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Movies

CinemaNow Steps Up (A Little)

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A couple of days ago, I discussed the announcement by the film download service Movielink that they had licensed software to allow downloaded films to be burnt to DVD. Of course, there was still the tiny little hurdle of getting the studios to go along with their plan. Maybe by the end of the year.

Enter CinemaNow. They announced yesterday that they have not only licensed DVD-burning software and gotten a studios to take a flyer on the concept, but they have actually started offering the service. Naturally, there are issues.

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Movielink Steps Up (A Little)

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Some good news for those who are interested in legally downloading film: Movielink, one of the major services originally created to sell movie downloads, is going to allow consumers to burn their downloads to DVD.

Will this be the magic steriod that will kickstart the mostly-ignored film downloading service? Probably not, but it is a start.

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Fools Go Forth: Digital Distribution And Artist Compensation

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It is no secret that most entertainment companies are inefficient businesses — they spend far too much and save far too little. Nothing exposes this inefficiency like digital distribution. Even better — nothing exposes the inequities in artist compensation like digital distribution.

Artist royalties are calculated based on a contractual formula. Depending on your agreement, you might get a percentage of net revenue that takes the sales price less returns, bad debt that sort of thing. Or a percentage of net revenue that factors in certain costs like product manufacturing, mastering, freight, whatnot. The deals differ across industries, but, interestingly, when you look at how book royalties, music royalties, and home entertainment, formerly video, royalties are calculated, they are remarkably similar. Motion picture participations (video royalties are a subset of this) have additional complexities that I won’t cover here.

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Only Spielberg Can Mess With His Movies, Dammit!

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In a bit of good news for censorship foes, a Federal judge in Denver has ruled that retailers who were “sanitizing” films by removing all of the good parts prior to selling them to a probably-witting niche were also violating copyright laws.

This case has been in motion since 2002, when CleanFlicks tried to twist the First Amendment by claiming that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to these films prior to sending them out to the public. The judge, however, saw right through that bullshit:

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How About Independence From Demagogues?

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In case you are wondering how much the Republicans are going to try to use the evil boogeyman of Hollywood as a way to try to whip up their base in a desperate attempt to keep the House this fall, then look no further than this amazing quote, from House Majority Whip Roy Blunt:

“This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence,” Blunt said in a letter to MPAA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman.

All this is due to the fact that the MPAA had the temerity to give a PG to a film about a football coach, and how his faith sustains him. Apparently, the filmmakers claim that the MPAA originally said the the PG was given due to the religious content, and then changed their story. The MPAA says that ain’t so.

I say that the filmmakers smell a potentially box-office boosting controversy and the Congresspeople smell a potentially ballot-box boosting issue.

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It’s Not A Pirate’s Life For Them

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On Monday, the Los Angeles Times ran a story that made every classicist’s blood run cold: Disney is revamping — again — the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This time, forget about exorcising lusty pirates. Now it’s all about making the ride, sigh, more like the movie. Yeah, wrapped up in politically correct phrases about updating the ride is the key message: more Johnny Depp. It’s a bit like back-handed convergence.

You know, I can almost support this kind of modernization. I mean, regular park visitors deserve a little surprise, even though regular park visitors thrive on the familiarity of the rides. But just like misguided attempt to rewrite pirate history — yeah, sure, the pirates invaded the town and chased the wenches because they were hungry — this smacks of corporate decision-making instead of end-user love and care. The storyline has changed and the pirates’ booty has more, sigh, bling.

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That’s What I Like: IMDb

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This was how we watched television in the 20th Century: we would crowd around the tiny TV, watching shows whenever the broadcasters decided to show them — or maybe on a VCR, where we fast-forwarded past commercials on an ever-blurry tape. When a familiar actor or actress showed up onscreen, there would be some conversation about where we may have seen that person before, but nobody could actually remember.

This is how we watch television in the 21st century: Instead of the tiny TV, we have a nice HD; instead of the VHS, we have the DVR, and whenever a familiar face, or even a “Hey It’s that Guy!” shows up on the screen, we fire up a wireless-connected laptop, because it’s time to IMDb that person.

The IMDb, of course, is the Internet Movie Database. And it’s become a verb around our house because it is, without a doubt, one of single greatest examples of how the Internet changed everything.

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Convergence Gone Bad

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“There’s a reason they didn’t let me see this in the theater.”

As it turns out, I was sick this past weekend. Very, very sick. That’s the only excuse I can offer for the story I’m about to tell. When we settled in for a Friday night movie, I thought, “Let’s do something wild, wacky.”

In my misspent youth, I’d watched the movie version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Yeah, the movie.

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“Number Slevin:” #12

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A couple of days ago, I noted that The Weinstein Company put the opening sequence of Lucky Number Slevin up on YouTube. My guess was that they were hoping that it would go viral and kickstart the film’s box office for this weekend.

It didn’t happen: Number Slevin dropped to #12. And the per-screen was only $1387.89 — down by $1000 from the previous weekend and $2000 from its April 7th opening weekend. By contrast, the #1 film this week – Silent Hill, made over $6900 per screen.

So was this experiment a failure?

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