Netflix and Film Independent got a jump on the deluge of independent filmmaking news that will be coming soon via Sundance by announcing a new independent film contest today that will be chaired by Josh Brolin and judged by Brolin, Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen, and Dustin Lance Black.
While Karina spends today in Mac heaven, I’m celebrating my PC. Well, maybe celebrating isn’t the right word since I’m taking humorous delight in its faults. Just as I greatly enjoy the “I’m a PC; I’m a Mac” ads, I find this parody of The Matrix hilarious, because like so many frustrated computer users, I work with Windows. I truly never thought that I’d be entertained by something involving that annoying little paper clip fellow, but that lampooning of the spoon-bending scene is priceless.
This clip almost makes me grateful that I’ve experienced all of Windows’ many problems. But I’m no Microsoft defender. I’m just a cheap and lazy consumer. And I’ve had a laptop stolen by a junkie, so I’ll always be hesitant to spend a lot on a machine. But now that Netflix Watch Now works on a Mac, there’s not a whole lot other than price that’s keeping me buying a Macbook. And since my present laptop no longer plays DVDs, it might just be time to pay a visit to the Apple Store. Then again, if I stop using Windows, I might not be able to fully appreciate comedic videos like the one above.
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.
Remember how Hollywood feared a Screen Actors Guild strike earlier this year following the devastating WGA strike? Well, after a summer of fruitless negotiating, a strike from SAG may indeed finally happen. The guild is voting today on whether or not to ask its members for a work stoppage, which could have actors walking out around the same time the writer’s started picketing a year ago.
Adding to my single reason for not switching to a Mac, Netflix’s Watch Instantly service will now stream 1,000 additional movies courtesy of a deal with Starz. Time to finally buy a Roku, if you haven’t already.
Universal was reportedly already the lead candidate to acquire the available distribution partnership with DreamWorks, but just to clinch the deal the studio is offering Spielberg & Co. an additional $150 million financing safety net from parent company NBC Universal.
Hilary Swank has found another Oscar-bait role: the two-time Best Actress winner will star as the title role in Betty Anne Waters, about a high school dropout who becomes a lawyer in order to defend her brother, who has been convicted of murder.
Michael Tully does alittle bit of everything. He’s a musician. Journo/blogger/critic. Oh, and he’s directed a pair of acclaimed films, the down and out on drugs in Jacksonville narrative Cocaine Angeland the David Berman rock doc Silver Jew, which will be released on DVD next week by Drag City. Michael is currently the editor of the indie film criticism blog Hammer to Nail, creator of indiewire’s Boredom and Its Boredest blog and occasional contributor to Spout and Filmmaker Magazine. Here’s his take on why The Wire is our young century’s greatest artwork, what’s so special about Max Richter and just how tough it is to get the rights to Richard Yates stories. …Read more
Last night, I started getting emails regarding Netflix’s decision to shutter their Red Envelope Entertainment division, which invested in co-productions, partnered with larger distributors such as Magnolia and IFC to give their acquisitions a boost, and acquired indie films for theatrical distribution on their own. Over 100 films were released under Rev Envelope since it sprung up in 2005, including a number of press darlings and minor hits such as 2 Days in Paris and The Puffy Chair. Hacking Netflix reported last night that Netflix would only be letting 4 employees go in the course of Red Envelope’s dissolution; this morning, indieWIRE pegged the number at 5, which was the entire division, including executive Liesl Copeland.
The problem seems to be that Red Envelope forced Netflix to essentially compete against the Hollywood studios, indie arms and legit indies who supply the bulk of their content. Netflix will now focus its energy on moving content from those sources into digital distribution pipelines. Which will be awesome, once they finally broker a deal with Apple so that you and I can watch their G-D movies on our MacBooks and iPhones…
Meanwhile, a related (if inverse) story broke at roughly the same time, concerning IndiePix. …Read more
“If this is confusing, let’s make the comparison to the airlines — the cost of travel is up and the cost of providing travel is way up. So the business is down. Only the best routes work. And only the best films work. Economics explains it all.” In a post on the IndiePix blog, Bob Alexander re-frames Mark Gil’s by-now-legendary LAFF “the indie film sky is falling” speech––not to mention the vigorous head-nodding that followed––as, essentially, don’t look-behind-the-curtain propaganda designed to buy time for a failing business model whilst attracting attention away from viable alternatives.
When Netflix announced it was going to take away the ability for subscribers to keep profiles on their website, writes Lia LoBello at Radar, “Calamity followed. Petitioners petitioned. Conspiracy theories took hold. Blogs were set ablaze with the fire of DVD rental righteousness. Today, the company announced that the plans to keep, yes, keep, the feature. You did it, people!”
Finally, a way to celebrate Bastille Day that doesn’t involve tempting the food poisoning gods with discount moules frites: Vinyl is Heavy is hosting a blogathon. Quoth Ryland Walker Knight: “if any of our beloved, if mostly silent, readers want to offer any Francophilic thoughts on July 14th, let me know, either via links in the comments or via emails. Until then, go see Wall-E on a big screen when you aren’t out and about, eating cheese or throwing cake or dancing in the woods or driving into the Mediterranean.”
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.
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
Netflix will partner with LG to create a set-top box that will stream movies directly to a television without a disc or computer intermediary. Netflix has been rumored to be working on such a thing for a loooong time, but was it worth the wait? According to the Hollywood Reporter story, the first iteration will be aimed at HD-TV owners, and may be prohibitively expensive for the average consumer.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has yet to hammer out a deal with the Writers’ Guild to allow writers to work on the Golden Globes telecast, which is still tentatively scheduled for January 13. According to Dave McNary at Variety, the WGA looks so unlikely to budge that party planners and studio execs are proceding with plans on the assumption that the show will not be televised–and thus, the WGA won’t have reason to picket, and nominees and presenters will actually show up.
Sean Penn will chair the jury of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
THR is confirming rumors, which first hit the web last week, that Tyler Perry has been cast as the head of the Starfleet Academy in J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. Since there doesn’t seem to be any call for Perry’s usual makeup-aided, multi-role schtick, the casting seems like a clear ploy at broadening the remake/sequel/whatever’s built-in audience. Which makes me wonder: is this thing already so over-budget that Paramount is worried they won’t be able to manufacture a blockbuster on the shoulders of Trekkie love alone?
As if to teach me a lesson for questioning their commitment to the distribution of indie film, Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment inked a deal this week to distribute Running with Arnold, a documentary on Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s rise from Mr. Universe (yes, seriously) to governor of California. The film premiered at SXSW, and recently won a documentary prize at the Zurich Film Festival.
About a year ago, Alec Baldwin, who narrates the film, caused a bit of a dust-up with a dramatic entry on the Huffington Post, in which he claimed he was pursuing legal action to have his name and voice removed from the final cut. Baldwin claimed that he didn’t have time to screen the film before recording his narration, and when he finally did see it, he felt that some of director Dan Cox’s visual choices (such as archive footage of Nazi rallies used to hammer home a point about the Governator’s quest for power) went “over the line.” By the time the film premiered at SXSW in March 2007, that conflict had been resolved. As producer Mike Gabrawy told me during that festival, “The cease-and-desist was absolutely off base. They had no grounds.”
Paul interviewed Dan Cox about Running With Arnold at SXSW; you can check that out here.
Inc.com [via Hacking Netflix] recently asked five entrepreneurs what they would suggest to help Netflix win their on-going battle against Blockbuster once and for all. Let’s ignore, for a minute, the fact that it seems really weird to ask a handful of confirmed capitalists what they would do to help a single corporation to secure a market monopoly. I think Withoutabox’s David Strauss is right on the proverbial money with his suggestion that Netflix should seek out niche audiences and put a greater push behind indie films:
Netflix should distribute more obscure films. It started down this path last year when it helped to distribute The Puffy Chair, which got raves at Sundance. Targeted niche outreach of this kind is harder to do than mass outreach, but if you develop a lot of loyal little audiences over time, in the way that eBay did, you often end up with a larger audience than if you go after the mainstream.
It wasn’t that long ago that Netflix seemed to be on the forefront of this. But at this point, I’m not sure they have any interest.
Dana Carvey has started doing a web show for Netflix. Down in Front With Dana Carvey streams live at Netflix.com/NetflixNowPlaying on Friday and Saturday nights only, but one episode has made it to YouTube (embedded above). It’s kind of a marketing thing (each episode is built around a film available via Netflix’s Now Playing streaming program, another Windows-only app inviting us Mac users to suck it), it’s kind of a movie review thing (judging by the Jackass episode above, it doesn’t seem like Carvey’s under any mandate to be effusively positive), and it’s kind of sketch comedy thing (although, judging by the episode above, it’s not really funny). But, um, it’s a living…?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Netflix recently 
Last night, I started getting emails regarding Netflix’s decision to shutter their Red Envelope Entertainment division, which invested in co-productions, partnered with larger distributors such as Magnolia and IFC to give their acquisitions a boost, and acquired indie films for theatrical distribution on their own. Over 100 films were released under Rev Envelope since it sprung up in 2005, including a number of press darlings and minor hits such as 2 Days in Paris and The Puffy Chair. 
Remember last week
As if to teach me a lesson for questioning their commitment to the distribution of indie film, Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment 
