Electric Shadow

Live-Action KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE is Real

Anime News Network reported this yesterday, and a bunch of sites including Kotaku and every movie blog in existence aren't attributing them. The Grudge's Takashi Shimizu, as was rumored, is directing, and the movie will star 16-year-old figure skater Fūka Koshiba. Studio Ghibli, who previously adapted the source material as the anime Kiki's Delivery Service has nothing to do with this, and the new movie is a new adaptation of the six-volume source.

The Next XBox Revealed on 21 May

Polygon's Brian Crecente reports on press invites going out for the new XBox. I can't wait to hear how many slides worth of "social" and "revolutionizing TV" they have to share in the same way Sony and Microsoft have. I know their XBox Smart Glass app has revolutionized my folder of iPad apps I don't use.

I am actually interested to see how forceful a play they make in the exclusive video content game. They have the bankroll to buy up some things. If they're smart, they'll get their own Netflix/Hulu/Amazon-style "channel app" on other hardware platforms. History has not shown them to be that smart.

Amazon's Set-Top Box

Bloomberg reports that Amazon is planning to release their own "hockey puck" set-top box this fall, which will, like their theoretical smartphone, enter a very crowded marketplace.

If, like the story says, it is designed to connect people primarily to the Amazon Instant Video service, that's great, but so does my Roku. Bloomberg describe Amazon's interest in driving developers to create apps for Amazon's own ecosystem, presumably to support the theoretical phone and set-top box in addition to their Fire tablets.

Amazon should have done this three years ago, to be honest. This is a very uphill fight at this point, even with their enormous user base. Were I them, I would instead focus resources on being the premier distributor of digital media across various platforms, instead of sinking yet more money into a non-starter of a platform. They are up against Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Roku, Boxee, (less so) Nintendo, and TV manufacturers themselves.

The team working on it doesn't scream "content disruption geniuses", either:

The set-top box is being developed by Amazon’s Lab126 division in Cupertino, Calif., which has toyed with building TV-connected devices for several years, the people familiar with the effort say. The project is being run by Malachy Moynihan, a former vice president of emerging video products at Cisco Systems (CSCO) who worked on the networking company’s various consumer video initiatives. Moynihan also spent nine years atApple (AAPL) during the 1980s and 1990s. Among the other hardware engineers working at Lab126 with considerable experience making set-top boxes are Andy Goodman, formerly a top engineer at TiVo (TIVO) and Vudu (WMT), and Chris Coley, a former hardware architect at ReplayTV, one of Silicon Valley’s first DVR companies.

Proximity to Apple HQ and résumé credits there from the 80's and 90's don't equal instant success. I'll say this much: they're DOA if they don't support ecosystem-wide search like the Roku 3 out of the box.

Amazon has financed TV pilots for original shows, and are locking up their own Netflix and Hulu-like exclusive deals. I'm not counting them out, but they really need to make a bold move that sets them apart from both the existing hardware and distribution behemoths to break away from the pack. If anyone has the buying power heft to outpace Apple, it's Amazon, but their track record does not inspire confidence.

Samsung's Best Buy Land Grab

A few weeks ago, Samsung announced impending "Samsung Mini-Stores" coming soon to Best Buys nationwide, obviously in the mold of the Apple in-store pop-ups. I stopped in to the store nearest to where I live today and found this bit of real estate razed just across from AppleLand.

When is Best Buy going to fully transform into a landlord for all the electronics brands they sell?

Daily Grab 126: The Moon

One of the movies on the many, many months in-the-works Best in Blu-ray 2012 series of lists, which finally looks to get posted this week. It's designed to be more helpful and worth looking at than the various "Best of" lists I saw across the internet that reflected little to no effort.

"The Early Work" of Michael Bay

The Film Stage have put together a good cross-section of Michael Bay's early work in music videos and commercials. I link to it even though it's hitwhoring one page of content over five pages.

Yes, he directed The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself", Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love", and even the indelibly good "Aaron Burr" Got Milk ad.

I'm not surprised to see a bunch of movie sites turning this week into "Bay Appreciation Week", and treating him like a misunderstood auteur. I don't condone everything he's done, but he is an auteur. He is also not misunderstood and some poor guy needing artistic pity. He's a mega-millionaire with live lions guarding his office who screams at actors and crew on movie sets.

Pain and Gain looks like the culmination of everything he's ever tried to do with cinematic language.

Netflix Will Let Viacom Bulk Deal Expire

Yet another bit from Deadline...Netflix is now officially positioning their moving away from bulk content deals:

They say that at the end of May they won’t renew their broad deal with Viacom Networks that enables Netflix to carry programming from Nickelodeon, BET and MTV. “We are in discussions with them about licensing particular shows but have yet to conclude a deal,” the execs say. The change reflects Netflix’s effort to “focus on exclusive and curated content” which lessens its willingness to pay for “non-exclusive, bulk content deals.” Hastings and Wells add that “with all the recently added fresh programming from Disney, Cartoon Network, Hasbro’s The Hub and DreamWorks Animation, we have a great kids offering.”

Ditching the Nickelodeon part of the deal is where I see them looking at specific shows to grab, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, especially with the new movie coming out.

They're also adding a "four streams at once" plan at $11.99, which they expect "less than 1%" of customers to choose. The $7.99 plan offers two simultaneous users/streams.

HEMLOCK GROVE Beating HOUSE OF CARDS (Based on Zero Public Data)

Deadline mentions an analyst call in which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that their new, critically-unloved series from Eli Roth, Hemlock Grove, has had a better initial response than House of Cards did two months ago.

He doesn't offer any actual numbers or data to back that up other than to say "more" people have been plowing into Hemlock than House of Cards. I'm not calling him a liar, but it is worth noting that they are charting successes in a vacuum, with no new model for relative success. Everything is rosy when you're comparing against nothing and validating your own adjective without data.

A friend of a friend mentioned her greater interest in Hemlock Grove as a fan of True Blood (the books, not the TV show, she specifies). I hope it succeeds. I've heard through backchannels that Eli Roth found the process of putting this together invigorating and inspiring. Bully for that.

I love that things like this, Arrested Development, and others are springing up in a media landscape where the audience has been wanting it for a while, but the content providers have been too lazy to care. Who knows, maybe even Futurama's recent cancellation will find it un-cancelled yet again. Maybe that rumored Firefly animated series could have a home at Netflix (or Hulu, or iTunes).

Things have started changing in a big way. 2013 is going to be a disruptive year in content.

THE GRANDMASTER Trailer

The Hong Kong cut of Wong Kar-wai's newest movie runs 130 minutes. The original title is The Grandmasters. This "international" version is 115 minutes and only drops the "s" at the end of the title.

I have an import Blu-ray on its way so that I can watch the intended edit first.

This feels like the good old days, when Harvey Weinstein was re-editing and re-titling Asian martial arts movies for no real good reason, not to mention putting extremely didactic english voiceover on top of the trailer. This newest telling of the Ip Man story starring Tony Leung hits US cinemas on 23 August.

Ang Lee's FLYING TIGERS Moves Ahead

Deadline's Dominic Patten reports that additional funding has been secured for Ang Lee's version of the story of WWII's Flying Tigers, a squadron of volunter US pilots who helped China fight back against the Japan before the US joined the war.

Tom Cruise had been trying to get a version of this story off the ground, but it appears that Lee's camp, a China-US co-production monster, has definitively beaten him out. The project is being shot in English for use as both a six-hour TV miniseries and a two-part feature length movie.

I'm still unclear on which version will be shown in the US based on all the reporting I've seen, but it seems the two-part movie event is China-only. HBO-bound, then?

THOR: THE DARK WORLD Trailer

They have done a great job nailing this character on-screen. This looks to go heavier on the epic scale than in the first standalone movie, which is a very, very good thing. I like seeing them folding in more elements of the core Thor mythos, like the unhappy teaming of Thor and Loki, as well as more of a focus on the Nine Realms that include Asgard.

Aereo Starts Service in Boston on 15 May

Deadline has done a very good job following this whole Aereo "thing" from beginning to now. Here's a quick recap of what this is and why it is controversial:

The Barry Diller-backed service will stream local broadcast channels for free without the permission of those stations. At NAB, over-the-air broadcasters Fox, CBS, and Univision made the hilariously stupid threat to take their broadcast channels to pay-TV-only, which is actually a much worse move for them than to have a service that is basically IPTV-style Slingboxing:

It will stream programming from 28 over-the-air channels in Boston without their permission. (Aereo also has an agreement with Bloomberg Television to offer its pay TV channel.) Broadcasters in New York have already taken Aereo to court, alleging that it violates their copyrights. The company counters that it simply rents antennas, enabling subscribers to watch programming that’s already available to them for free. It adds that consumers also have the right to stream their content, much like they would if they bought a Slingbox.

Focus Features Snags DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

Deadline reports that the meaty awards bait movie has one of the best distributors in the game right now:

This was a long-coveted project for actors and directors even before Matthew McConaughey came aboard in May 2011 to star alongside Hilary Swank (Jennifer Garner eventually came on to take the latter role). McConaughey said he lost almost 40 pounds to tell the real-life story of Ron Woodruff, who fought the U.S. medical and pharmaceutical companies after he was diagnosed with HIV in the mid-1980s, when the disease was still mostly without a public face.

Valiant Goes 8-Bit with Harbinger Wars

CBR has a great interview with the Valiant guys about their upcoming 8-Bit-style iOS and Android game adaptation of their first big crossover event since re-launching their line, Harbinger Wars:

CBR News: A retro, 8-bit mobile game isn't unheard of, but it's certainly unusual when it comes to comic book-based video games in this era. How exactly did this project begin and where did the idea to deal exclusively in 8-bit come from?

Dinesh Shamdasani: We announced a series of 8-bit covers for our June books, and they got a tremendous response. What happened is we were all sitting around -- we do brainstorming meetings, and we were coming up with creative ideas, marketing ideas, sales ideas -- and Warren Simons had recently seen "Wreck-It Ralph." We were all talking about the proliferation of 8-bit style and how genius that movie was and how much fun it is. He pitched doing Valiant characters in 8-bit. Atom Freeman, our sales manager, knew Matthew White, who did the covers for us. He hooked us up with Matthew, who did a test piece that actually ended up being the "Planet Death" "X-O Manowar" cover. That hasn't changed from the test piece he did with no direction. It was fun, it was cool, we really liked it and we started talking about how we wanted to play that game. I had a chat with Russ and said, "Man, it would be so cool [to play that game]." Russ said he knew the perfect person for that. Russ and Steve Newton knew each other from doing Marvel with DSI. We sat down with the Storm City guys and everybody was on the same page and the 8-bit covers were announced. … We were totally gung-ho about doing the game and that's how we hooked up with Steve Newton and Storm City, and Steve brought in Dan Kitchen, who's been tremendous.

I interviewed Valiant CEO (then CCO) Dinesh Shamdasani on Giant Size back in the show's earliest days.