Regretflix

Netflix's pseudo apology letter & video has been making its way around the internet the past couple days. The big news is that instead of the big (60%!) price increase that brought so much flack a few months ago, Netflix is splitting into two separate companies; one for digital streaming & one for DVD/Blu-ray mail service. Purchasing both services together will cost the same as the 60% price increase, but you're supposed to feel like you're purchasing two different services from two separate companies.

Only you're not supposed to feel like that because the envelope will look almost identical to the current Netflix envelope. The company doing the streaming will be called Netflix while the mail service will be called Qwikster. Make sense? Sound good to you?

No. Not likely.

So what's going on? Well, in our opinion, they're panicking. With the US Postal service in real trouble & facing major cutbacks, Netflix can no longer rely on their model of distribution to continue without either making customer service sacrifices or switching to a more expensive, private carrier. Outdated as it may seem in the age of high speed internet, UPS & Fed-ex, the US Postal Service is actually a pretty amazing thing; for less than the cost of a candy bar you can have a real live person carry your handwritten letter, bill, or postcard to its recipient anywhere in the country in just a couple of days! It's big government at its most grandiose perhaps, but it allows almost all Americans to have reliable, affordable mail service. That the mail will just arrive at your house 6 days a week is something we've all grown up taking for granted. Sure there are problems & the free market has decided that Americans are happy to pay more to guarantee the delivery dates for important packages & documents, & then we're happy to email free digital copies of everything else, but for access & overall price, well, nothing beats the postal service. The Netflix mail-in model just cannot function without postmen who daily overcome rain, heat, snow, & gloom of night.

One of Netflix's biggest assets has always been its name: NET-FLIX: Flicks from the net! (ahem, the word "Flick" is pretty catchy isn't it…) It's a much catchier name than VOD (Video On Demand) which I can only assume got its name because the name "Netflix" was taken. Netflix was started in 1997, just at the beginning of the digital download era when pirated music was first becoming a widespread issue.  They saw what was happening to the music industry (at the hands of another infamous "-ster" named company) & jumped to make sure the same thing wouldn't happen to films. The late '90s were also the years of peak rental frustration. Blockbuster had trampled most of its competitors & insisted on resting lazily on its laurels rather than innovating & customers were getting increasingly irritated about spending a fortune in late fees on an item that cost so little to make & ship. Netflix was beautifully placed; they could provide better selection at a consistent price & then when bandwidth increased enough for digital streaming, they'd already have a loyal customer base. Now that Blockbuster is out of the picture & they're the only rental biz in town, it is surprising that they're faltering the way

they are.

My guess is that Netflix sees the industry going in a certain direction & it's the one that sounds like Sweatmix & not the one that sounds like Friendster. They know what business they want to be in & what business is expensive, labor-intensive & possibly soon to be obsolete. Qwikster is, in all likelihood, a cutting off of dead wood so that the mail-in service can finally be disassociated with the catchy, movie-streaming name & left to putter about in internet obscurity until everyone & their grandma has gotten over the demise of the postal service & finally figured out the whole new-fangled computer-digital-download-thingie. (I mean, did they seriously not check to see if the twitter handle @Qwikster was taken?) Given that part of our business is DVD/Blu-ray rental & we're well aware that there's a continuing market for it, I think it's unfortunate that Netflix is apparently dismissing physical rental. Sure, shipping will be an increasing problem, but digital download is still only a fraction of the movie market. Only a relatively small number of films are available for streaming, & the industry is still pumping out DVDs, Blu-rays & all those special features discs & people are still demanding them. Conversion to a new media platform is slow & people like what they're used to (heck, we still regularly get requests for VHS tapes!) There's no guarantee that the market will favor the online streaming system Netflix is backing.

(Note to the good folks over at archive.org; I hope you're preserving those soon to be antiquated "queues" so that someday we can all look back on a simpler time when you actually had to wait patiently for your turn to watch Hangover 2, & we can tell our children tales of a tiny, magical truck driven by a blue-hatted driver who would hand deliver a little red envelope to a box with your address on it & therein lay your movie. You will blow their minds.)

Watch this delightful classic piece about a rural mailman & feel some anticipatory nostalgia.

Girl Walk All Day

This is a project that makes me happy. Photographer/Filmmaker Jacob Krupnick describes his new project, now in the editing phase, as "combining the amazing talents of improvisational dancer Anne Marsen (and a supporting cast of contemporary dancers) with the epic new Girl Talk album, All Day to create an album-length music video of grand proportions." Krupnick filmed a 7 min clip of Marsen & some of the other dancers on and around the Staten Island Ferry about 8 months ago, put it up on vimeo & started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to complete the project. It took off & he received 5x the funds he requested.

It's an unusual way to go about funding a film & the film follows an unusual structure since we're all used to getting our music videos in attention span coddling nuggets of only a few minutes each. What would an album length music video be like? Well, it will be interesting to find out, but I'm personally looking forward to it. Dancing and film go way back but it's died out in recent years. Marsen's dancing is indeed amazing, & her presence on the screen charismatic. The other dancers look great too. Who hasn't wanted to bust out dancing in a totally un-dancey place? Who hasn't wanted to have the skill, energy & guts to be able to step up & really (& I mean really) dance?

Well, like most people, I don't have those skills but I do have the desire. I look forward to dancing vicariously through Anne & the rest of the dancers to Krupnick's film of the new Girl Talk album.

The trailer has an irrepressible, playfulness to it. Check it out. Seriously, do yourself a favor & check it out. I think it contains prescriptions strength fun. It almost reminds me of this delightful bit from one of my favorite films (&, little known fact, first movie crush) Gene Kelly from Singin in the Rain.

The Sleeping Beauty

A little background on my blog writing process: Sometimes I post about movies that I haven't seen but want to or about movies that I haven't seen & don't want to. Sometimes I post about movies that I have seen & that I think that you (general you) should want to see. Generally I try to blog about films that I not only think sound interesting, but I think a sizable portion of the population would agree with me on. Today, however, I'm posting about a movie that I've just seen & loved & I want you all to see it & love it too but it's a very unusual film & not only that, but it's in French which, ( as I mentioned earlier,) seems to deter some people from checking out some of the best stuff out there right now. The film is Catherine Breillat's ("Blue Beard" 2009) "The Sleeping Beauty" & a more visually stunning film you won't find this year. (Not to be confused with Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty", about a beautiful college student who becomes a prostitute for men who prefer their partners drugged into deep sleep, which also comes out this fall.)

I loved the film for its embrace of fantasy & fairytale in an unscrubbed form. We are used to getting our fairytales in happily ever after format & the ghoulish originals have been stuffed away in favor of tidy happily ever afters that come after some predictable social lessons about the close relationship between happiness, virtue & beauty. Princesses are mirrors of society's vision of the perfect woman & the results are somewhere between cute & horrid. The princess in Breillat's version of the tale is also somewhere between cute & horrid but in a delightfully human way and the film is definitely not suitable for children. She's a spunky, willful child who loves alarm clocks & dictionaries. She falls out of trees while imagining herself to be Vladimir, a rough & tumble boy. When at age 6 the enchantment takes place & she enters her 100 years of sleep, she marches through her dreamworld with a self assurance that is both delightfully naive & sophisticated.

On her dream journey she travels to exotic places on a ghost train, meets a surprising cast of fairytale-esque characters, encounters love, desire & danger, & discovers puberty. The colors are vibrant & the scenery is exquisite. The enchanted world feels real. Waking into adolescence, she meets characters from her dreamworld & struggles to come to terms with reality, adulthood & the passage of time. Childhood is a dream that we all awake from at some point & there is a poignance to that experience for all of us. Watching Princess Anastasia go through it in such an exaggerated way is thrilling.

I hope people can overcome their fear of subtitles to come out and enjoy this exquisite film.

Watch the trailer Here

Read the New York Times review Here

Oh the Possibilities!

Earlier this week I thought, "Hmmm, there are so many movies we're looking into that I should really pick one or two to blog about..." but then I got stuck trying to pick one and ended up, as with many things in life, just sort of letting the thought drift out of my head without acting on it. However today I realized that it wasn't necessary to pick just one or two; the exciting thing about having a ton of great movies we're looking into is that there are a ton of them & they're great.

Here are a few of them (there are plenty more good ones that I'll cover later, don't worry!):

Newcomer J.C. Chandor's financial thriller "Margin Call" staring Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany & Jeremy Irons is on our radar. Financial thrillers are close to home for many of us at the moment as we continue to feel the effect of the economy's roller coaster lurch a few years ago. This film captures that moment when the financial institutions were on the cusp of that lurch.

Another film is Jeff Nichols's psycho drama "Take Shelter" about a father who is either going crazy or predicting a devastating storm. The film stars Michael Shannon who does crazy eyes like nobody's business & seems to be reprising his role in the Herzog/Lynch film "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done."

We're also keeping our eyes on David Cronenberg's new film, "A Dangerous Method" staring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender & Keira Knightley about the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and psychiatry in the early days of psychiatry. Sounds cerebral & potentially boring but go ahead & Watch the Trailer Here... Oh wait, it also has hot kinky sex between hot people in period costumes? Awesome! Sign me up!

In a similar vein, we're also intrigued by Pedro Almodóvar's new film "The Skin I Live In", staring Antonio Banderas, about a plastic surgeon who works mad scientist style to create an impenetrable skin after his wife was badly burned. There appears to be plenty more twisted sexy sexness as well as a good dose of classic twisted Almodóvar. Watch the trailer here

Then there's Steve James's (Hoop Dreams) well reviewed documentary "The Interrupters" about the struggle of a small group of ex-offenders who work to protect their community from violence. It's a courageous project & the reviews are excellent.

For the life crisis that is somewhere between

early & mid, there's Miranda July's (Me and You and Everyone We Know) new film "The Future" about a couple whose decision to adopt a cat forces them to think about the future. It's getting good reviews & looks great.

There's also Jacob Tierney's film "Good Neighbors" which I will absolutely never ever watch because I value my ability to sleep at

night, however, I know there are several intrepid movie goers who frequent Cinema 16:9 who don't suffer from that worry. This is a film for them.

There's Rob Minkoff's "Flypaper" staring Patrick Dempsey & Ashley Judd which is a new twist on the classic light-hearted bank-robing farce. It's about two gangs who accidentally attempt to rob the same bank. Looks like fun. Maybe not high art, but fun and I'm all for fun.

Then there are some wild cards like Sheldon Larry's "Leave it On the Floor" & Mathew Bate's "Shut Up Little Man." "Leave it On the Floor" is about a newcomer who stumbles into Los Angeles ball culture. (For those like me who had to look it up, here's what wikipedia has to

say about Ball culture) A niche film for sure, but check out all the great dancing! "Shut Up Little Man" is a part of a burgeoning new documentary sub-genre; the cursing middle aged man whose rants were captured by a now outdated recording device & distributed virally before viral was cool & then resurrected for a chance to gaze deep into the navel of viral character assassination through a lens of nostalgia. (Check out last summer's "Winnebago Man" for another example.)

Do any of these look good? Great? Awesome Dull? Lame? What else should we be looking into?

Who Wants to Live Forever?

I just watched the movie How to Live Forever & enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. Now, I should admit that I'm not a person who thinks a lot about immortality or life extending elixirs all that often. Death has always seemed comfortably far off, a nice distance on the horizon but not something I need to bother myself with on a day to day basis. Someday it'll be here but why bother with worrying about it now?

Anyway, the movie was a lot more entertaining & enlightening than I'd feared. Living forever may be impossible, but the various routes to a long, fulfilling life are encouraging rather than laborious, enjoyable rather than drudgery. Actually, as I just said goodbye to my 31st birthday & firmly entered my early 30s (mid-adulthood, non-youth, the age when you start getting all excited when carded at the liquor

or store restaurant on the rare occasions work & family allow for such things...) it's a real joy to see the variety & joy available ahead. Botox, shmotox, someday I'm getting into kite building!

Cultural Advent

Sorry for the long silence over the past couple weeks. We've been busy little cinema elves hard at work on some new and exciting developments, ("Which," she sagely noted, "shall all be revealed in due time.")

One that I can discuss, however, is that we're considering bringing in some absolutely stunning HD presentations of some of the best opera, ballet, and Shakespeare performances from around the world. Personally, I love the concept. I take my older daughter to the ballet in Philadelphia a couple of times a year (the younger is still too young, but I hope to bring her as well someday) and we get all excited about it and have a fantastic time, however, it's extremely expensive and a great deal rests on the seats I happen to choose/spring for. Too close and we're looking at toes, legs,

and bums, too far and I'm holding her up on my lap hoping she can see enough to stay engaged, too far off to one side and a portion of the stage is hidden. Obviously, nothing can replace the experience of attending a performance in person, of experiencing it without the interference of a lens, steadicam and editing crew; this is why live performance has stayed strong in spite of film, but this is exciting because the HD cameras can record beautiful images so close to the performers, much closer than any real life experience can put you. It's also appealing because, like many Americans, I'm unlikely to personally visit the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow anytime soon to see their performance of Coppelia, take a trip over to Milan to see The Magic Flute at La Scala, and then make one final stop in London to see As You Like It at Shakespeare's Globe Theater before jetting home, as much as I'd like to.

Anyway, all you Shakespeare lovers, ballet fans and opera aficionados, what do you think? Would you enjoy coming out for a night of HD cultural programing at Cinema 16:9? What would you be interested in seeing? Should we attempt the hat

trick of stuffing a world of famous theaters and performances into our tiny theaters? Please, share your thoughts!

We Need to Talk About Melancholia

As promised, now that the Cannes film festival has closed up, now that all the surprises, awards and upsets are out on the table, I have a couple of films that I'm excited about. The first one is the dreamy, end of the world, romantic fantasy, Melancholia by Danish filmmaker, Lars von Trier. In the immediate aftermath of its screening at Cannes it was receiving excellent reviews, it was called a masterpiece, it was just about the buzziest of all the buzz-filled films, heck, it was being called a masterpiece AND accessible (ie - enjoyable beyond just the tiny strata of intellectual film buffs.) The film follows Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at her lavish wedding reception held at her sister Claire's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) house. Justine's melancholic nature haunts her even through her fairytale of a wedding while her sister Claire's naturally sensible disposition allows her to thrive in all social situations. Justine's mental state further deteriorates and Claire becomes her caretaker. In the second half of the film, a planet on a collision course with the earth is about to bring an end to life on earth. The tables turn and Justine's melancholia allows her to thrive in the face of The End while her sister struggles to say goodbye to a world she loves dearly. The plot is romanic and apocalyptic, and the soundtrack is full of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Drama, beauty and the romantic ideal of the sublime are exquisitely rendered, and Dunst's dreamy performance won her the best actress award. However, von Trier, the filmmaker most recently known for the shockingly brutal film Antichrist, and previously knownfor the Björk fest, Dancer in the Dark, seemed unable to do the smile and wave, thanks for all the the praise, modest head bob, and perhaps a little eccentric show of artsiness routine that's expected of makers of masterpieces, accessible or not. His tattoo (nsfw) was plenty balls out eccentric and he could have gone with that as his memorable moment but he didn't.

Instead von Trier took the path of most resistance and bombed his press conference with increasingly line-nudging jokes about casting his female leads, Gainsbourg & Dunst in a pornographic film next, understanding Hitler, and a reflection on his German family tree as making him "a nazi." Cannes quickly responded by naming him a "persona non grata" and banning him from the festival. Von Trier later attempted to run damage control and explain that no, he is not a nazi, that his words were the result of a struggle to express himself properly in english (not his native language,) and that they were "stupid." Stupid displays

of antisemitism have not been as uncommon as one might expect (just ask another Cannes guest, Mel Gibson) but nazi jokes, other than the ubiquitous "Hitler hears about X" clips, are pretty much universally in bad taste. As far as I can tell, it seems unlikely that von Trier, who grew up with a jewish father, is actually an honest to goodness anti-semite, however, whatever self destructive impulse that drove him to make those comments is probably best left at home next time.

Watch the Trailer for Melancholia Here

The other film I am excited about is Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on the book of the same name by Lionel Shriver. Tilda Swinton stars as Eva, the somewhat ambivalent mother of Kevin, a teenaged boy who has just committed a violent crime. Swinton has an impressive presence on film. A friend first pointed her out to me over a decade ago in the film The War Zone. Watch her face, he said, it's fascinating. It was. She has since starred in several films, taken home an Oscar and cornered the market on tall, jumpy, gaunt women. In this film the strained

relationship between Swinton's Eva and her son Kevin is on display and Eva worries that it was a catalyst for his actions. Eva is a parent who is, it seems, trying to do her best but ends up feeling responsible for creating a monster out of her son.

Watch a clip from the film Here and Here