Criterion posted the first four minutes of Roger Ebert's commentary on their Floating Weeds DVD at the beginning of April, which I only noticed when they put a link to this post at the top of their most recent newsletter.
Electric Shadow
Help Close TODD AND THE BOOK OF PURE EVIL
An inventive, funny show that deserved a wider viewership, FEARnet cancelled Todd and the Book of Pure Evil before it could be properly wrapped up. Where Zach Braff and Veronica Mars want a couple million dollars each, the Todd crew are trying for under $100k.
ROCKY: The Musical Hits Broadway February 2014
Lynn Ahrens co-wrote Ragtime, one of the best musicals I've ever seen (and performed in, for that matter, as Houdini). The music style feels like a weird fit for Rocky, but it's apparently been a hit in Germany, so who knows.
Ed Douglas Update
In something like less than two weeks, almost $45,000 out of the $50,000 goal for film critic and pal Ed Douglas' leukemia treatment has been raised. Let's get him the rest of the way there.
Best in Blu-ray 2012: Trends, Top Shelf Discs, and More
I’ve been working on this piece in various capacities, tempos, and formulae, since January 2012. “But…it’s been 2013 for four months now!” you cry. “Best Of List Articles should be finished within the year they’re written about or as insanely quickly afterward as is possible!”
Welcome to “as insanely quickly afterward as is possible”.
Compiling a list like this one is not as simple for me as scribbling off 10-25 numbers on a dry erase board and throwing titles at it to see what sticks, and then spending a couple of hours writing capsule reviews for each. Let me pause a moment to clarify: this is not simply a list, it’s a collection of a few lists.
I've looked at loads of "Best of 2012 Blu-rays" lists around the web (some posted as recently as the end of March). I found them all lacking as a thorough or comprehensive-enough reference point. Go look around the web. Most of them are under 1000 words and read like something designed to butter up to their favorite labels or publicists. I don't find pieces like that very helpful.
At first, I set out to write a shorter version of this for myself. It mutated into its current form where, at just over 13,000 words, it includes a healthy dose of pondering and analyzing the Blu-ray market itself. I added in pushing movies that readers may have not had on their radar nor knew were on Blu-ray in the first place.
Please click on the links of individual titles if you choose to buy through Amazon. Doing so helps make this column and articles like this one possible. I've listed the usual/reasonable prices of different discs and sets for all individual honorees so that you have a barometer of what really constitutes a "deal". These are also listed to reflect where pricing is across the board (aka still too high).
Lawrence of Arabia
"If you've never seen Lawrence, you're missing out on one of the greatest case studies for why Blu-ray is an important format."
Criterion's Brief Encounter
An early 2012 release from Criterion, the story packed into the sleeves of David Lean Directs Noël Coward is masterfully composed and told.
Criterion's The Game
David Fincher's 1997 thriller has finally seen the HD light of day it deserves, adding long-OOP laserdisc extras to a little bit of new stuff and an outstanding transfer.
David watching Lawrence of Arabia in Prometheus
Charles de Lauzirizka's three-hour-plus documentary, Furious Gods: The Making of Prometheus, is worth the price of purchase even if you hated the movie.
Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies
Don't mind the washed-out color of the cover art: the disc is gorgeous, and features a new English dub if you care about those.
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1
Steven Spielberg's OBAMA
This is better than most of these faux trailers usually are at political events.
Daily Grab 128: Grew Up Around Horses
Henry Fonda looking impossibly young in The Farmer Takes a Wife.
SNL Archives Find a Home at Yahoo
...says Deadline. Hopefully, full episodes will be available unabridged. Does this mean Hulu Plus is losing SNL?
Daily Grab 127: Cream for Kitty
Janet Gaynor feeding the canal ship kitten in Victor Fleming's The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935), which co-stars Henry Fonda as the titular Farmer who takes expert cook Gaynor as the titular wife (spoiler alert!). It's now available through Fox Cinema Archives, the Manufacture-On-Demand offshoot of Fox Home Entertainment.
Screen legend Jane Withers has a bit part as the plucky little girl. As a child actress, Withers was Fox's B-picture answer to their own Shirley Temple. She grew up to be the only woman on the Giant set that James Dean trusted to clean his lucky shirt. It looks like I'm interviewing her next week.
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.
Mario Leads 3DS, Wii U Sales Charts
Polygon's Alexa Ray Correia reports that Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, and New Super Mario Bros. U are the biggest-sellers on Nintendo's two current-gen systems. The lesson: give the audience what they want...high-quality games from recognizable franchises.
CW Network Launches XBox Live App
VentureBeat's Tom Cheredar reports that The CW (The Carrie Diaries, Arrow, Supernatural, other shows) is making full episodes available in a free XBox Live app, and in so doing, becomes the first US broadcast network to distribute that way. Interesting counter-move as compared to the ostriches hiding from Aereo, who are crying instead of doing something like this themselves.
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?
Nintendo: Two Consecutive Annual Losses
This is very bad news for Nintendo indeed. They really need some sort of killer success to counteract the impending new PlayStation and XBox consoles.
One of the more notable figures is their under-selling at the rate of a half million consoles relative to a conservative estimate that was originally 1.5 million higher.
Those awful commercials are not the right direction to take.
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.