Netflix's 'House of Cards' gamble. House of Cards, Netflix’s expensive expansion into original programming, debuted one month ago this week. I finished watching the 13th and final episode of the first season on Sunday night and I have no idea if that makes me ahead of the curve or hopelessly behind. I imagine, to many of you, writing about the show in early March already seems pathetically out of date, like wearing white shoes after Labor Day or secretly finding “Harlem Shake” videos still amusing.
There are probably also at least a few patient holdouts moments away from closing this tab to avoid spoilers. And I don’t blame you, you tough-minded few too disciplined or busy to binge — rather, I admire you! Stanford has commissioned gooey experiments about you; YouTube is littered with videos celebrating and mocking your willpower. To put it more plainly: I’m a little unmoored! But Netflix’s strategy of uploading an entire season onto its servers in a single day has disrupted all of that. Netflix's lost year: The inside story of the price-hike train wreck | Internet & Media. Reed Hastings stopped listening, and that's when the trouble started.
In the spring of 2011, Hastings, Netflix's widely admired chief executive, held a meeting with his management team and outlined his blueprint to jettison Netflix's DVD operations. Netflix managers would tell subscribers on July 12 that they planned to do away with a popular subscription that offered access to DVD rentals as well as unlimited on-demand streaming video for $10 per month. DVDs and streaming would be separated and each would cost subscribers $7.99 a month, or $15.98 for both, about a 60 percent hike.
The changes would take place in September. If you cancelled your Netflix subscription, have you returned? Jonathan Friedland, the new vice president of global corporate communications who had joined Netflix just a few months earlier, asked whether customers on tight incomes might object to the price hike, according to people at Hastings' meeting. Hastings was wrong. So how did Hastings stumble? Apocaflix DVD Co. To Russia with amor: Spanish cinema enters the Twilight zone | Film. Reading this on a mobile? Click here to view video Russia is a secure beachhead for Hollywood at the moment, so it was a surprise to see a small Spanish film twanging The Amazing Spider-Man's web-strings there a few weeks ago.
Tengo Ganas de Ti (I Want You) opened at No 2 behind Sony's reboot at the beginning of July, one of the most impressive showings ever in the country for a non-English-language film. An online marketing push for ab-festooned star Mario Casas and an introspective Twilighty pallor to the scenario – troubled hunk returns from love exile in London and has to decide on his true love – seemed to work their magic. Tengo Ganas de Ti has taken $5.8m (£3.7m) in Russia – more than the first Twilight, with which it shared comparable awareness levels, but was probably considerably poorer in promotional resources. Distributors Caravella DDC know it's a coup. It must be serious if he's using the F-word. But the situation seems acute in Spain. What Does It Mean That Megan Ellison's Annapurna PIctures Picked Up U.S. Distribution Rights to Harmony Korine's 'Spring Breakers?' Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures made a surprise move Tuesday when it bought U.S. distribution rights to Harmony Korine’s new film “Spring Breakers” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival Wednesday, September 5.
To date known only as a production and financing entity, Annapurna has no distribution infrastructure and merely states in its news release that “additional distribution information will be revealed at a later date.” During Cannes, Ellison launched an international sales division called Panorama Media, but French outfit Kinology already reps “Spring Breakers” overseas. READ MORE: TIFF List 2012: A Complete List of All Films at the Toronto International Film Festival The story of four college-age women who get involved with a local thug after their plan to rob a fast-food shack to fund their spring break adventure goes awry, “Spring Breakers” will have its North American premiere in Toronto September 7.
Muse Prods.’ Tanzanian VJs. The godfather ... Derek 'Lufufu' Mukandala was the first VJ in Tanzania. Photograph: Matthias Krings for the Guardian On a gridlocked Tanzanian street, a hive of market vendors are swarming around the cars, unloading boxes of electronics, hauling apple carts, pushing wheelbarrows full of wine glasses and calling out to each over. Kariakoo, Dar es Salaam's busiest street market, is also one of the points where global cinema flows into Africa; Derek Mukandala, who sells VHS cassettes from Hollywood, Bollywood and everywhere else, is a man with a surprising amount of influence on what kind of reception it gets. He is Tanzania's first video jockey (VJ): one of the narrators who translate foreign films into Kiswahili, both for live narration over screenings in vibanda vya video (public video parlours) and dubbed recordings to sell in shops.
Reading this on mobile? (Narrating Jack's internal monologue) "On this party one is supposed to eat ugali [maize dumplings] with twenty different spoons. Out of this world: Secret Cinema conquers all | BFI. Comment | Web exclusive Would you buy a cinema ticket without knowing what you were going to see, or where? Instead of relying on word of mouth, critics or adverts to choose your film, would you happily follow a digital breadcrumb trail of clues via email and website to the surprise venue and film? This odd setup is at the heart of the erstwhile ‘underground’ event that is Secret Cinema. The Secret Cinema organisation, which launched in December 2007 with screenings of Peter Watkins’ Paranoid Park in a disused South London railway tunnel, and has just finished its biggest edition yet – a month-long screening of an undisclosed first-run blockbuster – actually bases its appeal on two key pillars.
There’s the secret-screening element, of course, but what’s on offer extends beyond simple surprise. The rendezvous was outside the statue of Robert Stephenson at London’s Euston Station. I was directed by clipboard-wielding, sharp-tongued BNV officers into the ‘Control Operator’ line. Secrets to Film Distribution Success. Ask independent film producers and directors what causes them the most angst, confusion, headaches-or worse-in the filmmaking journey, and the answer likely will be: Distribution. Lacking knowledge, training and guidance, most independent filmmakers employ a scattered, piecemeal, and ultimately unsuccessful approach to distribution. Film producer and distribution expert Jerome Courshon says you can't fault them. After all, despite its importance to the filmmaking journey, distribution isn't even taught in film school. And the industry stacks the deck against filmmakers from the beginning with a fear-based mentality where rookies are expected to pay their dues and industry veterans keep their secrets to success to themselves.
Which is why most producers and directors have no idea how to get their films distributed-resulting in most of those films collecting dust on a bookshelf. But Courshon wants to change that. Right here. Right now. : Film3Sixty Magazine. Posted by Kathryn on Friday, March 30, 2012 · 0 Comments What does the rise of video on demand mean for the film industry… and film lovers? Alison Frank assesses its impact. For all its innovation, the film industry can often be painfully slow to embrace new technology. The invention of VHS, for example, was decried as a death knell for the business when it actually turned out to be a whole new way of making money. Now that more and more film lovers are currently bringing the cinema into their homes through video-on-demand (VoD), will Hollywood finally embrace the potential offered by the internet?
For some forward-thinking production companies and distributors the answer is a resounding yes and they’re already forming partnerships with VoD providers such as LOVEFiLM and new competitor Netflix, both of which offer unlimited streaming of films for a monthly fee of between £5 and £6. Some film industry experts see such partnerships as a model for the future. Words by Alison Frank. Film3Sixty film infographic : Film3Sixty Magazine. Posted by Kathryn on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 · 0 Comments You may have seen in Screen International a feature around a bespoke piece of research carried out by Film3Sixty.
Our survey is the largest single piece of film consumer research ever undertaken in the UK, taking six months to compile and resulting in a project with over 18,000 respondents. These results have included consumer attitudes towards cinema releases, home entertainment, social media and emerging technologies like tablet usage and internet downloads. We have created an infographic with the topline facts for our survey – Click on the image below to see full image. (If you would like to read the article in Screen International, then click here) hosted via We would love to know what you think of our survey. The Media Piracy Report | Media Piracy | The American Assembly.
Film is Dead. Long Live Digital? | Criticwire. "Citizen Kane. " Film is going away. Not films, the pieces of entertainment we watch starring Sandra Bullock or Jim J. Bullock (don't judge), but film, the celluloid medium those pieces of entertainment were recorded and exhibited on for more than a century. The future of film is no more film, replaced by whole bunch of 1s and 0s on, at least in the short term, a big external hard drive called a digital cinema package or DCP.
As a cinephile it can be tough to know how to feel about this. Maybe that's why I appreciated John Lichman's article "Why the End of Film is Awesome (Except When It Isn't). " "If a physical film print breaks, it snaps or bursts into flames. I've been to press screenings -- and we've all been to paid movie exhibitions -- that were cancelled because films broke in projectors. There are undeniable problems with digital. There are two sides to this story, and I can see both of them.
It definitely didn't feel like celluloid; more like a pretty good Blu-ray. Books. Pandora’s Digital Box: Films, Files, and the Future of Movies by David Bordwell237 pages, 5 × 7 inches. For background on Pandora’s Digital Box, see this blog entry, and read below on this page. Available for download as an Adobe PDF file through PayPal (you can use a debit/credit card, electronic check, or PayPal account). It is readable on computers and e-readers (iPad, Kindle, Nook, et al.). When checking out using a debit or credit card, PayPal will ask for your address and telephone number. This is for PayPal’s verification of your credit card only; we do not keep your address/telephone number on file. After you complete the payment process, PayPal will redirect you back to the “Irvington Way Institute Press” web site (same thing as davidbordwell.net).
PayPal will send you an email receipt confirming your purchase. Clicking on the “Buy Now” button below will open a new browser page. “It was the biggest upheaval in film exhibition since synchronized sound. Excerpt from the introduction: Film festivals: which is top dog? | Film. It has been a quiet few months on the film festival front. The last two biggies, Sundance and Berlin, were back in the depths of winter; but now things are suddenly getting interesting.
Tribeca, the New York trendoid-magnet, has just started, and Cannes, the swanky Cote d'Azur schmoozathon, has reared its finely contoured head on the horizon. The UK is even getting in on the action, with the much-anticipated arrival next week of Sundance London, an offshoot of Robert Redford's indie-maven event in Park City, Utah. Sundance London is an example of that industry buzzword "diffusion", whereby name events set up franchises overseas. Tribeca has been doing it since 2009 in Qatar, co-organising the Doha film festival. Be that as it may, film festivals are asserting themselves ever more strongly; the competition between them is increasing as they jostle for supremacy. Sundance Evidence of Banksy at Sundance in 2010. Anglophilia Tasteful but sporadic. Harvey or Haneke? Berlin Glamour Not much. His last picture show: What does the rise of digital film mean for those behind the reels? - Features - Films. In 2005, the UK Film Council installed digital projectors at 240 UK cinemas.
In 2009, as digital 3D was rolled out, the number of digital cinema screens in the UK more than doubled to 1,400. And in 2010, 80 per cent of UK releases were digital prints. Last year, most of the projectionists at the Odeon Leicester Square retired or were made redundant, replaced by automated projection. Odeon confirmed in February that 120 had seen their jobs cut across its cinemas; the other 250 are being "retrained" for different roles: selling popcorn, maybe. Norris, who has left the Empire to take charge of the in-house screening rooms at Universal Pictures' London HQ, became emblematic of his dwindling profession when he appeared in Kermode's bestselling 2011 book, The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex.
Projectionists are the critic's cause célèbre: "A building without a projectionist is not a cinema," says Kermode. Norris, who is 49, grew up in east London. How On Demand Is Redefining the Film Festival - Robert Levin - Entertainment. Tribeca's embrace of home viewing shows that movie premieres don't have to be tied to one location. A still from 'Giant Mechanical Man,' which premiered at Tribeca and on demand nationwide. The Tribeca Film Festival, which opened on Wednesday, is often criticized for lacking an identity. While Sundance, for example, is closely associated with top-of-the-line independent film premieres and Cannes is world-renowned for favoring big-name directors, industry analysts have regarded New York's biggest festival as something of an unfocused mess. As David Poland, editor-in-chief of Movie City News, told me, "It's all a blur.
Nobody can answer, 'What is Tribeca? ' in 25 words or less. " The truth is that Tribeca is too sprawling to be codified in simple terms. But there is one distinct area that sets the annual confab apart. Tribeca may be the first truly nationwide film festival. Tribeca might never achieve the cachet of its top-of-the-line counterparts. 10 movie poster cliches (with plenty of examples) YouTube teams up with Ridley Scott on new film festival channel. YouTube is launching a new film festival channel in partnership with the Venice Film Festival and film director Ridley Scott, the company announced today. The new Your Film Fest channel is part of YouTube’s strategy to boost the amount of premium original videos available on the site — and making it more than just a place to watch funny cat videos and viral content. In October, YouTube committed $100 million on channel partnerships to ensure that this strategy succeeds.
Some of these channel partnerships include Madonna’s DanceOn, World Wrestling Entertainment’s Fan Nation, and exclusive bits from the Onion News Network. More recently, YouTube forged deals to bring a variety of news-related channels to the site from partners like Reuters, Young Hollywood and Penske Media-Ion TV. As part of the partnership, YouTube users from around the globe are invited to submit short, story-driven videos (up to 15 minutes in length) to a Your Film Festival contest. On the cutting room floor: a century of film censorship | Film.