Radioactive Communist Zombies

Why Are Action Movies So Long?

I've noticed a disturbing trend among action movies.  They are getting . . . long.  An unscientific look at the action movies I've recently watched (via Netflix):

• Fast Five: 2 hours 11 minutes
• Captain America: The First Avenger: 2 hours 3 minutes
• X-Men: First Class: 2 hours 11 minutes
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: 2 hours 27 minutes
  
• Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon: Forever (okay 2 hours, 34 minutes. just felt like forever)

Some are bucking the trend, (Source Code for example was only 1 hour 33 minutes) but it seems suddenly action movies want to have huge back-stories, and (heaven forbid) character development.  I just want to see some hot babes, gun fights, car chases, and explosions.  Something like The Expendables (1 hour 43 minutes) or Sucker Punch (1 hour 50 minutes but felt much shorter).

But in no case should an action film exceed two hours and absolutely not 2 hours, 30 minutes.  Yes, I know I should subtract 10 minutes for end credits, but that's still a long wait.

If I want feelings and long movies, I'll rent foreign films, not Michael Bay blockbusters. 

Netflix Going 100% Streaming

I've written before that Netflix made it obvious that they wanted subscribers to stream and not get movies on DVD/Blu-Ray through the mail (Netflix's original service).  This is because it costs Netflix five cents to deliver a movie through streaming and $1 to deliver a disc through the mail. 

Last night I, and I assume all Netflix subscribers, got an email saying (in a lot of words) that Neflix is going 100% streaming.

What about DVDs and Blu-Rays through mail?  They are spinning that business of to a new company called Qwikster.  They say that (for now at least) the cost will be the same.

I see some downsides, unless the two companies/websites integrate.  One: I'm hoping all my Netflix settings (including my queue) transfers seamlessly to Qwikster.  Two: I hope Qwikster will point out when movies in my queue are available on streaming through Netflix.  For example, I started watching Battlestar Galactica on streaming when the discs became hard to get and streaming became available.  And I have moved movies from my DVD queue to my streaming queue so that I can watch them without the risk of being throttled.

I guess we'll have to see how this works.  I've been with Netflix since almost the beginning (January 2002; almost 10 years).  I admit I have a love/hate relationship with them.  We'll have to see how this works out.

Repeats, Sequels, and Remakes

Does Hollywood want new ideas?  Or does it want tried and tested same old same old.  Well, let's take a look.  I went to the trailers website that Apple has (I like trailers, they are often better than the movie they are promoting). On the first page of the website there are 20 trailers.  And here's what I see:

1. Four sequels
2. Three remakes (i.e., redoing movies that were previously made, one is it's third remake)
3. A movie based on a popular T.V. show
4. A movie that appears to be a parody of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies
5. A comic book/superhero movie (part of the "Avengers" series).

So that's half the movies that are not based on original ideas.  (There also appears to be a movie based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" book A Princess of Mars (first published in 1912).  The move is called John Carter.)

Hollywood is a business, just like any other.  it's mission is to make money.  Sure, it's a convoluted business with inbred liberalism and out-sized egos to put any corporate CEO to shame.  But it's primary function is to make money just like IBM, Exxon-Mobile, and Ford.  That means it tends to skew itself to known money-makers.  Yes, sometimes risks pay off big (e.g., Star Wars).  But would you rather green-light a sequel that you know will make money or risk millions on an untried concept?

This business model, however, doesn't help the artists and the movie-going public.  It's hard for new artists who are unproven to get past the gatekeepers and it's tough for the audience to find something new and original.  But there really is no good solution to the problem.  The free market is a much better way to run any business.  Can you imagine the government running Hollywood?  It would be as stifled as a bureaucrat and as fun as an EPA regulation.

But I do wish Hollywood would take more chances.  Of course, who am I to complain: last move I saw in the theater was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition: a sequel and a (sort of) remake.

Netflix Streaming Availability

The news is all debt ceiling and Rupert Murdoch's phone hacking scandal and I'm having trouble caring about either one (see here). That, and sometimes when I get obsessed about something, I get obsessed.

Netflix is pushing its customers toward streaming by raising the price of getting DVD/Blu-ray discs while lowering the price of streaming (slightly; see here).

According the the Wall Street Journal, Netflix won't say how extensive it's disc library is versus it's streaming library except it is generally recognized it's disc library is more complete. I do know that almost any time I think about watching a movie and check to see if it's available on streaming, it's not.

So I decided to get some empirical data. I was trying to think of a way to come up with twenty-five random movies to check. But I couldn't think of any way to do that without my biases coming in (i.e., picking mostly movies I like or have seen or at least know about). So instead, I picked the Internet Movie Database's (IMDB) top 50 movies as determined by the votes of IMDB's members. Afterall, these are probably the movies people are most likely to want to see. The list ranges from Toy Story 3 (2010) to Seven Samurai (1954). Inception (2010) is the newest movie on the list and City Lights (1931) the oldest. Interestingly, I've only seen 39 of them.

All 50 moves are available from Netflix on disc (mostly DVD, some Blu-Ray). But only 5, or 10%, are available for streaming. Those movies are:

• Pulp Fiction (1994)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
• Memento (2000) and is in my Netflix streaming queue because I haven't seen it.
• Toy Story 3 (2010)

Is this a representative sample of Netflix's streaming library? Is it really 5% of their disc library? I don't know. But only 5% of the top movies based on IMDB's user's votes is pretty dismal.

If Netflix really wants me to stream, they need to make it closer to 90% of movies available.

But I don't think it's Netflix's fault. I'm sure the content providers are stopping Netflix from streaming. Netflix has made some faustian deals (such as not releasing discs until four weeks after they go on sale) to keep content providers happy. Maybe the need to make some deals to keep their subscribers happy.

Netflix Really Wants Me to Stream

I've been a Netflix subscriber since 2002.  Most of that time I was on a three-discs-at-a-time unlimited plan.  That is, there was no limit on the number of discs I could get, but I could only have three at my home at a time.  About a year ago I switched to two-at-a-time unlimited because some of what I wanted to watch was available on streaming (i.e., downloading from the Internet).  And streaming is unlimited (and immediate) and was free.

Of course, while you could conceivably watch three movies a day and send them in for three more (about a two-day turn around) and watch, say, 30 DVDs a month, Netflix punishes you for renting too many DVD (and "too many" is very vague).  They "throttle" you and don't send you new releases very fast (you could literally wait months).  I found that on the three-at-a-time plan if I limited myself to two DVDs per week, I tended to not get throttled.  On the two-at-a-time plan I'm on now, I'm doing three every two weeks and that seems to keep me from getting throttled.

Streaming isn't perfect.  Just last night I tried to watch something on streaming and the audio and video synchronization was so far off I just couldn't watch it.  Also, sometimes there's starts and stops with streaming (probably due to traffic on your ISP, I'm guessing).  And the rewind and fast-forward are kludgey.  But the picture and sound quality are almost up to Blu-ray specifications.

But apparently Netflix really wants its customers to stream as much as possible.  Last night I got an email saying they were raising my plan by about 20% because there were going to break out the streaming (and lower its price to $7.99 per month) and then charge for DVDs/Blu-rays separately and there was no discount for having both.

The lowest cost DVD/streaming plan (one disc at a time) is going up 60% (from $9.99 to $15.99).  But it's obvious Netflix would like to stop sending out DVDs and have everyone stream.  Today  the Wall Street Journal (sub possibly required) reported (links original):

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has made it clear he sees Netflix's streaming service as the future of the company. Netflix isn't even bothering to launch DVD-rental services as it expands its streaming service into new territories outside the U.S., such as Canada and Latin America.

As I've said before, it costs Netflix $1 per disc mailed out and back and five centst to stream a movie.  So, of course, they want everyone to stream. The problem is, you can't get new releases on streaming. And Netflix's DVD/Blu-ray library is much bigger than their streaming library. The streaming selections are increasing all the time, but mostly with older content such as "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek." It's bad enough Netflix often makes its customers wait four weeks to get newly released DVD/Blu-rays. But it takes a lot longer for new content to hit the streaming pool.

Despite this price increase, I'll stick with Netflix. I was tempted to get rid of the streaming and save the $8 per month but there's a lot of fun stuff on streaming and it is unlimited (I was bored one night and just for fun watched old Dragnet episodes from the early 70s; it was a hoot but I'd never do that through discs).

I do believe in the future all media will be streamed and people won't even bother owning DVDs/Blu-rays because they'll be able to stream anything they want to see at a nominal cost. But that's probably at least 10 years out. In the meantime, we have to go through growing pains.

Netflix Streaming

Netflix wants me to stream (i.e., download video off the internet but not save it on a hard drive).  They've made that clear with their advertising and the fact I can stream for free. The reason is obvious, according to this article, it costs $1 for Netflix to ship and return a disk (blu-ray or DVD).  But it only costs Netflix five cents to stream a movie.  So I do stream but usually just "I'm bored, let's see if there's something to stream on Netflix" not "I wanna see that, let's stream it."  (I did stream the last few seasons of Battlestar Galactica when it came on streaming because it beat waiting for the disks and I wanted to see it.)

The problem is while there's a lot of content you can stream, there's also a lot you can't.  Of the 26 disks in my Netflix queue, only three can be streamed.  I just added all six blu-ray disks for "The Pacific" and I thought "now here's something I would happily stream."  But it's not available for streaming.

Frankly, I blame the content producers (i.e., movie and television studios).  They don't seem to want their material streamed.  I don't know, but I suspect, they get a royalty whenever someone streams a video or rents a disk.  Maybe if Netflix shared some if that 95 cents they save from streaming.

(You know, I read somewhere the difference between "disc" and "disk" but now I don't remember it.)

I suspect sometime in the future it'll all be streaming.  People won't bother buying movies on whatever format because unless they watch it five times a day, it'll be cheaper to just stream it.  Now if the rewind and forward worked better on Netflix streaming.  That would then be perfect.

More Shrugging

As a writer, I often, when watching movies, T.V. shows, or reading a book, tend to rewrite.  I often think "How would I write this?"  Often times I can't improve on what the original writer composed.  Sometimes I can (in my humble opinion).

I've already talked about the movie Atlas Shrugged based on the thick tome by Ayn Rand (my paperback version is 1074 pages of tiny print).  The book is dense and preachy and long and full of pedantic speeches.  It doesn't translate well to the screen (the movie, which billed itself as "Part I" avoided the long monologues of the part of the book it covered).  But the writing of the movie (based on the book) could have been better.

P.J. Rourke made the sensible suggestion that they should have set the movie in an alternate past (a “future of the past” he calls it), such as set it in 1962 as if Rand's predictions had happened.  The problem being this low-budget production would have had to spend a lot more to recreate 1962 America.

But there was one scene in the movie where I thought the movie writers failed completely.  They'd already explained that flying and driving were too expensive (gas was reported to be nearly $40 a gallon and no, that's not a typo).  So people were taking trains again.  I was okay with suspending my disbelief for all that.

But there's a quick scene, probably taken right out of the novel (been too long since I read it to be sure) where the heroine, Dagney Taggert, comes out of a train station and a man is standing there selling newspapers on the street.  You know, like they did in 1957.  Dagney buys one and reads something important that moves the plot forward.

But the movie is set in 2016.  Even today no one sells papers on the street.  I'm 50 years old and a never remember seeing anyone sell newspapers on the street.  And fewer and fewer folks get there news from newspapers.

How should that scene have been written?  Dagney is sitting on a train looking at her smart phone when she gets a news alert (I get them on my phone) and she opens an app and reads the important news.  And she's stuck on the train, adding to the tension of the scene.  She gets off the train and rushes to get a car (I have to admit, I don't remember what the important news was and what happened next in the movie).

As I said before, the makers of this movie set themselves up for a nearly impossible task.  And they didn't rise to the challenge (as, say, those who wrote and shot the Lord of the RIngs trilogy).

Maybe "Part I" will make enough money the film makers can make "Part II."  And maybe they'll do better.  But I wouldn't count on it.

Atlas Shrugged The Movie

Hey, for once I'm not way behind the curve here.  I saw Atlas Shrugged Part I last night in a theater in suburban Portland, OR. in an upscale mall full of trophy wives and hip teens.

The movie was shown on one of 18 screens the theater had (not including an IMAX screen).  The tickets cost $10.75 apiece.  I was surprised at that.  The presentation was fine and in fact, the theater was quite nice with high-back seats and a slope that ensured you wouldn't be trying to peer around other's heads to see the movie.  There were maybe 50 people in the theater that could probably hold 300.  The crowd was predominately white (actually, all white), middle aged or older, and there was a trend toward facial hair (mostly on the men).  They applauded at the end of the movie.

The movie itself was fine.  But signs of a low-budget crept in: seems everyone was driven around in the same limousine and Dagney's office was tiny for a chief executive for a national company.

Set in 2016, the Dow was said to be at 4,000, gasoline more than $30 a gallon, and flying and driving was too expensive so trains were coming back in vogue as primary transportation (you try moving a novel about the train industry from 1957 to 2011).

The biggest problems I had with the movie was the direction was somnambulistic.  The shots would linger too long.  It felt like a movie from the '50s or '60s in its style.  I kept wishing for another camera angle.  And the acting was sometimes high-school drama class stiff. Taylor Schilling, who played the lead Dagney Taggart, unemotionally moved through the movie in her tight skirts (even when at a railroad work site).  Perhaps she was told to portray Dagney controlled and reserved.  But a better actress would let us see how hard she is working to control her emotions.

As for the content of the movie, well, it followed the book very closely.  So if you liked the book you'll probably like the movie.  If you've never read the book, the movie is a good introduction.  (My feelings on Ayn Rand could fill another whole post.)

I'd recommend the movie if only for its cultural significance.  Liberals will probably think it caricaturizes them.  And it does to a point.  Conservatives won't like the extra-marital sex.

Stripped of its politics (most of which I agree with), this just wasn't a very good movie.

UPDATE: Here's P.J. O'Rourke's take. 

Something Economics

Am I the only one who finds Ben Stein's lecture on economics here fascinating?

I heard or read somewhere that Ben Stein ad-libbed that entire scene (the kids' reaction shots were probably filmed later). Just some levity to lighten up the mood.

UPDATE: Here's the source for that datum that Stein ad-libbed his lines.

Annoyed with Netflix Again

I'm a little annoyed with Netflix right now. I wish their "throttling" algorithm took into account loyalty.  I've been with Netflix for over 9 years (since January 2002; yes, I was an early adopter) and yet I get throttled on the strangest things.  For example, last year, I had to wait 11 weeks for the second disk in the second season of Batttlestar Galactica (later, Netflix put all of Battlestar Galactica on instant view which was nice).

So now I'm waiting for Family Guy: It's a Trap.  According to Amazon it was released December 21, 2010.  That's 11 weeks ago.  Even if Netflix released it four weeks late (and I don't think they did), that's 7 weeks ago.  It's the top movie in my queue after movies that haven't been released yet, and has been for at least seven weeks and is still on "long wait" which is a slight improvement over "very long wait" (click for a larger view):

I know Netflix likes to send popular things to people who don't rent a lot of disks and to new customers.  But what about being loyal to them despite all we have to put up with being part of that decision?

I really like Netflix and shudder at having to rent movies from my local Hastings, but sometimes they make it hard.