since it hasn’t even been a week. Not to mention the fact that those Joker posters were creepy long before any real-life context made them even creepier.
At least I’m losing money, not making it.
As I was mulling over the odd tech-lessness of the J.J. Abrams-produced flick Cloverfield -- no smart phones apparent, no Internet, no GPS devices anywhere -- I ran across Craig Rubens' post on NewTeeVee about the exact same detail. Craig's take on the apparent tech lacuna: Cloverfield should have been released online as a mysterious download, and surrounded itself with a rat's warren of Flickr photo clues and fake profile pages, which all-lead, Wonderland-like, further into strangeness.
IOW, Cloverfield should be like Lost. And I have to respectfully disagree.
While Craig's insightful in outing Cloverfield as tech-less, what I think he's missing is how Cloverfield succeeded precisely because it eschewed the contrivance of web mystery. Without any marketing beyond a handful of trailers, J.J. Abrams' name, and a single iconic poster -- all of which hinted at monsters, but never revealed them -- the film set an MLK weekend record with $46M in box office sales. No photos of the monster were leaked (well, they were hard to find, anyway). The movie and its contents were a mystery (or in Abrams-speak, a mystery box). And its that mystery which compelled the audience to seek out the movie and then be intrigued enough to follow a shaky handycam through an hour and a half of action.
Remember how rewarding that final aerial shot of the monster was, that image you'd been waiting months and months to see? That shot was the impetus for the secrecy. And it worked to the tune of $46M.
The point is this: Sometimes blinders enhance the moviegoing (or television) experience. We don't always need that marketing smoke and those participatory mirrors. Abrams demo'd that by creating a tech-less movie that appealed to a tech-savvy audience.
In a world obsessed with hoaxes, rife with leaks, and overfull with chatty bloggers, Abrams pulled off a bigger trick than creating some intricate and -- at this point, let's face it -- hackneyed web game. He one upped that. He put butts in theater seats.
UPDATE: MMM's Chris Thilk points out that Cloverfield did indeed have a web ARG attached to it. Well damn, doesn't that just contradict, uh, everything I just wrote. But I still maintain that Cloverfield succeeded despite eschewing current tech in its storyline; the blinders of the videocamera contrivance enhance the suspense, rather than ruin the suspension of disbelief.
By Andrew Wallenstein
Just when I thought Internet sneak peeks at the upcoming "Rambo" were too gory, along comes footage of another new film that made my skin not so much crawl as as it did leap off my skeleton. And the kicker is there's no visible gore--it's just two kids sitting in a wading pool.
It's the first five minutes of the upcoming Village Roadshow picture "Teeth" (opens today in New York and Los Angeles) which dramatizes a mythical biological condition known as "vagina dentata"--as a God-fearing family man, I can't bring myself to explain what that is.
"Teeth" may be the most effective example yet I've seen of a film whetting viewer appetites with a little excerpts of the film, as so many (too many?) others have done lately including "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," "Cloverfield" and "National Treasure: Book of Secrets." A film that likely would have gotten lost in the shuffle of bigger releases catches my eye with footage that would have been too risque to explain on broadcast TV.
My nightmares thank you.
Itinerant funny man Will Carlough recently posted another episode of Paraphrase Theater, a series of movie scene spoofs in which dialogue is paraphrased in a droll vernacular. The latest is All The President's Guys (after the Redford flick, natch), but my favorite's the Star Wars piece, Tarkin and Friends. Carlough plays each character:
Princess Leah: I, uh, smelled your foul stench when I walked on board.
Admiral Tarkin: Uh, good one. I wanted to ask you, where is the secret rebel base?
Princess Leah: yeah well, I'm not gonna tell you.
Admiral Tarkin: That's fair.
Would that HBO would contract with Carlough to paraphrase The Wire. Any series so critically-felated needs some levity.
Related: the hilarious series Movies in Five Seconds.
I wish Gawker had jumped the shark, too.
But sadly -- happily! -- the OG media snark blog (as OG as media snark gets post-Suckdom) is back in the spotlight after founder Nick Denton posted several videos showing Tom Cruise professing his Scientology zealotry. This after the religious group (club? sect? cabal?) forced down several of the videos on YouTube. They've got a history of breaking the Internets.
On the videos: Honestly, not that weird. No couch jumping, but a lot of railing against psychiatry (a la his anti-Brooke Shields tirade) and touting of Keeping Scientology Working, a policy letter written in 1965 by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and which Cruise repeatedly refers to as "KSW". He also sprinkles about Scientology acronyms like tiny croutons: PTS, a "potential trouble source". SP, a "suppressive person."
Really, Cruise seems to be baffling himself. He talks in circles. He makes arguments like a preacher -- lots of emphatic statements, dramatic pauses, "NOW is the time," "we HAVE to DO something," etc -- w/out resorting to specifics. "When you're a Scientologist, everything's so clear." Everything, except WTF am I talking about.
Cruise's spiel actually reminds me of the huckster psychics Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in "Dangerous Minds", his November New Yorker piece, in which Gladwell refers to "the Barnum Statement, the assertion so general that anyone would agree", and the Fuzzy Fact, "the seemingly factual statement couched in a way that 'leaves plenty of scope to be developed into something more specific.'"
As for Gawker: Bully for Denton. After a few months of bad press and acrimony between editors (three of which left. Or is it four. Five?), he's made the blog integral again. At least to the folks sniggling over Tim Cruise and spaceship religion. No judgments here.
The old Apple TV: $300, received video from your 'puter, had a cool screensaver, was 'sposed to sell 1 million units in its first year, sold 400k.
The new Apple TV: $229, downloads directly from iTunes, movies start playing w/in 30 seconds (Amazon UnBox takes hours), is the new hotness.
In all the hubbub, there's some rush to compare Apple TV to iTunes in terms of disruptive potential. Not going to be the same deal: iTunes video capability launched in 2005 in a market empty of competitors. Turned peeps on their ears. Apple TV entered last year -- and flopped(ish) -- because it didn't differentiate itself enough.
The new Apple TV also has a host of marketing vectors to contend with: competing with cable companies, competing with Netflix, set-top-box clutter, DVD machines, even net-connected televisions, all of which compete among convenience, volume, and pricing. Apple TV needs to fit into that mix. Starting with $4-5 rentals from the big studios -- including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, MGM, Disney, Lionsgate, Universal, and New Line Cinema -- is a great start.
So is it all good news for the consumer? While the idea of a complete end-to-end video solution is appealing to marketers and clutter-eschewing OCD'ers, it's not so fetching for anyone concerned with Apple owning their movie library. Or, of having yet another proprietary system for their movie content. In the future, when you move your video library, you'll basically have to move two to four boxes. It ain't just a stack of DVDs or VHS tapes. Apple's not going to change that.
What's amazing to me is that anybody approaches these news announcements as if there's one ring to rule them all. The future is a messy, multi-boxed, rent/buy world. The consumer's satisfaction won't be set by one singe provider, but by their success in navigating all the available options. And the market winner won't be the best service, it'll be the service that advertises best. Take that to the bank.
The director of the Snakes on a Plane rip-off Snakes on a Train, Eric Forsberg, has another knockoff debuting this week: Monster, a rip-off of the upcoming J.J. Abrams flick Cloverfield. I find these knock-offs completely riveting, like alternate versions of reality wondrously full of cheese-laden actors. Check out the trailer at Slashfilm. Also check out this article in the NYTimes about the "mockbusters" genre of films, including Transmorphers and The Da Vinci Treasure.
Spent an hour this morning playing around with Fancast, the TV channel guide / trailer depo / streaming video portal that Comcast debuted at CES this week. Overall, it's a gorgeous site that has the potential to be a great video directory, but Comcast needs to improve several aspects of the user experience. Here are a few of my initial observations:
Fancast sits at the tension point between Comcast's desire to promote its networks' long-form content and the Web's user-generated, social abilities.
It's a good directory for TV and DVD content, but not UGC video. That's probably a good decision on Comcast's part; Fancast can't battle YouTube. I certainly would never consider using a TV company's web site to find content created online.
But Comcast should consider adding the ability for users to comment, add tags, and interact with each other around the videos. Conversations spark pageviews, and pageviews spark ad dollars.
Because I'm not a gadget-o-phile, I'll note this briefly and move on: The Neuros OSD is an open source video recorder that lets you capture media from any receiver/player in MPeg4 format. Not only is the device powered by Linux, the Chicago-based company that produces the Neuros literally invites hackers to modify its programming and circuitry to fit their needs. Good for ripping stacks of physical media to a flexible digital format. Very cool.
By Andrew Wallenstein
Don't believe the projections that Warner Bros.' latest release, horror pic "One Missed Call," is going to get shellacked by the likes of "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" or "Alvin and the Chipmunks" in its opening weekend at the box office. Yes, it is a piece of garbage compared with the sublime majesty of "Alvin," but Yahoo Buzz notes quite a spike in requests for the film's "ringtone of death," which could mean there's curiosity out there despite the fact the film has barely been marketed. Shannyn Sossamon (above, right) is also quite pulchritudinous.
By Gretta Parkinson
As showbiz goes, selling out is widely considered the eighth deadly sin. A performer would sooner drown a sack full of kittens or come out of the closet as a Republican than do something to earn that title.
Unless that performer is actor David Cross (pictured at right), who recently defended his role in the new movie "Alvin and the Chipmunks" on his blog after fellow comedian Patton Oswalt criticized Cross for taking the job on his MySpace page. Ironically, Oswalt also berated himself for his decision to host the 2007 Spike TV Video Game Awards in the very same post.
It's swell that the Internet is there to provide a forum for actors to bare their easily corrupted souls, but aren't they getting carried away here? If there’s anything we’ve learned from Shanna Moakler and Travis Barker, it’s that there are no winners in petty online squabbles. So stop explaining, Hollywood! We get it: You’ve got jobs to do, jobs that sometimes require you taking a "profane amount of money" from Spike TV. Now get out there and entertain us.
Much of the copyrighted content excerpted in user-generated content is eligible for protection under the fair use provisions of copyright law, according to a new study.
Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by American University professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, studied 83 UGC videos (some popular, some esoteric) to determine the legality of copyrighted snippets and identified nine common kinds of re-appropriation practices.
While the study's conclusions aren't news to anyone who follows the industry -- we're allowed to remix culture?! Shut! Up! -- Recut, Reframe, Recycle is an excellent pedagogical tool that breaks down the various ways corporations are trying to restrict remix culture.
Here are the researcher's top five videos in each of the nine categories:
Satire and Parody
Negative or Critical Commentary
Positive Commentary
Quoting in Order to Start a Discussion
Illustration or Example
Incidental Use
Personal Reportage/Diaries
Archiving of Vulnerable or Revealing Materials
Pastiche or Collage
Addendum: On the Pho List right now there's a discussion about popular parody-ist Weird Al Yankovic and how/whether he gets approval for his songs. One of the Phosters pointed to this NPR interview from 2006, in which Al says he asks labels for permission out of respect, but acknowledges he isn't breaking any laws by creating transformative works with their material.
"I have a long-standing history of respecting artists' wishes," Yankovic writes. "So if James Blunt himself were objecting, I wouldn't even offer my parody for free on my Web site. But since it's a bunch of suits -- who are actually going against their own artist's wishes -- I have absolutely no problem with it."
Bonus: Weird Al's Don't Download This Song, on Revver.
Happy New Year, studios: TorrentFreak has posted their list of Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007. The film compilation lists "Transformers" at the No. 1 spot, followed by "Knocked Up" and (oh God, really?) "Shooter." Top TV shows were "Heroes," "Top Gear" and "Battlestar Galactica." Attention federal agents, please limit your investigations to awkward, bepimpled teenagers with cable modems and bad taste.
Except for B Star G. That's some epic drama. Plus robots are cool. Mark Wahlberg is not.
Addendum: My colleague Andrew Wallenstein noted last week that Wired also published a top downloaded content list, which was created courtesy of the P2P tracking firm Big Champagne.
In a continuing sign of legal troubles for popular torrent-trading site TorrentSpy, a federal judge in California ruled today against the site on grounds that its operators engaged in "willful" deletion of important evidence.
The ruling opens the site to charges of copyright infringement in the U.S. The MPAA originally filed suit against the site last year. The judge then ordered TorrentSpy to track users so that the data could be given to the MPAA, but said that the service could mask IP addresses for the time being. TorrentSpy then decided to block US visitors, after which its traffic plunged.
TorrentSpy's servers are located in the Netherlands, and has continued to serve international users. There are several tools available to get around TorrentSpy's geographic restrictions.
IMHO: Despite the ruling against TorrentSpy, the MPAA and other interested parties are fighting a losing battle when pursuing individual sites. New sites and sharing methodologies appear regularly, making litigation at the site level not unlike a losing game of whack-a-mole.
See THR Esq for more on TorrentSpy ruling."Dozens" of striking writers are negotiating with venture capitalists in efforts to establish their own online entertainment studios and bypass the traditional studios, according to the LA Times.
Tech investors have been reticent to fund entertainment ventures in the past, largely because they see programs/movies as one-offs with low post-debut margins compared to tech ventures, which have more of an innate ability to grow virally and with less overhead.
Earlier this year, Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie.com had a hit with the vid "Landlord," essentially making the Web safe for A-list talent.
A handful of web companies, like Revision3 and Yahoo, are currently attempting to produce original content for the web, with mixed results. Yahoo's had the most experience -- Wow House, Richard Bang's Adventures, In the Hot Zone -- but has often fallen short of its stockholder's expectations. Perhaps the most successful original entertainment initiative from a tech company is AOL's Gold Rush which, while not successful across all demographics, did attract a large number of women age 35 to 44.
In yet another departure from traditional distribution models, Paramount and MTV will release the next Jackass movie, Jackass 2.5, online. The movie will be available for two weeks at blockbuster.jackassworld.com. More info at HollywoodReporter.com.
Earlier this week Universal announced that it would allow purchase downloads of The Bourne Ultimatum on set-top box Vudu the same day as the DVD release.
Both announcements come as the business of selling DVDs posts a year-over-year sales decline for the first time since the format's debuted a decade ago.
DVD sales are declining as video game sales rise. Analysts blame everything from new social-oriented games and platforms (the Wii, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, Halo 3) to the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war that's confusing consumers.
From my own anecdotal perspective, the reason for the DVD's decline is clearly video game platforms. Not only do I keep in touch with friends through Xbox and play Wii at parties, everyone in my family plays video games now. For Thanksgiving, my uncle bought a Wii, which entertained everyone from the toddlers (playing Super Mario 8) to the adults, playing tennis and Tiger Woods golf. Later that weekend, at my friend's 30th birthday party, everyone in the 50-person crowd took a turn at Guitar Hero III.
Video games are the new Pictionary.
Set-top box content delivery service Vudu announced today same-day DVD downloads of Universal's Bourne Ultimatum, plus episodes of "24," "Prison Break," "NYPD Blue" and other 20th Century Fox Television titles.
The same-day DVD download marks a shift in Universal's distribution methods, which thus far have limited downloads to availability after a DVD's release window.
Unlike other films in Vudu’s library, Bourne is available only for purchase (not rental) for $24.99. The download-to-own TV shows are available for $1.99 per episode, with the initial beta test featuring only shows from News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox.
Vudu went on sale back in September and costs $399 for the box itself, though there's no subscription fees to pay. Their library has about 5,000 rental titles from 22 independent and international film distributors, but does not allow transfers to portable devices. The rentals cost between $0.99 and $3.99.
Vudu plays in a crowded market, less one since Moviebeam recently announced it was stopping service. IMHO, Vudu's a great service that's completely unnecessary when you consider your less expensive movie options, e.g., Xbox 360, Apple TV, TiVo, and Akimbo, just to name a few.
Adding the ability to buy movies same-day-as-DVD makes the service more attractive, but not enough to surmount that ludicrously high price barrier to adoption.
Part of me wishes the writers would keep striking just so I can keep watching their publicity stunts online. To wit, the now famous clip from Daily Show writer Jason Ross, who video'd himself on the picket lines in New York City explaining why writers didn't believe the studios' argument that Internet video's not profitable enough to offer residuals. Exhibit A, Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Ross: "When you're not paying him, you owe him $1 billion. When he's not paying you, he's not paying you."
If only that clarity of message made it through in "Speechless", a series of professionally-produced, pro-writer videos released over the Thanksgiving holiday and now available at speechlesswithoutwriters.com. Created by George Hickenlooper (Factory Girl) and Alan Sereboff (The Red House) "Speechless" is a series of 15-second to 4-minute long black-and-white public service announcements starring a who's who of high-profile actors (read about the series inception here).
There's Holly Hunter, who discovers her script has been outsourced to India. William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman who, instead of speaking, whistle. Eva Longoria and Nicolette Sheridan, who are completely (blessedly?) silent.
This is amazing. Next week theatres will begin to show Anderson's 20-minute Hotel Chevalier prequel before Darjeeling. I reviewed Chevalier for Reporter a few weeks ago. In brief: There's awkward conversation, talk of feelings, and no resolution. The short ends. It's kind of like a Raymond Carver short story, if Carver's stories were illustrated by Dr. Seuss. Or maybe Chris Ware?
There's no immediate lesson to be learned from the studio's/Anderson's decision to include Chevalier with Darjeeling in theatres. You can't really construe the decision as a victory for "online video" (whatever that means), since any merit to the piece is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that Natalie Portman appears nude in it. Not full frontal. She's sorta in a Rodan-meets-Jane Fonda repose. But still. "Natalie Portman nude" sells tickets.
Then there's the question of whether Chevalier actually served its purpose, which was to drive interest in Darjeeling. Darjeeling, at $2.5 so far, doesn't seem to have benefited. Does that mean that cross-medium promotions don't work well?
No easy answers to these questions right now. Despite that, I argue that deciding to release Chevalier online was a smart move. And I guarantee if Darjeeling was released online shortly thereafter, the studio would have a whole lot more than $2.5 mil in their pockets.
At this point in his boyishly id-like career, Wes Anderson can be counted on to create characters which, like the letters automatically given to contestants on Wheel of Fortune's bonus round, are always, always the same: They're quirky. They've got family issues. They deliver their lines with deadpan comedic timing, and they're surrounded -- almost at the mercy of, really -- lushly oversaturated, detail-rich scenes.
So it goes with Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman in "Hotel Chevalier", Anderson's 13-minute prequel to "The Darjeeling Limited", which debuted on Apple's iTunes this week. An offbeat release strategy, the free "Chevalier" is meant to stoke interest in "Darjeeling," though Anderson says seeing the former isn't necessary to understand what's happening in the latter.
So let's just deal with the short: With the exception of a brief opening shot of the lobby, "Chevalier" occurs entirely within the well-lived-in hotel room of Jack (Schwartzman), who orders a grilled cheese and chocolate milk before receiving a surprise call from his unnamed ex (Portman). The ex arrives and it's soon apparent the two are estranged. There's awkward conversation, talk of feelings, and no resolution. The short ends. It's kind of like a Raymond Carver short story, if Carver's stories were illustrated by Dr. Seuss.
And it's the illustrations, the background details, that mark Anderson's style. Like in his feature films, Chevalier presents the character's surroundings as a metaphor for the inside of his mind (in Bottle Rocket a motel; in Rushmore a school; in Tenenbaums a house; in Aquatic a submarine).
Obviously self-conscious of his own trope, Anderson has Jack arrange his borrowed room in anticipation of the ex's arrival: A diorama of a porcelain swammi and what looks like Tom Wolfe; a lightbox of pressed butterflies; miniature music boxes; a freshly-made watercolor painting. As Portman examines each of these in turn, Peter Sarstedt's "Where do you go to my lovely" plays. A fitting song, of course, describing a man's attempt to understand what's happening inside his standoffish lover's head.
This being an Anderson flick, the gender roles are reversed. It's Portman who's recalcitrant and it's Jack who, by revealing himself, is trying to understand her. Apropos actor/actress selection here: If there's one person the diminutive Portman can emasculate, it's the hipstery, hobbit-sized Schwartzman.
All in, Chevalier's beautiful to watch. And the release strategy -- free, and available online -- is probably the smartest move a Hollywood studio's made in some time. As for the content, there's no departure from Anderson's trademark style. Chevalier will entertain, but it won't surprise.
[You can download Hotel Chevalier here]
Webcuts 07, the latest iteration of the Berlin festival for Internet films, is coming in October. But you can follow their blog now for arty recommendations, like this excellent 3D animation from KDLAB, the open source animated flick Elephant's Dream, and the dreamy work of Brasilian design shop Lobo.
Apple is in talks with the major studios to allow more movie rentals through iTunes. While the studios already allow downloads from a bewildering array of web sites, Apple would ostensibly make the process more attractive to consumers (who, odds are, also own iPods). What's more, by hooking up with Apple, the studios are effectively committing to the idea of shortened release windows.
Digital distribution increases reach -- instead of releasing to roughly 3,000 large theaters, you're piping movie downloads into about 60% of American homes. Compared to theater tickets, the real cost of downloads is lower ($2.99 per computer for 30 days vs. $10 per person for 2 hours), and a single download can entertain an entire family, or more.
But the profit margin is ostensibly higher compared to theaters, where margins are slim and attendance has been dropping over the last four years or so. With iTunes music, Apple takes about 30 cents on every dollar. Assuming they take a similar cut with movies, that leaves over $2 in pure profit for the studios.
These are rough numbers. But Apple's upcoming deals attest to the fact that we're rapidly reaching the inflection point where home distribution is more profitable than theaters. What effect this will have on city social centers intrigues me. T.S. Eliot once described television as a device by which a million people could share a joke alone. Soon we'll be sharing movies in the same manner.
Parsons, as quoted by AdAge: "Everyone's afraid it's somehow going to upset the 800-pound gorilla, Wal-Mart. We don't think so. We think and what we've shown in some of our trials is the video on demand can help increase sell-through as well as change the economics dramatically for the studios."
Daily Film Dose on the best directors from the 80s, along with YouTube vids of some of their memorable work. I'm of the opinion that the two best years for movies in the 80s were 1989 (Born on the Fourth of July, Field of Dreams, Abyss) and 1987 (Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning Vietnam, Raising Arizona). Below, Spinal Tap lost below stage in Rob Reiner's film from '84.
The LA Times reports, and P2Pnet comments on, the leaking of an unfinished version of Eli Roth's Hostel II, which is due in theaters June 8. LAT: The pirated copies, apparently made from an April 2 work print, bear the watermark of a studio employee, but Lions Gate said that person was not suspected of wrongdoing.
FWIW, I agree with P2PNet: Piracy begins at home, and home = Hollywood. You can't blame consumers for downloading what's been made readily available in P2P networks by a studio insider.
(via) Web maven, social theorist and brainiac hottie Danah Boyd gave a talk at Cannes recently titled Film and the Audience of Tomorrow. She's posted her notes from the talk online. Here, she talks about the structural limitations preventing teens from actually going to the movies more often:
Teens *want* to go to the movie theater but there are structural limitations to their access.
First, there's money. Seeing movies is increasingly expensive and fewer teens have the money to afford a night out to the movies. In the US, there are fewer opportunities for teens to work and middle/working class parents have less discretionary income now than they did 25 years ago, making allowances harder to come by. Second, there's a lack of discretionary time. Middle and upper class teens spend a lot of their waking hours over-scheduled, running from activity to activity with little downtime. Third, there's a mobility issue. In the US, having a car is equivalent to freedom... without it, it's hard to get to the movie theater and this is even more true now because the huge movieplexes tend to be on the outskirts of towns, rather than easily accessible by bike or walking. Fourth, there are structural limitations to teens ability to leave their homes. Curfew and trespassing laws were relatively rare 30 years ago, but are in almost every US town now. Yet, more importantly, parents are afraid of all of the terrible things that might happen to teens if they are allowed out of the house. These forces affect many things, movie theater attendance being one of them. Going to the movies for teens is primarily seen as a treat and something that they beg to do when a big movie is coming out; when i was growing up, going to the movies was the default activity for the weekend. Again, this isn't about a lack of desire, but the lack of access will increasingly affect the film industry.
Think about this for a moment. Web savvy teens aren't abandoning movie theaters because it's more convenient to get media at home on their computers. They abandon theaters because of complicated social and demographic forces that conspire to make us a more atomized society. No wonder social networks are so popular.
A 10-minute movie posted on Stanford University's web site uses clips from Disney movies to explain copyright law. Visions of animated snoring come to mind. But the YouTube version, posted Friday, has over 144,000 views.
And why: Disney is the Ursula, the Scar, the Grand Vizier Jafar of copyright law, having shepherded through Congress several copyright extensions, the most recent of which -- derisively known as the Mickey Mouse protection act -- extended copyright terms another twenty years.
And so the clip uses fair use snippets of Disney characters to satirize Disney's position on copyright. And when I say snippets, I'm talking one staccato word from one character at a time, punctuated by sentence-long releases: "So. Copy. Right. Now. Lasts. A lifetime. Plus. Seventy. Years. Well this is, it's just, oh my, Delbert would you please explain how ridiculous this is."
Torture porn auteur Eli Roth is planning a feature film comprised completely of trailers. Ads for ads? Narrative through blipverts. Why not. Meanwhile Roman Polanski tells Variety: "Most of (Hollywood moviemaking) is completely uninteresting to me. You see literally everything in the trailer. The marketing took
over the art." Marketing is art. Sony is planning a minisode network that shows short versions of old TV shows. A seven-minute synopsis of the Sopranos was a hit on YouTube. Preshow TV show summaries get longer. Actual TV shows get shorter. Movies in five seconds. And the millions of streams on YouTube last year equal less than 1% of total television airtime.
What to think of John Rambo, the fourth installment in Stallone's action film saga, footage of which was seeded into YouTube this weekend and racked up almost 200,000 views. Three minutes, one decapitation, and one Swayze-like larynx removal later, justice has been served.
But justice is a tired and often misapplied word these days. Leave it to the jowly, sagging Rambo, who, as the original hyperviolent antihero, has been consistently reimagined to accomodate the everchanging social context for outrage. Rambo I, 1982: The disgruntled vet outraged at his pariah status, destroys a small town. Rambo II, 1985: The betrayed soldier who rescues VIP-MIAs in Vietnam. Rambo III, 1988: Adopted muhjadeen battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. And now: Retired recluse who avenges Christian missionaries in Burma, where soldiers are decimating the local population.
Burma? America's guilty conscience is fighting in Burma? Whatevs. Rambo marks the return of the superpatriot at a time when superpatriots -- both real and imagined -- are dying every day. So this is an interesting schtick. Saving Christians from themselves. Or: The idea that feverish violence can solve the problems of violence. I guess that's why it's easier to imagine Rambo in Burma rather than Iraq. Stylized violence in Burma is palatable. Real violence in Iraq is chaos. And besides: Can anyone imagine an Army of one really making a difference. Besides, like, the Army?
And poor, tired Rambo, still fighting the psychic battles of the Asia-pacific. You can't get here from there. Or maybe we never really left.
On Monday thousands of preadolescent girls, moms in tow, lined up outside the American Girl Store on 49th Street and Fifth Avenue for the chance to co-star with Abigail Breslin (of Little Miss Sunshine fame) in the upcoming American Girl movie, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery. New York Magazine's Vulture blog stopped by the audition line to ask the girls why they thought they deserved to be in the movie. Watch the video here.
Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be hitmen. Especially nebbish hitmen like Seth Silver, who at 25 still lives at home, takes his mom contra dancing once a week, and always answers her calls, even if he's in the middle of a quadruple homicide. Mom, in this case, is Rhonda "Ronnie" Silver, a Jewish television chef who thinks Seth is a veterinarian. The only person who knows the truth about Seth's true vocation: His womanizing friend with a shoe fetish, Rex.
Such are the Oedipal underpinnings of "Getting Away with Murder," IFC's new web comedy series which debuted on Sunday. The series is at once hilarious, depraved and gory. Happy Mother's Day!
And hello Peter Pan. "Getting Away with Murder" marks yet another
take, albeit a brilliantly funny one, on the man-child character with a Peter Pan complex (thank you Wes Anderson). Once a charming
expression of boyhood imagination, Peter Pan has become shorthand for
social retardation and sexual dysfunction (thank you Michael Jackson).
Thus Seth, no good with the ladies -- "I hate girls," reads his latest blog entry
-- becomes disturbingly good with guns. And garrotes. And C4. He's
found the fountain of eternal youth, but the spigot's spurting blood.
Speaking of: We meet Seth for the first time at the Ponce de Leon Hotel
and Spa. Disguised as Randy the bellhop, Seth sneaks into his victim's
suite and uses a silencer to dispatch two burly guards, who writhe
comically as blood spatters the camera lens. Next up is a half-naked
girl in the bedroom, whom Seth drugs with a syringe. Then he pokes at
her boob like it's a science experiment. The coup de grace: Drowning an
old man in the bathtub. And then his cell phone rings.
"Ma, I told you never to call me at work!" But Ronnie hasn't found him
out. She only wants him to pick up some asparagus on his way home. 
And
so it goes throughout the 13-episode season, with Seth casually
greasing old men and avoiding his mom's preening while trying to set a
date with a bookstore clerk. On his trail: An FBI investigator and
another emotionally vestigial hitman named Pinkie, a sadistic torturer
who plays "Hostel" to Seth's "Grosse Pointe Blank." Playing sidekick to
the anti-hero is the boy wonder Rex, a foul-mouthed cad who works at a
mall store called Pretty in Pumps. Beside this lech, Seth comes across
as the good guy.
And isn't that a neat trick. In a
hyperviolent world beset by real-life school shootings and daily
reports of international violence, a cold-blooded hitman becomes a
sympathetic character. Strangely endearing, this killer who loves his
mamma.
"Getting Away with Murder" is IFC's first web-only
series, with new shows debuting every Monday through August 6. The show
is written by Andrew Schwartz and written/directed by Bennett Barbakow.
ifc.com/static/sections/gettingawaywithmurder/
***
p.s. The actor who plays Seth, Gilbert John Echternkamp, has also filmed a documentary about his parents called "Frank and Cindy." That doc was featured in episode four of "This American Life" on Showtime.
Big day for lists. "Star Wars," released 30 years ago this month, tops the Visual Effects Society's rankings of the 50 most-influential visual effects films of all time. The list was released today. The full list is here (PDF). The top ten, including a tie for third:
1. Star Wars (1977)
2. Bladerunner (1982)
3. The Matrix (1999)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
5. Jurassic Park (1993)
6. Tron (1982)
7. King Kong (1933)
8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
9. Alien (1979)
10. The Abyss (1989)
(via) Daily Film Dose: "In a director’s cinematic bag of tricks the long tracking shot is the boldest way of making a statement. It’s the flashiest and most attention-grabbing egotistical way of flexing one’s muscle. In most cases it's a narcissistic maneuver, “look-at-me” filming technique, but rare ones, the best ones, serve to reflect and further the story in a way that can’t be reflected with traditional editing."
Today in Literature: On this day in 1932 William Faulkner reluctantly arrived in Hollywood
to begin work as a screenwriter, a labor that would last, on and off,
for twenty years...Faulkner's screenplay credits include adaptations of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Many aspects of his own life in Hollywood are incorporated into the 1991 movie, Barton Fink.
The cineastes at The Reeler, a New York cinema pub which I must read more often, are covering the Tribeca Film Festival. Their latest video interview: Zak Penn, writer behind X-Men 2, X3, Electra, Fantastic Four, and several other movies about funny people in funny underwear. Zak's sophomore effort at directing, The Grand, debuted April 27th at the festival.
The Grand is a mockumentary starring Woody Harrelson on a quest to win the Grand Championship of Poker to save his dead father’s hotel-casino from the clutches of a high-end real estate developer. The film also features Cheryl Hines, David Cross, Werner Herzog and Gabe Kaplan.
Penn: "I feel that the world needs a movie that has Gabe Kaplan and Werner Herzog in it and that's something that was lacking from cinema. And so by providing that I've provided a service for all of us...I see myself as a god who has altered fate."
10 Zen Monkeys: Pulp Fiction changed cinema — but then the internet changed Pulp Fiction. Web pranksters have kicked down the door for a surprise attack on the 1994 film, re-imagining its dialogue in a series of surprising parodies.
Slate's Grady Hendrix explains what Cho Seung-Hui got wrong about Oldboy, the Korean revenge flick the killer evoked in a photo of himself with raised hammer.
Hendrix excerpts a partial quote from film director Park Chan-wook, originally reported in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter a few years ago, but the full quote is even more powerful (excerpt bolded):
THR: The theme of vengeance recurs in your films. Any particular reason?
Park: With the development of civilization and the rise in education levels, people have had to hide their rage, hate and grudges deep within them. But this does not mean that these emotions go away. As relationships become more and more intricate, the rage only grows more and more. While modern society is burdening the individual with a growing sense of rage, the outlets through which people can release their rage are becoming narrower. This is an unhealthy situation, and it's probably why art exists. In reality, however, the vengeances represented in my movies are not actual vengeances. They are merely the transferring of a guilty conscience. My films are stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves. Therefore, rather than movies purporting to be of revenge, it would be more accurate to see my films as ones stressing morality, with guilty consciences as the core subject matter. The constantly recurring theme is the guilty conscience. Because they are always conscious of and obsessed with their wrongdoings, which are committed because they are inherently unavoidable in life, my characters are fundamentally good people. The fact that people have to resort to another type of violence in order to subjugate their initial guilty consciences is the most basic quality of tragedy characteristic in my movies thus far.
Park's next movie, Bakjwi, a modern vampire story, is currently in pre-production. His most recent movie, "I'm a Cyborg, but that's okay" released in 2006 but met with mixed reviews. The trailer, below.
Catchphrase Entertainment principals Dean Shull and Shahrook Oomer will produce and direct the upcoming comedy "MyTop8: The Movie," according to Variety.
The duo also wrote the project, centered around a slacker who decides to take a road trip across the country to meet his "cyber" friends from the Internet as well as various 'Net celebrities from YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. Lensing begins next month.
Cyber friends? Net celebs? They might as well rename this movie "Hey there never laid." And then get Amanda Congdon to punch herself in the face with the NES Power Glove. That doesn't make any sense. But wow the Power Glove was cool, huh?
A bonus video on the Children of Men DVD demonstrates the equipment director Alfonso Cuaron used to film long takes without cuts or excessive editing. Related: Apocalypse How? Reel Pop's Guide to the Top Ten Dystopia Films.
The first episode of Prom Queen debuts today on MySpace. The show, which is the first series from the Michael Eisner-financed video site Vuguru, will unfold over 80 episodes, each 90 seconds in length.
Dramatis personae: Nikki (hearts Chad), Chad (hearts Nikki), Sadie (hearts Morissey), Lauren (has daddy issues), Curtis (has anger issues), Nolan (is Stifler), Danica (is British), Ben (plays sports), Courtney (plays grown-up), Josh (is from juvie).
This is late notice, but if you're in NYC tonight I'm moderating a panel discussion hosted by the International Radio and Television Society foundation. The panel is called "Traditional Media Meets the Digital Challenge," and includes the following panelists:
The panel will be held at Leela Lounge, 1 West 3rd Street (corner
of Broadway) near the 6 at Bleecker Street and the N, R, W at Prince St.
I've got plenty of fun questions to ask the panelists, including (broadly) the importance of video in terms of revenue, the place of affiliate television stations in an online video world, Google's importance/threat to the online video and advertising markets, other forms of digital initiatives (USAToday's focus on social networking, Time's recent purchase of FanNation, Sports Illustrated's VOD channel), metrics for understanding the success of video, the place of videobloggin
