All for Link and Link For All
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 12:00PM Variety are House of Cards and Hemlock Grove and other new instant watch series the saviors of Netflix? I sure hope so. I shudder to think of a world without Netflix and I've been very surprised at how gleefully people have watched its fall. Wake up cinephiles: there are so few services left that give us this much variety in movies. I mean do you really want to rely on Redbox if you want anything other than the latest blockbuster?
Bold Hype Gallery I'm so sad to hear about this Scorsese Tribute here in NYC after the fact (and so annoyed that it was only up for three days -wth?) but look at these amazing paintings from the just closed installation,
Inside Movies new pics of Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan in Spider-Man 5 (which is called The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
Awards Daily Vertigo and Kim Novak are guests of honor at Cannes this May
Advocate Darren Criss sings the gayest cover of "Call Me Maybe"... I bet you thought covers of that song were over?
Hammer and Thump will Spring Breakers continue to change minds about Harmony Korine's shock-friendly filmography?
Ed Douglas (photo via BadAss Digest)Finally... And Quite a Lot Importantly.
[soapbox] Though I'm loathe to remind my fellow US citizens that we live in a selfish self-sabotaging world where 50% of the country thinks "we're all in this together" equals weakness (or, even more misguidedly,"evil") and thereby punish themselves and others by fighting against universal healthcare, I must. Ed Douglas, who writes for Coming Soon and who has been nothing but sweet to me my whole career (others say the same which proves he's a truly nice guy), was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Like many film journalists he is without healthcare so if you have it your heart or pocketbook to donate, join the fundraising effort. The goal was raised from $10,000 to $50,000 due to the immediate and very heartwarming response from the cinephile community but if you've ever seen a hospital bill you know that that kind of money can be gone in all too quickly (another reason we need to cut out the parasitic middle man known as the insurance industry whose profits are directionally proportional to blocking our access to healthcare... or just jacking up the prices for it if they can't find ways to block it) and just pay for healthcare for everyone. [/End soapbox].
Reader Comments (6)
If something is going to save Netflix, it sure won't be the likes of Hemlock Grove. I'm five episodes in and it's nearly unwatchable. And House of Cards is fine, but if this is what Netflix gets when they pour 100+ million dollars into something (to say nothing of the reported 45 million that was squandered on Hemlock Grove), then they might find themselves in some serious trouble down the line.
You know, as promising as Netflix's lineup of originals seemed early on, what are the results?
--subpar remake of a British miniseries
--God awful adaptation of a God awful book
--4th season of Arrested Development
I'm all for AD, but it's the 4th season of a cult show that was canceled years ago, so it's not like that's going to drive numbers.
Obviously these are Netflix's first stabs - and I'm sure you could look at HBO's early scripted development and take similar shots (Arli$$!) and look how that turned out.
But still - even they admit that their originals aren't driving much of their new subscription business, so why the hell did they even bother?
But if it gets them the cache they want, while providing the dvd and streaming service we all need, then so be it. Netflix is a flawed company and they've alienated a lot of users with their fee structuring, but it's still the best - really the only - option out there for this type of thing.
For all us diehard soap fans, this second original series by Netflix fuels our fiery hope that The On Line Network's original episodes of All My Children and One Life To Live, set to debut next Monday, will be a creative and financial success. Web-only series are still learning to crawl, but the fact that a major outfit like Netflix is willing to gamble on financing and creating another original online series is great news for this developing platform. Tune in tomorrow.
"I shudder to think of a world without Netflix and I've been very surprised at how gleefully people have watched its fall. Wake up cinephiles: there are so few services left that give us this much variety in movies. I mean do you really want to rely on Redbox if you want anything other than the latest blockbuster?"
I live in Canada. We have libraries that have a more diverse selection than Netflix.
Arkaan - wow. well we don't here in the US so count your blessings every day. My local library has one shelf of movies and half of them are not the kind you'd ever want to revisit. Netflix, meanwhile, has thousands and thousands of movies from every era. A better selection than i've seen anywhere else and trust me I've searched. Even the cinephile-focused video services are often missing key titles.
Cool.
For the record, I have the following DVDs from the library
I Wish (Kore'eda)
The Disappearance of Allice Creed
Farewell My Queen (Nathaniel's top ten, 2012)
Daddy Longlegs
The Turin Horse
This Must Be the Place
Heaven's Gate (Criterion)
Chronicle of a Summer (Criterion)
Here (Ben Foster movie)
Portlandia, season one
The Fades, season one
I have to admit that I don't know why I'm not that cheerful about Netflix. I find the convenience over effort aspect rather disappointing. I'm not one of those that misses Blockbuster or anything, but there's something about Netflix that bugs me and it comes back to the convenience thing.
I think Netflix has shifted the way people watch things from "I want THIS right now" to "I want something RIGHT NOW" and that really bothers me.