Netflix recently opened up a Mac Beta version of their Watch Instantly movie streaming service (via Microsoft’s much-maligned Silverlight. About 15 minutes ago I decided to give it a test drive, and now I’m already five minutes deep into Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century. It’s that simple!!! Just go to Netflix.com/silverlightoptin, click a button to enter the Beta, pick a movie to watch, install Silverlight, and your movie really will start playing instantly. It’s not false advertising!

My only complaint thus far is that, unlike a YouTube or Hulu clip, you can’t wait for the full video to load before you start watching — the video buffers itself in real time based on the strength of your internet connection. So every time my Gchat goes off, Twentieth Century goes off, too. This is surely my fault for attempting to multitask. I trust you would give Carole Lombard the undivided attention she deserves.

The End of America, a new documentary based on a book by Naomi Wolf and directed by Ricky Stern and Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback), will premiere tomorrow night at the Hamptons Film Festival. And then, it’s going to be available … everywhere. It’s the first production of IndiePix Studios, and the company has developed a unique plan to get the movie out there via a ton of different means. After its festival premiere it’s going straight to streamability via Snag Films, and then, according to a press release, the doc will “flood venues around the country, from special screenings to theatrical exhibitions, from book stores and merchants that sell DVDs to internet sources for renting, streaming and downloading the film.”

As far as I know, it’s the first film to go to Snag directly from its festival premiere. Presumably, the goal is to enable the film, which “addresses issues of freedom, dictatorship, civil liberties and democracy - and warns that the United States’ claims on constitutional civil liberties are fast eroding,” to “go viral” in the days leading up to the election. It’ll be an interesting experiment; so far, most of the films on Snag have been titles that had been available in other forms for awhile, and this may be a test of whether or not, when given the oportunity to embed and discuss a brand-new political documentary, bloggers will pounce. I’m seeing the film tomorrow in the Hamptons and will have more thoughts after that.

In a post published today on Hulu’s official blog, Kevin Smith reminisces about his 21st birthday, which he spent driving from New Jersey to New York to see Richard Linklater’s Slacker. Inspired by J. Hoberman’s Village Voice review, Smith says, “the promise of a scene centered on a Madonna pap smear of questionable authenticity was bait enough to lure us from the Jersey ‘burbs into the wilds of Manhattan-after-dark.”

17 years later, thanks to Hulu, no one will ever have to drive an hour each way for the Madonna pap smear scene again. Slacker is embedded above.

We’ve been complaining for a long time about the Mac incompatibility of Netflix’s Watch Now online movie streaming service. But a CNET blog has found evidence that this problem may soon be a thing of the past. Jennifer Guevin noticed a Netflix blog entry, which promises that a “solution” for Mac users who want to Watch Now will be available “by the end of the year.” Promises, promises, but let’s hope this leads somewhere productive.

Remember last week, when that guy at CES asked the guy from Netflix why their Watch Instantly streaming service doesn’t work on a Mac, and the Netflix guy was all, “It’s totally Apple’s fault,” and I bought it, and a million Apple fanboys wrote in to tell me that I was wrong? Those were heady times. But now it looks like there’s a new kink in the works, which puts Netflix and Apple’s reticence to get together in a new light.

…Read more

If you, like me, are both a Mac user and a Netflix user, then the fact that the latter’s Watch Instantly movie streaming service is incompatible with the former’s devices is probably one of the banes of your existence (unless you have a life beyond movies, and your computer, and watching movies on your computer. Must be nice.) I’ve always just assumed that Netflix was responsible for the so-1999 decision to ignore the growing market of Mac users and keep the platform PC-only.

I was, apparently, wrong.

Hacking Netflix has linked to a CES interview with Netflix’s Steve Swasey, in which he responds to the “why can’t a playa watch a movie on a Mac, y’all?” question rather defensively:
…Read more