hollywood

Showing 19 posts tagged hollywood

Hollywood Hires Anti-Piracy Pro

The MPAA scumbags have hired a new weapon for their piracy fight, as Mark Milian reports for Bloomberg:

During Strahan’s tenure, Neustar developed the cloud infrastructure for UltraViolet, an initiative that won support with most of the major studios. The system lets consumers register the movies they’ve purchased to an online account providing streaming or downloading of copy-protected files to various devices.

Well, great. At least the MPAA knows she’s fully capable of shipping half-baked turds that no one wants.

Apple's Hold On Hollywood

Yet another subtle, but important advantage Apple has over competitors: their products are all over popular television shows and films — and Apple doesn’t pay a dime for such placement. The creative talent uses them because, well, they use them.

I mean, did you see Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol? It’s one big iAd — but again, not paid for by Apple. (Though Pixar alum Brad Bird may have played a role in that.) It’s a billion times better than any ad. It’s something money could literally not pay for.

This is also interesting, Peter Burrows and Andy Fixmer reporting:

In the 1990s, Apple’s PowerBook laptops included a company logo on the lid that faced the user sitting at the computer. When the lid was opened, the logo was upside down. Holtzman knew this was inconvenient to filmmakers and had stickers printed to cover the actual logo and have it appear correctly onscreen. A few years after Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he flipped the logo for good.

Hard to believe the logo was ever upside down, but I remember it. It looked incredibly stupid.

I Tried To Watch Game Of Thrones...

Hollywood’s core piracy “problem” is perfectly captured in this one cartoon by The Oatmeal.

In fact, I’ve had this exact debate with myself. I really want to watch Game of Thrones. But I’m not an HBO subscriber because I’m not a cable subscriber and unfortunately, the two go hand-in-hand, no matter what I’m willing to pay.

Speaking of “willing to pay”, okay fine, I can’t get Game of Thrones on HBO, but I’m willing to pay a quite a bit of money to get it via iTunes. Wait. Nope. Can’t do that either. At least not for a few more months — well over a year after the first season wrapped.

Netflix? Nope. Not streaming or DVD/Blu-ray. Amazon? Nope. HBO.com? Not unless I’m a cable subscriber. 

So my options are…

…

…well, I only have one option. Thanks Hollywood!

[via Yun on Twitter]

Hollywood's Next Great Business Model: Praying That Stars Die

Update: While McDermott accurately quoted the Netflix rep (who herself apparently checked with two supervisors), Netflix is now saying the information is inaccurate. Actually, The Bodyguard vanished as a streaming option before Houston’s passing.

Earlier: When asked why The Bodyguard was pulled from Netflix streaming following Whitney Houston’s death, Dan McDermott got the following response from a Netflix rep:

I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston’s passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they’re going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies.

What fucking scumbags. Not Netflix, which sadly has no control over situations like this, but the movie studio. 

It seems like Hollywood is eyeing two business models in order to preserve their precious DVD sales (which are tanking more each day):

1) Make it basically impossible to rent a film. It used to be that you could rent a movie the day it came out for sale on DVD. Then it was 30 days later. Now it’s 56 days later. And you can’t even think about renting the films for 28 days.

As a reminder, torrents currently have no such window.

2) Hope and pray that big time stars die to temporarily boost sales. And instead of doing everything in you power to ensure that fans have easy access to remember the stars they cherished, pull all access except for the most expensive and limited variety in order to maximize profits.

Put this way, it sounds so simple. And actually, it should be this simple. Unfortunately, this discounts the fact that Hollywood is run by people with their heads up their asses. Like this guy. It’s a fucked up nightmare of politics and greed. It’s amazing that anything good comes out of the system at all — it’s a testament to the true creative talent behind the films themselves.  You can bet that Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all the rest have tried to talk Hollywood into the system above. They’ve probably been doing it for a decade, if not longer. Instead, we get bullshit like UltraViolet — a giant middle finger to consumers. High-res

Put this way, it sounds so simple. And actually, it should be this simple.

Unfortunately, this discounts the fact that Hollywood is run by people with their heads up their asses. Like this guy. It’s a fucked up nightmare of politics and greed. It’s amazing that anything good comes out of the system at all — it’s a testament to the true creative talent behind the films themselves. 

You can bet that Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all the rest have tried to talk Hollywood into the system above. They’ve probably been doing it for a decade, if not longer. Instead, we get bullshit like UltraViolet — a giant middle finger to consumers.

Why Not Try An Infinity-Day Window?

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. 

Kill Hollywood, Not Movies

The fallout from the failure of SOPA and PIPA is just as interesting as the main topics themselves. First, many on the web with loud voices are finally waking up to how corrupt the lobbying/political system is in this country. Second, directly-related, there’s a quickly growing anti-Hollywood sentiment.

The most forceful stance has to be Y Combinator putting out a new RFS (Request for Startups) will one goal: Kill Hollywood. 

It’s an important statement and message given the bullshit the MPAA is up to. But it’s also important to separate film, the artform, from Hollywood, the industry.

Read more

Innovation, Hollywood-Style

Get ready for this one — it’s huge. In fact, you better sit down.

You know the 28-day window* that studios now impose between when a DVD goes on sale and when it can be made available to rent?

It’s about to made 56 days, reports Peter Kafka.

Boom.

Hollywood is saved. DVD sales are going to flow like wine again. Everyone will be drunk. Glory days.

*sometimes known as “the bullshit 28-day window”