Speaking of Netflix, Comcast is launching a Netflix competitor.

But wait — isn’t Comcast already a Netflix competitor with their On Demand service, their Xfinity service, and their stake in Hulu? Well yes, but this will have a new name and new fees! Joy!

Reports Andrew Wallenstein for Variety:

With a business model and catalog-oriented content mix similar to Netflix and other competing services like Amazon and a coming joint venture from Verizon and Redbox, Comcast is clearly attempting to supplement its existing digital presence, Xfinity, with a long-tail-oriented offering. But Streampix is not available to those who don’t already get Comcast cable.

Streampix will either be free to those who get Comcast’s triple-play package of video, broadband and phone or for an additional $4.99 fee on top of other varieties of Comcast offerings.

So, it will only be available to those people who already have Comcast cable. AND it will likely cost you an additional fee even if you’re already spending upwards of $100 a month on cable. What a fucking fantastic sounding service.

Huge win for Netflix. The Weinstein Company is one of the few production houses where quality absolutely trumps quantity. If I wasn’t already a member, I’d consider signing up for Netflix just for this alone.

The new Bourne film looks like it could be good. The first three were all great, but all had Matt Damon as the base. They’re moving to Jeremy Renner now, but smartly keeping several other elements intact — namely Joan Allen, Albert Finney, David Strathairn, and Scott Glenn. 

And Renner isn’t Jason Bourne, he’s another agent from Bourne’s program. The tagline of the film plays this up: “There was never just one”, and Bourne is mentioned in the trailer. Smart way to handle it.  

As an aside, interesting that Renner seems to be successfully taking over both the Bourne and the Mission: Impossible franchises — and he’s doing it as neither Jason Bourne nor Ethan Hunt.

[via /film]

Matt Drance on Warner Bros. idiotic new 56-day DVD rental window:

Also under this new deal, pirated movies remain free of charge, free of non-skippable ads, free of five-minute load times, and are now nearly three months ahead of the competition.

And:

iTunes changed the music industry because it was more convenient than stealing. Most people made the value judgment that ten bucks for a clean, legal digital album was worth the alternative of fishing around for files that may or may not be damaged or infected.

It’s really — honestly — surprising that Hollywood doesn’t understand such a simple concept. Even stranger is that they can look to the music industry as an example and learn from the mistakes there, but they refuse.

Hollywood isn’t going to die anytime soon — but it won’t be from lack of trying. The pain is coming. In a big way. 

LOL.

For once, a bit of upbeat news for UltraViolet, the awful idea that Hollywood seems dead set on implementing: Amazon and Samsung are now on board.

That’s good news for the don’t-call-it-DRM newfangled DRM, which has been swimming in a sea of shit since it launched last year. 

Of course, the one name still not on board remains the most important: Apple. Wake me up when that happens — which given the customer response to UltraViolet seems unlikely anytime soon. 

The popular argument nowadays is that the movie business is tanking because the majority of movies suck. But that’s not really true. Sure, many big, Hollywood movies suck. But for each of those, there are a few smaller, independent movies which are great. In fact, as a whole, I might argue that quality is better than it ever has been thanks to technology greatly driving down the cost to make a film. 

As Ebert lays out, the actual problem is with the distribution model. That is, most movie theaters in the U.S. are set up to play only the big ticket items — and again, a good percentage of that is crap. Massive films like Avatar and The Dark Knight disguise this — but only temporarily. This year there wasn’t a film of that magnitude, so we’re seeing it.

Here’s a shocker: the theaters showing actual good movies are doing quite well.

I see a healthy number of movies myself — at least one a week, sometimes two. But I rarely go to the AMCs of the world (in fact, the only time I’ve been to one recently was to see an IMAX). I go to theaters like Sundance which pride themselves on the quality of the experience and the quality of the films they show. You buy a reserved seat and you can buy a drink for the showing. Because it’s a bit more expensive, the audience tends to be better behaved as well. It’s well worth the money.

Ebert has this exactly right and the theater industry would be wise to listen to him. But they won’t. Because next year, we’ll get The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit and a few other massive films. And they’ll think everything is just fine again. And they’ll keep on thinking that until they go out of business. Which will happen.