One of the reasons I like the film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is the self-referential nature of the film. Here, the film literally stops the story and breaks into a “commercial break” so that the television viewers won’t be too alienated.
Clearly, this was added to the film version that was not in the stage version. It works to poke fun at the new media of television. It literally represents the philosophy behind making the movies an entirely different experience than television and to win back the audience.
Although I wasn’t one of the 800,000 subscribers who cancelled their Netflix subscriptions, I did cancel their DVD-by-mail part of my subscription and kept the video streaming since I use that more anyway. Two days ago Netflix charged me for the new billing period, which includes only the streaming service, and today I received what should be my last DVD-by-mail from Netflix, at least for now.
This marks the end of an era for me. I joined Netflix in 1998 when my first DVD player, a Toshiba branded deck, came with a card that offered a free trial for an unlimited DVD by mail service. At the time, the service cost $15 a month and you could have 4 disks at a time. I remember wondering, when I first signed up, how are they going to send me a DVD by mail, considering that I was used to getting DVDs encased in those jewel boxes. Little did I know that they had designed those now ubiquitous red-and-white sleeves.
I held on to the service for a few years until I moved to New York, mostly because I thought that the DVDs had to come from California, where the company was based. Little did I know that the service had gone national.
I re-upped in 2004, partly in an effort to get the airline-mile bonus that Netflix offered to new customers. At the time, the subscription offered only three disks for almost $20 per month, and over the years, I scaled back to two disks, then to one disk, and, after this week, to none.
The streaming service proved to be the “disk killer” for me. The convenience of watching a movie or television series, even if it’s not my first choice, is much better than waiting two-to-three days to watch a movie on DVD. I was a bit late the streaming service when it was first offered. I had a Powerbook G4 as my only computer from 2004 until 2009, and the PowerPC chip wasn’t good enough to run the streaming service. I didn’t do Netflix streaming until I bought a Roku in 2009 to watch Netflix Instant through a TV. Since then I have linked my Blu-Ray player, iPad, and iPhone to my Netflix accounts. It’s now possible to see Netflix just about anywhere I can get a 2 megabit Internet connection.
Will I miss the disks? Not really. DVD was always a problematic medium, given its rather short life.
I know that Neflix gets blamed for killing the local video store, and that studios are withholding streaming content from Netflix because they fear that Netflix is going to kill the DVD format and then the multichannel video distributor. I have theories behind the decline of each of these institutions, and I don’t think Netflix has had a substantial role. I’ll save that discussion for another day, but for now, I know that my mailbox will be a little emptier for the time being.
As I mentioned in class on Monday, Cleo from 5 to 7 remains one of the best examples of the French New Wave for many reasons. First, the film is one of the few made by women during this very vibrant period in film history. For the usual reasons, women were not part of the filmmaking fun in this rather male-dominated scene. The fact that Varda was able to break through the gender barrier is certainly remarkable.
Second, the film ties into very contemporary city life. You get a lot of scenes that feature Parisian life quite prominently, especially those parts that young Parisians would find familiar. One such scene is the cafe scene when Cleo enters in plays her song on the radio to see if she can get anyone’s attention. The personalities and conversations in that scene would have rung familiar to anyone in the city at the time.
Third, the film features rather visibly, the concern for formal experimentation and political voice for which the so-called Left Bank filmmakers became known. The formal element of the film was exposed through its chapter structure, which were very clearly seen on screen. Although the story is about Cléo, other characters get their own internal voices portrayed on screen and the chapter titles make that break from the film’s narration quite clear. An early example is when we see Angèle at the cafe trying to console an inconsolable Cléo.
There’s also a fair amount of politics involved, too. You can see that in the clip where Cléo and Angèle are driving around in the taxi cab, and we hear the radio news cover Algeria, which was arguably one of the biggest events of the early 1960s in France and was covered repeatedly by the French New Wave filmmakers.
And, of course, there’s an undeniable element of human drama. The final shot of the film, with Antoine and Cléo looking off into the distance, marks a huge departure from the self-centeredness Cléo exhibits throughout most of the film.
In today’s New York Times, Brooke Barnes writes about the possibility of movie studios adding a new “window,” or a new run, to the existing tiers of home video sales. The new window, called Premium VOD, would begin as little as 45 days after the theatrical run would start and would be facilitated by video service providers (i.e., your cable or satellite company). The move is done to combat slumping DVD/Blu-Ray sales and Internet piracy.
The main opponents to Premium VOD include the movie theaters, which depend on the content, and the retailers of DVDs. Both fear that customers would opt to watch movies at home for a price that is lower than either theatrical exhibition or video disc sales.
Students should consider this in the context of the old run-zone-clearance system that emerged nearly 100 years ago and was pioneered by studios such as Paramount. Also, consider the digital revolution in media and how this marks another transformation in the film industry.
Yesterday, ArsTechnica posted an article about the Motion Picture Patents Company, an early 20th century patent pool and cartel established by Thomas Edison to protect the profits of his and his partners companies. Colorfully called, Thomas Edison’s Plot to Destroy the Movies, the article is an accessible summary of the cartel was formed, how it controlled the film industry at the expense of innovation, and how it was eventually undermined by a group of independent filmmakers, led by Universal’s Carl Lamelle.
ArsTechnica writes about this as a cautionary tale of how large companies who control a media industry, such as Internet access, recorded music, or even the movies, can stand in the way of innovation once they grow so powerful and unchallenged by competition.
Having just taught a class last week on the advent of widescreen cinema to compete with television in the 1950s, it is very tempting to see Forbidden Planet this Friday and Saturday at the restored Loew’s Jersey theater in Jersey City. Even if you’ve seen this film before, you’ve probably never seen it on the BIG, w-i-d-e Cinemascope screen.
I’ve been wanting to see a film there since it’s been completely restored to its old Nicholas Schenck-glory days, although I won’t not be able to make it, as I’ll be out of town for “fake” Thanksgiving.
Brooklyn’s Light Industry is showing, five times this week, the East Coast premiere of Wang Bing’s Crude Oil.
The film is a fourteen-hour documentary of what it’s like excavating for crude oil in Northwest China. The shift starts on Wednesday at 9:00 am and continues each night 11:00 pm through Sunday.
