Kindle Worlds and Legal Fanfiction

I figured that after "50 Shades of Gray" became a success, we'd get more attempts to monetize fanfiction, but I didn't see this latest one coming. Kindle and Amazon Publishing announced today that they're going to offer a service called Kindle Worlds, that will publish fanfiction for certain licensed properties. Submissions will be vetted to ensure that they follow a set of content guidelines (no erotica, no crossovers, etc.) and that they measure up to some baseline of quality. Authors won't get to retain the rights to their work, but they will get a cut of royalties, either 20 or 35% depending on the length of the story. It's a smaller percentage than they would for get for self-publishing original material through Amazon, where the cut is around 70%.

Still, the idea of making any money at all through writing amateur fanfiction is a big change in how the fan community has traditionally operated. It used to be a cardinal rule that you never, ever monetized fanfiction, because that would be stepping on the toes of the original content creators, and their right to create derivative works like sequels and spinoffs. Now three Warner Brothers television shows aimed at young women, "Vampire Diaries," "Gossip Girl," and "Pretty Little Liars" are the first franchises to grant licenses to create legal fanfiction for sale though the Kindle Worlds platform. There have been officially sanctioned fanfiction and other fanworks for quite a few different properties over the years, particularly for contests, but this is the first time I've heard of anyone granting permission to go try and make a profit with them.

Now, is this a good thing for fandom? As always, it's very hard to say. The big worry is that if Amazon and Kindle do make money with this service, they'll have a better argument that non-licensed fanfic is infringing, and be more motivated take steps to shut down everyone else's fanfiction that isn't being written for profit. The worst case scenario is that your "Vampire Diaries" fanfiction, posted on Tumblr or Archive of Our Own, becomes viewed as a competing product, and suddenly there's going to be a real incentive to end the benign neglect that has allowed the fanfiction community to flourish online over the years. However, the argument can be made that it's in the best interest of the properties involved to keep turning a blind eye. Fanworks essentially operate as free advertising, and they're a part of the fandom experience that has become much more visible and accepted over the years. Also, enforcement has always been notoriously difficult, and risks alienating fans.

Fanfiction writers aren't the only ones who are going to be affected. A couple of years ago, I remember there was a notorious published author who would write up these spectacular, hyperbolic tirades against the existence of fanfiction. Lots of people poked fun at him, especially since his name was on several tie-in novels for television shows. Tie-in novels and fanfiction are essentially the same thing, except that tie-in novels are licensed and they're written by professionals. If Amazon and Kindle can start making money off of work that's being generated by amateurs, and get away with paying them less, where does that leave the pros? A lot of notable science-fiction writers depend on the money from tie-ins to keep them going during lean periods. Is the market for this kind of work still going to exist after legal fanfiction? The delineation between fanfic and pro-fic is going to get even blurrier.

Of course, this is all assuming that Kindle Worlds is going to take off, which is not certain at all. Fanfiction has been around for a long, long, time, and the readership is used to getting it for free. The culture around it has often been strongly anti-commercial, and that may be difficult to change. Personally, I can't imagine paying for fanfiction, especially the kind of safe, friendly fanfiction that Amazon and Kindle seem to be the most interested in. I prefer all the subversive, weirdo, boundary-crossing stuff that would never make it into print in a million years. As far as I'm concerned, that's the appeal of these amateur stories.

I may be the exception though. The nature of media fandom has changed considerably since I first got involved, over a decade ago. Fanfiction is slowly but surely becoming more legitimate content, and eventually people are going to find ways to use it to make money. Kindle Worlds may not be successful, but it's a pretty bold idea. Unlike past efforts, such as the short-lived for-profit Fanlib Archive, Amazon and Kindle are actively addressing some of those thorny legal issues and they're willing to share a piece of the revenues too. I never thought I'd ever see this happen.

Kindle Worlds launches in June.
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Why I Don't Use Tumblr

Big news over the weekend. Yahoo has announced a deal to acquire social networking site Tumblr for over a billion dollars. They see it as a great new platform for selling ad space, a move that is probably going to make its core user base unhappy, including a significant chunk of media fans who use it to share various contributions. However, I'm fairly ambivalent towards this news because I never got into Tumblr, though not for the lack of trying.

I think I may have fallen victim to a generation gap of sorts. When I was really active in media fandoms, the major activity was fanfiction, and the bulk of fandom interaction was centered around message boards, mailing lists, private sites, and finally some of the social networking platforms, specifically Livejournal. I migrated from one platform to another over the years without many problems. Then, a couple of years back, we saw a major shift from Livejournal to Tumblr, where the fanwork became more graphics based, centering around artwork, memes, icons, gifs, and videos. Tumblr, classified as a microblogger site, was great for sharing this kind of content, but I found it difficult to hold any kind of conversation there, and I couldn't make heads or tails of the navigation. Tumblr is closer to Pinterest or Twitter than a traditional blog, and it's all about finding similar content through various tags. While you can leave comments on individual items or posts, these can be difficult to follow from one to the next, and usually requires digging through a lot of links.

I think the appeal of Tumblr is that it's quick and simple to use, and participation is easy. A significant amount of user activity amounts to "reblogging," posting interesting items to your feed that other people have uploaded to Tumblr, the way people use Pinterest boards. This is easier to do with simpler fanworks like pictures than it is with multi-chapter fanfiction or long, involved, analytical discussions about the character development on "Doctor Who." A couple of months back, someone commented on my blog that I ought to be using Tumblr, because I'd get a much bigger audience that way. However, I don't think that Tumblr is a good fit for me, because my contributions are almost entirely text-based, and many of my posts run over a thousand words apiece. Tumblr is better suited for smaller, bite-sized chunks of text information, like quotes and snippets of chatlogs. There are plenty of other places and spaces online for the kind of fandom activities I prefer, the reviews and meta, which is why I've decided to stick to Blogger and Dreamwidth. I think if I were to use Tumblr, it would be similar to how I use Twitter. I'd just post links to my blog entries.

Initially it bothered me when Tumblr became so popular, and the Livejournal and Dreamwidth-based fandoms started to shrink. Sure, the blogs weren't the best places to have good discussions about media, but at least they were pretty good about attracting a significant number of likeminded fans to the same places, so they were worth keeping an eye on. The problem was, or course, that these little communities became insular very quickly, and there were high barriers to entry. If you didn't have a good grasp of writing or you weren't good at socializing, it was difficult to get involved. Tumblr removes or significantly lowers a lot of these barriers. You can follow the tags instead of specific users or carefully delineated communities, and you don't have to interact much in order to be an active user. The kind of Tumblr content that is the most popular often involves remixing or manipulation of existing media, activities that seem to be easier for younger fans to pick up. Tumblr is made for a different kind of media fan than the ones who prefers the older blogging sites, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Anything that keeps the fandom world going should be supported in my book.

I am a little bit worried about the Yahoo acquisition having an impact on the Tumblr fandom community. It's not the ads, but the potential changes in management and oversight of the content that may have the most negative impact. Fandom is notoriously anti-commercial because of the difficult IP issues that monetization usually brings up. Changes in ownership were among the major reasons that Livejournal and Delicious fandom user bases both fell apart. If the Tumblr-based fans move on, though, as fans inevitably do, my guess is that they're going to pick another microblogging service, since that's kind of interaction this group is used to now. Or they could pick something radically different. Even the people most heavily involved in fandom have no idea where fandom is going. That's what makes it so exciting to follow.
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The Kickstarter Conundrum

I've been reluctant to say much about the Zach Braff Kickstarter controversy, because the story is still developing, and it's probably too early to draw any conclusions one way or another. However, this is becoming an important point of reference when talking about Kickstarter in any capacity, so I figured I should at least figure out where I stand on what has transpired so far.

So, here's where we are at the time of writing. Zach Braff started a Kickstarter campaign and has so far raised a little over $2.6 million from nearly forty thousand contributors to fund a new film, "Wish I Was Here," billed as the follow-up to his 2004 comedy "Garden State." There has been spirited debate about whether it's appropriate for a celebrity like Braff to use Kickstarter, since it's a fundraising platform that has been primarily used to help small, under-the-radar, independent film projects get off the ground. Writer Ken Levine wrote a blog post on why he wasn't supporting the project that attracted a lot of discussion. Braff is someone who has access to other backers, who appears to be independently wealthy enough to fund most of the film himself, and has plenty of industry connections. After several casting announcements this week, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that a traditional financier, Worldview Entertainment, will contribute additional funds to raise the film's budget to $10 million. There's some disagreement as to whether this sum is an investment or a loan, and whether Braff would have gotten this money without the interest generated by the Kickstarter campaign.

Still, the question remains. Why is "Wish I Was Here," a film that will star recognizable actors like Anna Kendrick, Josh Gad, and Mandy Patinkin, using Kickstarter? According to Braff, going the crowdfunding route allows him to retain creative control of the film, giving him final cut and the ability to cast who he wants. This is a perfectly legitimate concern, and one I'm sympathetic to. Finding the funding these smaller films has become more difficult in recent years, and Zach Braff may be a celebrity, but I doubt he has the clout to be given carte blanche over even a modest-sized production like "Wish I Was Here." I don't see all that much difference between a project headed up by Braff and one headed up by someone like Dan Harmon or Charlie Kaufman, who used a Kickstarter campaign to fund the stop-motion short "Anomalisa," though "Wish I Was Here" clearly has much better commercial prospects and will probably land a traditional distribution deal. I think what most people are worried about is the precedent for more typically Hollywood-friendly media this project is setting, and the uncomfortable possibilities being opened up for other filmmakers to abuse the system. I'm not saying that there has been any abuse, but there's a significant and growing likelihood that it's where all this may lead to.

Will the increase in celebrity-headed projects like "Wish I Was Here" and the "Veronica Mars" movie end up taking attention and funds away from the smaller projects that need them more? Could Kickstarter end up devolving into a mechanism to pre-sell products and media that were going to happen anyway? Will it be used as a market research tool to gauge interest in future films or as a way to spread the risk around for less conventional projects? Many of the studios are struggling, and it would be tempting to get the fan bases of existing properties to offset the costs of new franchise installments. Remember, Kickstarter contributions are donations, and if a film like "Wish I Was Here" makes a huge profit, the contributors won't get to share in the profits like traditional investors. Their compensation is only limited to the special rewards like DVDs, screenings, and the chance to appear for a few seconds onscreen as an extra.

However, on the flip side this could also mean that interesting projects that might never have been made otherwise will now get a fighting chance. And Kickstarter recently released a statement supporting the Zach Braff and "Veronica Mars" fundraising campaigns, pointing out that they had attracted more contributors to the site who had gone on to donate more funds to smaller projects. We really don't know enough yet to tell if the net effect of these more high-profile Kickstarter movie projects is going to be positive or negative. I think it's important to remember that the power ultimately lies with the contributors. If they feel like they're getting a bad deal, they won't contribute. If they feel like they're being taken advantage of, they won't contribute. And remember, the involvement of a celebrity is not necessarily a positive. A Melissa Joan Hart-backed indie movie recently pulled its Kickstarter campaign after failing to drum up enough interest.

As for me, I kicked in a few dollars for "Anomalisa," but I have no interest in "Wish I Was Here." I didn't find the synopsis about the main character's midlife crisis very compelling, and I didn't think much of "Garden State." I wish Zach Braff all the best, but I'll be saving future contributions for more interesting projects that I hope will be coming our way.
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Will Aereo Kill TV?

I've lived in a series of apartments for the past couple of years, and since I've cut the cord, I've gone back to the old rabbit ear antenna model for live television viewing. And it's miserable. I can only pick up a couple of smaller stations, and never more than two of the major broadcast networks. Which two depends on where I am and what direction my building is facing, but for the last few years, I haven't had any access at all to FOX or ABC.

Now enter Aereo, a new service backed by IAC's Barry Diller that may solve my TV problems at last. Aereo will let you watch over-the-air broadcast channels live online for $8-12 a month through a variety of different devices, and they also throw in a couple hours of cloud-based DVR space for time shifted viewing. They take their streams directly from the airwaves, and the user is essentially renting their antennas, placed in a prime spot for television reception, to access broadcast television. Aereo currently features about two dozen channels in the New York area, but will be launching in Boston next month and expanding to the rest of the east coast soon after. The reviews have been great, and anticipation for its expansion are high. And the major broadcast networks like FOX and CBS are freaking out.

All the news about Aereo the past few months has been about the ongoing legal battles between Aereo and the networks. The biggest worry that the networks have is the potential loss of their retransmission fees. Back in the 1980s, when cable television was first starting to emerge, legislation was enacted that required cable operators to pay these fees to carry content taken from over-the-air broadcast networks. A good chunk of this is for live sports games, but cable will also pay for news coverage and other events. Aereo does not have to pay retransmission fees, however, because they're not considered a programming distributor in the traditional sense. Technically you're not buying content through Aereo. You're renting the equipment that allows you to access that content remotely over the internet.

This could have some big consequences for the networks, because they rely heavily on those retransmission fees, which are estimated to bring in about 10% of a network's income. The other 90% is advertising. It doesn't seem like much, but in many cases, that 10% network's entire profit margin. This is why FOX's Rupert Murdoch and other television executives have been threatening to leave the airwaves and become cable-only outfits if Aereo continues to expand. This is why they've been trying again and again to get injunctions to stop the service from operating under a multitude of legal arguments. Their most recent appeal, which argued that Aereo was engaging in copyright infringement, got turned down by the Second Circuit a few weeks ago. Now there's talk that the networks will try to lobby Congress to legislate Aereo out of existence. Suddenly the public airwaves have turned into a war zone, and free television may not be so free anymore.

Over the last decade we've slowly watched the internet take major bites out of nearly all the information-based industries, from journalism and publishing to movie rentals. Now, it's coming for live television content. The networks are looking at what happened to the newspapers and the recording industry, and trying to stave off what they perceive to be the potential end of their business model. If they can't generate the necessary revenue to keep television stations and networks profitable, then we're going to see the whole TV landscape change dramatically. My guess is we're going to end up with fewer free broadcast networks, an emphasis on cheaper content, and probably more ads to make up the difference. Some networks like FOX very well may move to cable, and if you want access to their content, you'll have to pay for it.

Then again, I don't know if I'd use Aereo very much even if I had it. The networks have been migrating most of their prime time content online, so I find I have reasonable access to most of the shows I want to see. I don't watch the local news regularly, I don't watch sports, and I don't really miss the morning shows or the late night shows. In fact there are only a couple of times a year when I really miss having access to broadcast television. The Oscars, for instance, are something I always want to watch live, and have to scramble to make arrangements to see every year, because my local ABC station has somehow never been in antenna range.

I just don't watch enough television anymore that Aereo would be all that useful to me. And I think that mindset is even scarier to the networks than the loss of their retransmission fees.
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800 Words on the Boston Bombing Coverage

My TV set stayed off during the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing that happened a week ago on April 15, 2013, and the subsequent manhunt for the two suspects that happened on Friday. I kept up by checking the internet for updates, not only on the bombing story but on the emphasis of the coverage. It was difficult not to pay attention to what was going on because it was practically all that anyone in the U.S. was talking about last week. However, this time it felt like all the worst case scenarios about the 24 hour news cycle and the danger of trusting what you read on the internet came true, one after the other.

During the days between the bombing and the manhunt, many news outlets were remarkably self-conscious about the potential harm of speculating on the identities of the bombers and their motives. That didn't stop anyone from speculating, however. There was plenty of on-air chatter about possible ethnicities, nationalities, religions, political stances, and more. The bombers were already being politicized long before they were identified, their potential impact on gun-control legislation, immigration reform, drone warfare, and other hot button issues getting plenty of attention. With so much interest in the event and so little information, it was inevitable that rumors would run rampant, and that the smallest details would be blown out of proportion. Jon Stewart has a good rundown of the worst offenders on "The Daily Show" last week.

I was glad that there seemed to be much more awareness of various groups trying to make the bombings fit certain narratives. There was a lot of pre-emptive defense of Muslims and the Saudi national who had been identified as a witness. Many people were being called out for racial profiling and jumping to conclusions. As quickly as the crackpots came out of the woodwork, they were confronted and scolded just as quickly. For at least the first few days of the news coverage, there was a real attempt to focus on the victims, the first responders, and relief efforts. Disasters tend to bring out the best in many people, and for a while that provided enough material to fill the airwaves and the newspaper columns. My favorite piece came trom the New Yorker: Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready. However, all the good intentions and the emphasis on responsible reporting didn't last. Inevitably, attention shifted to the investigation, and things fell apart quickly.

CNN and many other news outlets reported that an arrest had been made on Wednesday afternoon, which had to be retracted when the Boston police denied that they had anyone in custody. Then on Thursday the New York Post ran the infamous "Bag Men" cover, that seemed to point to two "dark-skinned" individuals, neither of whom turned out to have anything to do with the bombings and weren't particularly dark-skinned either. The erroneous reports turned into news stories themselves, and many used them as an excuse to slam traditional media outlets. Meanwhile, internet-based outlets were hardly doing much better. Would-be sleuths on social media sites were trying to piece together evidence from photos of the bombings that had been released online. By all accounts their actions were mostly harmful, leading to several false IDs, and incidents of harassment and vigilantism. After the conclusion of the manhunt, it was revealed that the FBI was spurred to release the photos of the Tsarnaev brothers in part as an effort to mitigate the damage being done by these amateurs.

Now, in the aftermath, the mainstream media is blaming the internet, the internet is blaming the mainstream media, and I'm left feeling exasperated with both sides. After all that talk about how we should wait for information to be confirmed and avoid turning into an unthinking mob, that's exactly what ended up happening. At least this time around there's a little more introspection going on, and more discussion of the problems that the coverage revealed. Oddly, the mainstream media and the internet ended up checking and balancing each other to some extent, and maybe that's how it should be. Since both approaches have proven to be problematic, at least we can be glad that we're not stuck with one or the other exclusively.

And so we've completed another cycle of tragedy and terror and retribution in the American media. The suspect has been apprehended, the heroes have been cheered, and it was all very exciting and, though we won't readily admit it to ourselves, we were all very entertained. Sadly, for the bulk of the time, the public was kept pretty badly informed by a sensationalist media that was desperate to say something, anything, to keep our attention, and the collective speculation of the internet hordes that reflected our worst impulses to find someone to blame as quickly as possible.
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Amazon's Pilot Experiment

The television development process goes a little something like this: the major networks will hire creatives to develop a show based on their pitches and ideas. Then they order pilots, which are test episodes, and often used as the introductory first episode of the series, if the show gets picked up to air. Pilots go through a lot of audience testing by the studios, and there are plenty that never make it past this stage. The NBC reboot of "Wonder Woman," for instance, shot a pilot but didn't make it to series.

Most people never get to see the pilots for the shows that aren't picked up, except under very unusual circumstances, because of certain financial issues and PR concerns. The information related to the audience testing is kept pretty tightly under wraps. So imagine Hollywood's surprise when Amazon made its first slate of original programming pilots, eight comedies and six kids shows, available to the public on Amazon Instant and Lovefilm, seeking people's direct feedback. Like Netflix, they've been looking to produce their own content, and are taking a different approach to the traditional television development process.

Among the pilots currently available for download are the "Zombieland" series, based on the 2009 Woody Harrelson film, "Alpha House" with John Goodman, about the hijinks of four senators forced to share the same address, "Browsers" with Bebe Neuwirth, about a news website, "Dark Minions," "Betas," about app developers, "Those Who Can't," about high school teachers, "and "Onion News Empire," an extension of the satirical Onion news organization. There are also two animated shows, "Supanatural," about crime-fighting divas, and "Dark Minions," described as a slacker science-fiction show. I haven't had a chance to watch any of them for myself yet.

There are some reasons to be cautious about this approach. Immediately any failures become more public, and if a high profile show liked "Zombieland" fails to attract much interest, it becomes harder to brush it aside. There was a lot of press and pictures passed around from "Wonder Woman," but NBC kept the actual footage from the pilot away from the public's gaze, and never so much as ran a commercial for it. Also, most television shows are launched with the benefit of advertising campaigns and a much more controlled narrative around them. Your first look at a new show is often through ads and commercials that help to generate hype, long before it actually goes to air. Presentation counts for a lot on television, and I don't know if Amazon is putting their best foot forward with some of these new projects.

Also, there's the little matter of retooling. Some shows have multiple pilots, or make major changes based on initial feedback. For instance, "The Big Bang Theory" had an initial pilot that featured a very different female lead character named Katie. She didn't really work, but the characters of Sheldon and Leonard and their interactions did. The second pilot with Kelly Cuoco as Penny got much better marks, and now "Big Bang" is a monster hit for CBS. Consider what might have happened if the public had seen the first dud pilot, and CBS decided to write the whole concept off based on their negative reactions. Some shows need more than one round of development, and t's pretty common to see notices about recasting and retooling. I don't know if the Amazon shows are going to enjoy the ability to make tweaks and changes. For them it may be sink or swim.

Still, the idea of getting the potential audience involved this early in a show's life cycle is a really appealing idea. If people latch on to a particular pilot, you could get strong word of mouth going before committing to a full series. Fans could become more invested in its survival, and the wider exposure could provide better data on how a show is likely to do in the long run, and help to create better marketing. This would be an advantage to the more niche shows that appeal strongly to a smaller audience, and from Amazon's press releases these are definitely people that the company wants to hear from. It's important to remember that it's the Amazon executives who will ultimately be deciding which shows go to series, and the audience feedback will only be one factor they consider.

After seeing how Netflix is handling the launch of "House of Cards" and its other new shows, it's interesting to se the different tactics that Amazon has embraced. These companies are in a rare position that they can afford to experiment a little and try out different things, because nobody really knows how launching web platform based programming is supposed to work. What works for television may not work on the internet, and vice versa. It's a very exciting process to keep an eye on, and we'll see how successful they prove to be.
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Technology Marches On

Right now, I'm typing out this post using a new version of Gmail that requires that I open a new browser window if I don't want to draft a new message in a cramped text box that's squashed into the right half of my screen. I juggle enough different windows and tabs at one time that I really don't want to deal with another one, but I can't find anything in the settings that would restore the prior one-window method. I liked drafting in Gmail because I got to write and keep an eye on my inbox at the same time. Now, I might as well be using Google Docs or a separate word processing program. There wasn't much warning that this change was going to happen in Gmail, and it's just the first of a string of coming changes to the internet services and programs that I've grown to depend on.

In the next few months, we're going to lose Google Reader, which I was using as my primary aggregator for multiple entertainment news RSS feeds and podcasts, and the current version of Tweetdeck, which I use to update my Twitter feed. Tweetdeck was really just a quick fix for a problem I was having with the Twitter web interface, and not actually more convenient for me, so this could be a good thing, providing the impetus for me to get the issue sorted out for good. I'm going to miss Reader much more, since it is the most popular and most useful newsreader out there. There's some comfort in knowing there are a lot of other people in the same boat as I am. Right after Reader's impending retirement was announced, there was a flood of people on Reddit asking for recommendations for replacements. In both cases it's not going to take much effort to acclimate myself to a new or modified service, but it's still hard to shake the sense of loss, because I spent so much time using both, and I'd gotten very familiar with them.

I've always been something of a late adopter - I managed to skip Windows Vista entirely by holding out with XP until Windows 7 came along. My current laptop is nearly six years old, and I don't own a smartphone, tablet, or anything that supports an app. I'll probably be replacing the laptop soon with a newer model, not because I'm unhappy with its performance, but because you can't just go an buy a brand new 2007 laptop. There are already parts of the internet my processor and graphics card are having a hard time keeping up with, and I've been warned that eventually most of the online services that I use aren't going to run as well with my old, outdated machine as they keep getting upgraded and updated. Of course I've seen the benefits of many of these improvements over the years, but sometimes it feels like I'm running a Red Queen's race. Video platforms continue to be the bane of my existence. I spent a good chunk of yesterday evening updating Java and Adobe Shockwhatever, trying to get an old Stanley Kubrick supercut to play properly. And who knows what kind of horror will be unleashed when Netflix switches over to HTML5.

I've been through this familiar situation enough times before that I know that I'm really just grumbling over change in general. There's nothing I can do about the changes to my online services in the same way that I can't do anything about the volatile gas prices or the end of Saturday mail services. The online world is actually better in many ways because there are a lot of options to conduct basic activities, lots of different providers (except for internet service itself), and a lot of sympathy towards late adopters. If I really wanted to, I could hold out with my current laptop for a very long time. I finally gave up on Windows XP back in 2007, but Microsoft is still supporting the operating system until next year. I might just stick to Windows 7 for a while, considering what I've been hearing about Windows 8, and wait until 9 or 10 roll around.

But first things first. I need a new RSS reader, hopefully one that will let me download audio content directly. And I might just give up Tweetdeck entirely and update directly through the Twitter site, or see if there's another third party services that's a little more user friendly. I need my Gmail account, but I might start drafting blog posts in what used to be my Hotmail account, which recently mysteriously transmogrified into this thing called Microsoft Outlook. I can't really tell the difference between them functionally, so no complaints. The transition was handled so well that it took me a few weeks to realize that I was actually using a different service.

Sometimes technology marches on, and sometimes it can pull a fast one on you.
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Uncrowding Thursday TV

A couple of years ago, I lamented the fact that every show I wanted to watch had been scheduled against each other on Monday nights. Why did the networks keep making me choose between "Chuck" and "Big Bang Theory" and "Heroes" and "The Sarah Conner Chronicles"? was Monday somehow designated as geeky TV show night? Since then, I've watched all the shows I regularly tune in for migrate over to Thursdays, where a similar programming logjam has resulted. At the 8PM hour, CBS's "Big Bang Theory" and NBC's "Community" have been going head to head for years. At 9PM, "Person of Interest" airs on CBS, "Go On" is on NBC, and Lifetime has some variant of "Project Runway" or another. Finally at 10PM, CBS has "Elementary," which my significant other has gotten me into. However, there are also new episodes of "Archer" on FX and the impending arrival of NBC's "Hannibal," the "Silence of the Lambs" prequel series. Yet somehow, in spite of all the overlapping, I'm still more or less caught up with everything on Thursdays.

All the NBC programming, "Big Bang Theory," "Elementary," and "Project Runway" put new episodes online the next day. I usually end up watching "Big Bang" and "Community" on Fridays, and everything else sometime over the weekend. I prefer using the respective networks' sites instead of going through Hulu, because Hulu's interface and ads are still terrible. This easy accessibility is the only reason I'm still watching "Elementary," which has slowly grown on me over the past few months. Otherwise, I'd have chosen to stick with "Go On," which has a much higher chance of cancellation. Ditto "Community," which is almost certainly in its final season considering the dismal state of its ratings. I honestly do like "The Big Bang Theory" about as much, but "Big Bang" is a monster hit that's going to run in syndication for years. i don't have to worry about losing track of it the way I do with "Community," which is far more of a cult show. It's only been recently that CBS has consistently put full episodes of "Big Bang" online, so I no longer have to choose between them.

The cable shows are harder to come by if you don't have cable, of course, but I marathoned all of "Archer" in a big catch-up session with a friend who had the iTunes Season Pass for it. Otherwise, I would have waited for this latest season to show up on Netflix with the older episodes. However, I find that I'm getting more comfortable with using Amazon and iTunes for some cable shows, including "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," which both have highly anticipated new seasons right around the corner. I’ll be paying for Season Passes again for both series so I can keep up week by week as they air. And paying $45 for the two cable shows I actually want to watch sure beats paying for five months of a cable subscription. There are a couple of other programs I've been considering adding to that list, like Jane Campion's "Top of the Lake" miniseries, and the next season of "American Horror Story," but I think I can wait for those to hit disc or the subscription services, which means the price comes down considerably.

Finally, the only show I'm still watching live as it airs, on a mostly regular basis, is "Person of Interest," because rights issues prevent CBS from providing streaming versions in a timely manner (or so they claim). It's often a hassle, so I've missed several installments this year. For instance, I'm not sure where Carter's new love interest came from, or when Clarke Peters from "The Wire" became the show's latest big bad. I wouldn't bother for most other programs, but I still like "Person of Interest" enough that I tune in when I can. And it helps that it's not one of those series with a heavy mythology that requires seeing every single installment. Besides, it'll be nice to have a couple of new-to-me episodes to discover when I inevitably watch the reruns in a couple of years.

And so my Thursday night lineup no longer feels so crowded, and I can make it last all week. I could even start watching "Glee" again if I wanted to, without angsting over the scheduling conflicts. The internet has rendered the broadcast schedule mostly moot for me. The only reason that I remember that most of these shows air on Thursdays is because I have to wait until then before I have new episodes waiting for me when I get home. This week is going to be a little light since March Madness pre-empted all the CBS procedurals. Maybe I'll go catch up on some on those midseason premieres I missed.

Happy watching.
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Any Worthwhile New Streaming Services?

I was going to write up a review on Redbox Instant today, the new Verizon-backed streaming service that Redbox has launched to supplement its DVD kiosks. They've been offering free trials, and I'm currently taking a break from Netflix in my usual rotation. It's eight dollars a month for Redbox Instant, with the added bonus of four regular Redbox DVD rentals. Add another dollar to upgrade to Blu-rays. Unfortunately, I didn't get very far into the sign-up process. Redbox Instant is just out of beta and only offers 4,600 titles, most of the same Epix content that is already available on Amazon Prime and Netflix. After browsing their selections for about an hour, I couldn't find a single title that I was interested enough in to want to give up personal information for. In a couple more months, maybe, if the content has improved enough, I could test-drive the service then. I'm not dismissing Redbox Instant entirely - it's very early yet, and they can surely improve - but the service is not in the shape that it needs to be to compete as a streaming service right now.

Okay, so let's shelve Redbox Instant for the moment. This wasn't the only streaming content provider in the news. Today, it was announced that a service called M-Go had secured a distribution deal with Lionsgate to stream its content. They launched back in January after securing a bunch of other studio deals. I didn't get far with this one either. M-Go is a video-on-demand platform, not a subscription based service. That means you pay for each and every movie and show you watch individually. They offer movie rentals for $0.99 for the first 30 days, and then bump up the price later. Sure, they offer plenty of new releases, and will even direct you to other services if they don't offer the title that you're looking for. However, M-Go is clearly trying to push the studio-preferred model of content consumption, promoting digital locker services and its compatibility with the UltraViolet format for digital content. No wonder the studios were so quick to sign on to M-Go. I don't have much interest in another itunes/Amazon style digital retailer at the moment, so I'm giving them a pass as well. Maybe when December rolls around and I need to catch up on a lot of recent films in a hurry, that deal will be useful.

What else? How about Flixfling? They're a fairly under-the-radar little service that talks up its commitment to indie, classic, and obscure movie content. That sounded promising. They offer two different services, a subscription service called Basic, and an On-Demand service that offers access to "Premium" titles. The problem is that their content is pretty severely lacking too. At 6,500 titles they're nearly as bad as Redbox Instant, and their user interface really needs some work. According to their database, they only have fifty foreign language films available, though a cursory glance through the full listings reveals plenty more. Also, I couldn't find a single movie or television episode that wasn't a "Premium" title, including public domain classics like "Nosferatu" and "His Girl Friday," which can be found for free in plenty of places on the internet. Flixfling definitely puts an overwhelming emphasis on their On-Demand service, and that means I don't have any use for it. And frankly, all the effort they took to make it seem like they had a viable streaming service, but without really offering one, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then there's Crackle, which is Sony Pictures' platform for streaming content using flash video. They just ask for optional registration, and there are no fees that I can find. The content's not much to write about, but there were a scattering of decent titles that came up immediately, and if it's a free service, I can hardly complain. Then I tried watching Joseph Losey's "Go-Between," and found myself doing battle with a flash player that refused to load the content. I updated the Adobe player and still nothing. Had the movie expired? Was it one of the titles that you needed to register with the site to access? Was it not playable in my region? Not having the time to investigate further, I had to leave it at that. We're just going to have to label this test as inconclusive for now.

Competition is a good thing, but these latest challengers to Netflix and Amazon Prime are really not providing much of it at the moment. If anything, they show the studios’ deep resistance to the subscription streaming model. M-Go and Flixfling are aggressively pushing video-on-demand, while Redbox Instant might have some potential, but it's hurting for content. After researching each one, I didn’t bother signing up for anything, which was disappointing.

Oh well. Guess I'll renew the Netflix subscription a little earlier than planned. And keep tabs on that HBO Go rumor.
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What Happened to Youtube?

I've grown to rely on Youtube, as I'm sure many people have. It's the first place I go to look for clips of half-forgotten movies, television shows, and commercials. The other day, after a couple of tries, I found the opening of CCTV's 1987 of "Dream of the Red Chamber" serial, one of the earliest pieces of media I can remember. However, the continued push to monetize Youtube has been making the site harder and harder to use.

A few weeks ago I noticed that many videos, especially older and less popular ones, weren't loading properly. The stream would stop after the first twenty seconds and then take a minute or two to resume. This happened repeatedly for a set of clips that were only a minute or two in length individually, effectively doubling the amount of time it took to watch them. Apparently this is a measure that was taken in order to reduce the load on Youtube's servers, which I understand the reasoning for, but why apply it to these shorter clips where loading the entire video wouldn't have that much impact? And since last year, users have been complaining that a video won't load completely if it's paused, so I had to wait out the buffering each time.

Then you have the ads. Youtube has been experimenting with banner, overlay, and in-video ads for a long time now, similar to the kind that you find on other video services like Hulu. I don't usually find them too much of a bother, but this morning I was looking up some old trailers, and discovered I had to watch a hefty two-minute ad before I could access a one-minute teaser trailer, lengthening that wait time to ridiculous extremes. And of course, the teaser is already an ad itself, for the movie it was made for. I understand that Youtube is a business that needs to make money to pay for the servers, and I'm willing to put up with some advertisements to an extent, but this was too much. And I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way.

There have been various programs and applications floating around for a while now that let you download and save videos from Youtube, but lately we've seen the rise of various browser extensions, tweaks, and add-ons designed to skip or block Youtube ads, to increase download speeds, and add more controls. Don't like the autoplay or the automatic annotations? There are scripts out there that can turn them off for you. Youtube Options and Youtube Center seem to be the most popular all-purpose Youtube tweakers at the moment. I haven't resorted to using any of these, but it's becoming more and more tempting as Youtube keeps adding hoops to jump through for access. And if there are more and more people like me, Youtube may be in trouble.

Youtube has been trying to shed its image as a free video portal for ages. They've been slowly adding more and more pay content, like the ability to rent streaming movies, and they'll be launching premium content soon in the spring. The trouble is that the majority of its users don't associate Youtube with pay content, the way they do with Hulu or Netflix. They associate it with amateur home movies and music video collections and endless user-submitted memes. They think of it as a free media resource that becomes less valuable the more restrictions are placed on content, and the more difficult its videos become to access. Users are far more resistant to the monetization of Youtube than they are with the sites that started out as pay sites, because they're used to being able to use the site in a certain way, and can become hostile and resentful if that option is taken away.

I sympathize with Youtube, because there's clearly a lot of potential for them to grow commercially. Youtube is the third highest ranked site on the internet in terms of traffic, and has become a part of the mainstream culture the way that few other sites have. Many people use it daily, myself included. However, there's a significant risk of Youtube alienating their user base if they push monetization too hard. Last year they ran more video ads than any other digital distribution service, but it's clear that fewer and fewer users have been willing to sit through them. The most popular browser extensions are all ad blockers and script tweakers that give users more control over what they see online.

Personally, I know Youtube isn't going to last in its current form if it doesn't make money, which is the biggest thing that's keeping me from trying to game the system myself. However, I can't help feeling frustrated every time Youtube makes me sit through an inane ad, or the videos won't load properly. Surely there are better alternatives than this?
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How High Will "Veronica" Go?

Kickstarter has been a boon to the creators of short films, web series, documentaries, and other smaller scale film projects. The list of famous names successfully raising money via Kickstarter crowdsourcing keeps growing, and now includes Charlie Kaufman, David Fincher, Dan Harmon, Amanda Palmer, John Kricfalusi, Masaaki Yuasa, Bill Plympton, Phil Tippett and the guys behind "Cyanide and Happiness." However, funding a full-length commercial feature film hadn't been tried before, since the amounts of money involved were exponentially larger than what Kickstarter campaigns usually handled. The most high profile film projects, including the story reel for Fincher's "Goon" movie, only asked for a few hundred thousand dollars. A decent quality feature would require millions to produce. A few Kickstarter campaigns had raised millions, but only for technology and video game projects.

Enter "Veronica Mars." The high school mystery series ran for three seasons from 2004 to 2007, but was gone from television too soon, leaving unfinished business and a sizable fanbase hoping for some kind of follow-up project. As with fellow cult favorite "Arrested Development," rumors of a movie sequel circulated for years, but looked increasingly unlikely as the years went by. A small cult audience, no matter how fervent and devoted, is almost never enough for a studio to finance the resurrection of a beloved TV or movie property. But what if they weren't risking the studio's money? Yesterday, show creator Rob Thomas, with the full blessing of Warner Brothers, who owns the rights, started a Kickstarter campaign for the "Veronica Mars" movie. He asked for $2 million, the highest Kickstarter goal ever for a film project, to be raised in 30 days. The full amount was raised in less than twelve hours, and now the question is, how high will that total climb before the end of the 30 day campaign? At the time of writing, it's at a little over $3 million and climbing. And the buzz and the excitement around the campaign are so infections, I'm a little sorry I'm not more familiar with the show.

The unprecedented success of the "Veronica Mars" movie is leading to all kinds of speculation about other possible projects that Kickstarter could make happen. How about a second "Firefly" movie? How about another season of "Deadwood"? However, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious here. Keep in mind that "Veronica Mars" is in a very unusual position, where most of the creative talent involved is still available to do a follow-up project like this, the budget requirements are fairly low, and Warner Brothers is willing to play ball. A Kickstarter funded production is still very much uncharted territory, and a major studio being involved brings up some sticky legal and financial issues. Remember also that the biggest Kickstarter film projects to date, like Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" and "Goon" haven't been delivered yet. Kickstarter has grown so fast in such a short amount of time based largely on potential as opposed to actual product. Kickstarter projects, like any other entrepreneurial ventures, go awry all the time. CNN recently found that 84% of the biggest funded projects didn't meet their delivery deadlines, with around 30% by more than six months. Then there have been the growing number of failed Kickstarter projects that where the entrepreneurs couldn't deliver at all, leaving backers feeling cheated and wary of making future contributions

The "Veronica Mars" movie is high profile enough and has so many established, experienced professionals in charge that I don't think it'll be one of the failures. There's a solid timeline in place for production, Warner Brothers has already promised to distribute the film, many of the key actors have already signed on, and the media coverage that's been generated by the campaign will help to ensure things run fairly smoothly. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't still a lot of risks. Production issues aside, the biggest one that most people aren't thinking about is, what if the "Veronica Mars" movie turns out to be bad movie? What if the fans don't like it or are disappointed with it? Fans may scoff, but remember what happened with that second "X-files" movie? Or "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me"? Or "TRON: Legacy"? I'm sure the people working on those films had the best of intentions, but they ended up falling short of their fans' expectations, and those fandoms took some pretty hard blows.

However, there's no denying that crowdfunding movies and television shows has a lot of potential. Along with the recent investments by Netflix, Amazon, and others into web content, this marks the emergence of new sources of financing that weren't on anyone's radar a few years ago. Now thanks to them, "Arrested Development" is back. And "Veronica Mars" is back. And artists like Phil Tippett get to make their dream projects that no studio would have paid for in a million years, and do them on their own terms. Who knows who's going to be next in line?
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More Podcast Recs

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, so I thought I'd pass along links to some of the movie-related and television-related ones that I've been enjoying. All of these are free through iTunes or the links below. Enjoy.

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith - The host is a giant fanboy and it took me a while to get used to his style, but he conducts great Q&As with working screenwriters. Most of the interviews are conducted in conjunction with screenings of the writers' new movies, so after Goldsmith’s done with his questions, there's often a little audience participation too, nicely edited so that there are none of the breaks or the awkward pauses that usually come with live Q&A sessions. I recommend waiting until after you've seen the specific movies being discussed prior to listening to the podcasts, because they focus on the writing process, and how scripts are developed, and what got cut and what got changed on the way to the big screen. This is the side of filmmaking I love I hearing about, and as far as I'm concerned the writers never get as much of the spotlight as they should. Some recent highlights include Joss Whedon on "The Avenger," David O. Russell on "Silver Linings Playbook," and Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee discussing "Wreck-it-Ralph."

SModcast - This pick requires a little filtering. "SModcast" is both the name of a podcast and also a collection of podcasts associated with writer and director Kevin Smith. He's got a bunch of different ones related to the entertainment world, including "Hollywood Babble-On," which is a pretty free-form weekly discussion about current movies and television, "Smoviemakers," where he interviews filmmakers, "Film School Fridays," where he throws down with film students, and the main "SModcast" occasionally has guests like "Looper" director Rian Johnson. Some of the smaller shows aren't updated all that often, or were just kind of abandoned by the wayside after a few installments. However, my favorite at the moment is still going strong, and that's "Fatman on Batman" which is exactly what it sounds like. Kevin Smith geeks out about the Batman universe every week, and the 1992 "Batman: The Animated Series" in particular. He's had one several key members of the cast and crew, including a fantastic two-parter with Mark Hamill. Smith certainly doesn't neglect the comics though. I'm saving the recent Grant Morrison appearance for a rainy day.

Firewall and Iceberg – I've recommended this one before, but it was sort of tacked on to another post, and I really think these guys deserve all the kudos I can give them. Alan Sepinwall and Dan Fienberg are two prominent television critics who host the best television podcast, bar none. These are the guys who know the industry inside out, who understand the inexplicable network decisionmaking, and who can juggle talking about multiple shows, old and new. They'll review each individual episode of the ones they consider the most important, like "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Man," episode by episode, every week. Others only need to be checked in on from time to time. The lousy stuff gets a quick review, and only ever comes up again if there's been a major development. It's amazing the amount of ground these two can cover in a single show, and they don't even run that long. I tend to get more out of one of their ten or fifteen minute episode reviews than the podcasts that spend a whole hour on the same subject. And thanks to them, I know about pilot season, and about press tour, and exactly how “Community” is doing, because they’re just as obsessed about it as I am.

Kermode and Mayo's Film Review – Film critics Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo review films for BBC radio. They do more or less what every other movie review show does, offering their critiques on the new releases, related interviews, and some lively discussion about the recent entertainment news. This one stands out for the personalities and the professionalism. Mark Kermode's quite the character, and I suspect his personality may come across as grating to some, but I find him very informative and entertaining. And because it's the BBC, the show has the clout to get some big names to come by to promote their movies, though at the same time that means you get more actors and fewer directors and writers. It's also nice to hear the perspective of a couple of Brits who are working off of a difference release schedule and aren't as Hollywood oriented as most of the other shows I listen to. I've gotten some great recommendations for smaller films like "Perfect Sense" and “Chico and Rita,” that were higher profile in the UK than in the US, that I might have otherwise missed.
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Your February 2013 Follow-Up Post

And we're back with another semi-regular Miss Media Junkie Blog follow-up post, to provide you with updates on topics I've previously written about, but that I don't believe require an entire new post to themselves. The original posts are linked below for your convenience.

Who Should Direct "Cinderella"? - Kenneth Branagh's name has come up as a likely contender for the director's chair. That's a perfectly good choice in light of Branagh's work on "Thor," but I have say it's still very strange to see Branagh helming such mainstream, commercial films. Then again, if "Cinderella" goes well, maybe he can convince Disney to pay for his next Shakespeare adaptation.

Goodbye to the Nostalgia Critic - Well that didn't last long. Doug Walker's new satirical web series "Demo Reel" premiered in October and lasted all of five episodes before Walker called it quits and decided to resurrect the Nostalgia Critic character and show. The rules have changed - no more date restrictions on what he'll review, and we only get a new episode every two weeks - but otherwise, he's back. One can argue about Walker's creative principles, but from a business standpoint this was probably the right decision. I meant to watch "Demo Reel" but I kept putting it off and putting it off. However, when I saw that the Nostalgia Critic was back, I didn't hesitate to click the link and watch the new episodes. The latest thrashing of Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" was most enjoyable.

The Sleepers of December and Dreamworks Animation Gets Ambitious - At the time of writing, "Life of Pi" has brought in $111 million in the US and over half a billion worldwide. That makes it the highest grossing of the Best Picture Oscar nominees. "Rise of the Guardians," unfortunately, barely inched over the $100 million mark in the US and even with the additional $200 million from overseas, it's probably going to lose money. Dreamworks Animation hasn't been doing too well in the past few months, delaying "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" from November, 2013 to next spring, and pulling Me and My Shadow" from their slate entirely. Next up for them is going to be "The Croods," which has been getting overshadowed by marketing for the "Monsters Inc" prequel that's not coming out until summer.

The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown - I haven't watched "House of Cards" yet since I've been so busy, but rest assured that you'll be getting a full report soon. The early word is that the series is a success for Netflix. Not only is it getting high marks from critics and viewers, but a survey of Netflix users appears to indicate that the availability of the show is helping to retain subscribers. But how long will that effect last? And without the traditional television ratings, can there be adequate comparison the performance of other shows? Currently there's no sign of one major indicator of success: a renewal. And I'm very interested in how the "House of Cards" will be treated at awards time.

About the New Fall TV Season - "666 Park Avenue"? Cancelled. "Last Resort"? Cancelled. "Elementary" and "Arrow" look like they're going to be around for the long term, and "Vegas" is still up in the air. It got a full season, but the ratings may not be good enough for a renewal. And "Revolution," inexplicably, has become a hit. On the comedy side, "Go On" and "The New Normal" on NBC both got full seasons, but only "Go On" is likely to be around next year. "The Mindy Project" has been getting better, both in content and ratings. And good grief, is "Beauty and the Beast" really still on the air?

The Unscheduled Contenders - You know, this is why I should refrain from trying to act like an entertainment reporter. A grand total of none of the movies that I talked about in that post ended up with a 2012 release date or were part of the awards conversation at all. Mike Newell's "Great Expectations" was released in the UK back in November to middling reviews, but there's no sign of an American release. The rest are all being released in 2013, though "Mr. Pip" doesn't have a date set yet, and "Imogene" has been retitled "Girl Most Likely."

Notes on the "Ninja Turtle" Situation - "Ninja Turtle" fans can't say they weren't warned. After the leaking of a lousy script, the project appeared to be quashed last year, but Michael Bay went and tweeted a few days ago that not only was the reboot still in the works, but that he planned to cast Megan Fox in it. The immediate assumption was that Fox was going to be playing April O'Neil, the plucky reporter that the Turtles were always saving from peril. Fans were not happy about this, and have been airing their grievances to the internet ever since.

6 More Upcoming Anime Adaptations to Worry About - I guess you could call this a non-update. I wrote this post sixteen months ago, and in that time none of the project mentioned has moved an inch. Even Starz's planned "Noir" series has been stalled for over a year. Fortunately "Akira" remains quite dead. I think it's safe to say that whatever interest Hollywood had in the anime audience has cooled enough that we don't really have to worry about any of them.
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Notes From a Hulu/Criterion Weekend

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I've sworn off paying for Hulu Plus since last year, since they decided to redesign the site and broke nearly all the searching and sorting functionality for their Criterion Collection titles. The interface is still in a sorry state, but this weekend Hulu decided to promote the addition of a batch of new titles to their Criterion section by offering all of them for free for four days, from February 14th through the 17th. I figured that this was a good opportunity to play catch up with the new entries to the" They Shoot Pictures Don't They" Top 1000 list. So, over the course of four days I watched eight movies, one each from Francois Truffaut, Jacques Feyder, Mikio Naruse, Aki Kaurismäki, Roberto Rossellini, and Nagisa Ôshima, plus two from Pedro Costa.

The free Criterions were offered with commercials, unlike the ones on Hulu Plus which don't contain ad breaks. I was a little wary of trying to watch the films this way, particularly the Costa titles, which both ran nearly three hours. However, I didn't find the interruptions that disruptive. It was easy enough to tune out the commercials, especially since the ads tended to repeat constantly. The biggest problem was that sometimes the movie would fail to resume after the commercials ran. After some experimenting, reloading the page seemed to fix the issue most of the time, though it meant having to sit through the Criterion introductory idents and ads again every time. This was a problem on some films more than others, but there were none that I didn't have to reload at least once.

I also spent some time poking around on Hulu, testing alternate ways to browse their collection. Currently, the site's Criterion page is organized so that you have to scroll through graphics-heavy lists that only show you five entries at a time. This might have been fun for a casual watcher using a tablet or a smart phone, but not for me. On my aging laptop, I got through about 200 entries from the "Most Popular" list before giving up, deciding there had to be a better way to compare Hulu's advertised 800 Criterions against the list of new "They Shoot Pictures don't They" titles I was looking for. Searching by director yielded some decent results, but searching by titles was often troublesome because so many of the Criterion films are not English-language, and can have multiple title translations. I sorely missed the ability to filter by country and director, and to limit my search to the Criterion films.

To really make use of the Hulu collection, you really need to know what they already have available, which is more difficult than it sounds. There's been a lot of bad reporting that the entire Criterion Collection is available on Hulu, but this has never been the case. Criterion struck deals with many studios to release titles like "The Royal Tennenbaums" and "Chasing Amy" as Criterions, but these deals didn't include streaming rights. Only about half of the official collections is currently on Hulu. However, Criterion also offers other films through Hulu that were released in other collections, or that the company has the rights to, but never released on disc. As these are the films that are the most difficult to find, to the dedicated cinema nerd they're what Hulu's partnership with Criterion has proven the most useful for.

However, finding a complete list of what is actually available on Hulu was almost impossible. A few of the articles reporting on the free trial pointed toward third party sites tracking which movies were on the site, all the ones I checked had outdated information. A fan-generated list of 700 titles, updated a year ago, was the most comprehensive one I could find. Paging through a Criterion fan message board, where posters had listed titles from each update for the last year, gave me the rest. And it was a good thing I checked, because otherwise I wouldn't have known to look for "India: Matri Bhumi," Roberto Rossellini's little-seen documentary about life in India, or half a dozen more Yasujiro Ozu titles.

I'm very happy that Hulu is offering these movies, and I have no issue with the size or the variety of their current collection of Criterion titles. I absolutely think it's worth the money to have access to many of these hard-to-find movies. By my own calculations, I've only seen about a third of what they're currently offering. However, the Hulu interface is user-unfriendly to the point where it negatively impacts on the use of the site. I shouldn't have to resort to third party sites to tell me how many Ingmar Bergman titles Hulu has. Typing "Pedro Costa" into the search bar shouldn't immediately direct me to the Pedro Zamora biopic "Pedro."

Right now I have enough classic films from other sources available to me, that I don't feel like putting up with the hassle. So I'm still going to refrain from subscribing to Hulu Plus again until they get their act together.
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Measuring up Music Videos

One region of the media landscape I've never made any headway with whatsoever is popular music. The only time I ever tried to keep up was back in college, when I'd watch the VH1 Top 20 countdowns while I did my laundry. I developed a fondness for the music videos even if I often found the music inexplicable. I never made much of an effort to really explore the medium, but last night I stumbled across a TIME magazine list of the best music videos of the last 30 years. I had a great time getting acquainted with videos like Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," and Talking Heads' "Once in Lifetime," which was recently heard in the first "Wreck-it-Ralph" trailer. I've never needed any convincing that music videos were an art form, and some of my favorite directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have done some of their best work in videos.

However, when I sat down to write about music videos for this blog, I found myself facing a basic question. Are music videos a form of film or television? How should they be categorized? Well, the modern music video as we know it gained popularity with the rise of MTV in the early 1980s. There's a reason why the TIME list only goes back thirty years. However, music videos also have many film antecedents, going back all the way to the beginnings of the sound era. "Song film" shorts were popular once the sound era came around, and much of the structure and style of music videos came straight from early film musicals like the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night." There were also promotional clips and "inserts" consisting of filmed segments for specific songs that the record companies made in the 60s and 70s, some for film and some for television. You could argue that music videos have mostly been watched on television and have made their most significant advances in that format. However, it's quickly becoming the case that most music videos are watched on the internet, which also happens to remove some of the length and content restrictions of television. The record companies embraced the internet far more quickly than the studios once they became aware that they could reach a much larger potential audience online. I wonder if the transition might result in a further evolution in the music video form.

Maybe music videos should be in their own category, unconnected to any particular media platform, like video art installations or virtual theme park rides. The television and film establishments haven't been very good about recognizing the form. Aside from the MTV Video Music Awards, few major media institutions recognize the merits of the music video. You'll find no category for them at the Oscars or the Emmys. Music videos have slowly started receiving more attention from film historians in recent years, since several major directors have gotten their start in videos. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Archive back in 2009, the first music video to receive that honor. The New York Museum of Modern Art added two Mark Romanek videos, Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and Madonna's "Bedtime Story," to their permanent collection. Also, I found the "The Beastie Boys Video Anthology" occupying a spot in the Criterion Collection, officially spine #100.

There's no denying that music videos should be considered a form of advertising, and there's still some disagreement in the music industry as to whether they should be primarily treated as advertisements for the bands they feature, or whether they qualify as content. Music videos clearly still have a major marketing effect on specific songs, like PSY's "Gangnam Style," for instance. In many cases this has a negative effect on the videos since their function as advertisement can often mean content that skews very commercial. On the other hand, music videos are also far more likely to feature experimental filmmaking techniques and unique stylistic conceits that wouldn't be acceptable in mainstream feature films. A recent trend has been interactivity, in videos like Arcade Fire's "Wilderness Downtown," that can be customized. They also follow a different set of content rules, with major artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga cultivating reputations for controversial music videos with boundary-pushing content.

I don't think it's possible to categorize music videos as solely a product of film or television, or the internet, which is why I ended up using the tags for all of them. It's nice to think of them as a meeting point of all three, though I think if I had to pick one it would be the short film. Shorts were always more experimental, more free-form, and more open to new ideas. Music videos fit those criteria perfectly. Moreover, they're really the only short form media that still have any impact on the popular culture anymore.
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My Third Annual Holiday Wishlist

Dear Hollywood,

This year for Christmas, I want:

For Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" to find a release date quickly, and for a much shorter gap between this film and Cuaron's next one. I wasn't too convinced by that big screed that David Denby wrote a few months ago about Hollywood destroying the movies, but I heartily agree on at least one point, which is that some of our best directors are spending far too much time courting financiers and dealing with studio politics, and not enough time actually making their movies. A seven year gap between "Children of Men" and "Gravity" is just unacceptable.

For "Breaking Bad" to stick its landing. I never thought I'd be looking forward to a television show more than any upcoming film, but it's happened. The last eight episodes of "Breaking Bad" are scheduled to air over next summer, and I'm going to be glued to my television/and or computer screen for them. Other returning shows I'm anticipating include the first half of the "Storm of Swords" being adapted for "A Game of Thrones," and the penultimate season of "Mad Men." Oh, and of course the return of "Community" too.

For Hulu to fix the browsing functions in their Criterion section. The navigation is practically unusable since their last upgrade about three months ago, and since I use Hulu Plus primarily for the Criterions, I see no point in subscribing to their service again until it's fixed. This has thrown off my entire schedule of rotating between the various streaming and DVD-by-mail services too, so maybe it's time to try something else for a while. It's been a few years since I've used Greencine, or I could cash in some coupons and throw Blockbuster a bone.

For the continuing health of MoviePass and Netflix, a pair of movie-related services that I've heard lots of skepticism about, but could change the way we consume our media. Netflix will be taking the plunge with original content starting in February. MoviePass, the subscription movie theater plan, is only in the early stages of full-scale rollout, and still has to prove it can make money. I've held back from trying out MoviePass so far because the commitment is a little too big for my tastes - the subscription period is an entire year - but if it does well, we'll see.

For movie trailers to get more creative, following the lead of films like "Prometheus." Too many big movies are following the same formula of showing too much, and trailers have gone from being something enjoyable to something to avoid at all costs. "Prometheus" had a pretty spoiler-heavy trailer itself, but it also released a few shorts that were composed entirely of new footage created especially for the marketing campaign. You'd think that with so much more emphasis being placed on marketing campaigns we would see a little more creativity at work.

For a little more breathing room in our franchises. I'm pretty well resigned to the supremacy of the franchise in mainstream studio films at the moment, but I hate the latest trend of seeing talented directors bow out of repeat performances because the studios demand that new sequels be churned out so quickly. Last year we saw Rupert Wyatt leave the "Planet of the Apes" series and Matthew Vaughn quit "X-men" simply because they were unwilling to commit to making sequels by the dates that the studio had already staked out for them.

For more variety in iTunes and Amazon offerings. I've been renting more recent films online from the iTunes and Amazon pay-per-view services lately, especially when I can't find certain titles anywhere else, but I'm not happy about their selection. They're good about most of the limited releases, but there are far too few foreign language films, documentaries, and festival titles that I'd be happiest to give a revenue boost to. These are the films that could benefit the most from digital distribution, and I know the demand is there.

For HBO to figure out some way of going a la carte. Frankly, I'm tired of mooching off of friends when I want to watch "Game of Thrones" and I hope that HBO and the other premium channels can work out some way of offering their programming outside of the rigid, and probably doomed, tiered cable pricing system that has a stranglehold on it now. I'm planning to dive into "The Wire" next year, and I probably would have seen it a lot sooner if HBO's programming were more accessible. Turning HBO Go into a separate streaming service would be my vote right now.

For "Doctor Who" to have a smooth transition to the new Companion played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. I'm rooting for you kid!

For someone to stop the madness with this "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie before my mother starts asking embarrassing questions.

And for Peter Jackson to not screw up "The Hobbit."

Happy holidays!
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The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

Yesterday, the trailer for the new Netflix exclusive series, “House of Cards” was released, featuring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright as an ambitious politician and his wife, meddling in the affairs of a newly elected president and his administration.

Netflix has committed to two seasons of the show, based on a BBC miniseries. The first batch of episodes will premiere on February 1st, 2013. “House of Cards” is Netflix’s first major foray into original content, which may prove pivotal to the streaming service’s future. Netflix is one of the most popular online content providers, but Hollywood has been wary of doing business with it, for fear of undercutting their profits on other non-internet platforms. So, Netflix is investing in its own content. It outbid HBO and AMC for “House of Cards,” which boasts David Fincher as one of the creators, who will also be directing the pilot episode.

The ability of web-based content to rival television and movie content has been widely discussed, but nobody’s ever tried doing anything as ambitious as “House of Cards.” If this series takes off, it could be the beginning of web content becoming a serious cultural force, potentially upending all the existing content creation models. Skeptics point out that most of the web-based original content so far has only attracted very limited audiences, and are only financially viable if they’re made on shoestring budgets. However, none of the online services have the kind of distribution platform and massive existing subscriber base that Netflix has. They’re perhaps the only major streaming services with the resources and to try an experiment of this magnitude with a reasonable chance of success.

In my own circles, online distribution services like Netflix are already having an impact. Over the summer I was surprised to discover quite a few online conversations centering around smaller films like “Goon” and “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” The participants weren’t the usual art house geeks, but casual viewers who had come across the titles on Netflix or Amazon Prime, and had enjoyed them enough to pass along recommendations. This was around the same that the press was full of doom and gloom about Netflix’s prospects because several of its content deals had expired, removing many of the most popular recent and mainstream titles from the available online catalog. I think many people underestimated the appeal of the independent and alternative titles that remained. When you take away the hype, the quality of the Hollywood and non-Hollywood titles is pretty comparable, and once viewers figured that out, Netflix’s content problems didn’t seem so bad after all.

One aspect of Netflix’s release plans for “House of Cards” I find especially fascinating is that multiple episodes will be released at once. This reflects the difference in the way that web content is consumed compared to televised content. The Netflix folks know that their subscribers like to marathon multiple episodes, and are offering the ability to do the same with their own original series immediately instead of parsing them out week by week. I’m not sure I understand the logic here if Netflix’s goal is attracting and keeping new subscribers, but maybe the promise of quicker gratification will be seen as a plus.

I should add the disclaimer here that I’m generally biased in Netflix’s favor. I want them to succeed and survive, even though I know that there are many problems with their current business model and there’s no guarantee that their original content plans are going to pay off for them. I have a friend working at Hulu right now who is absolutely certain that Netflix is on its way out, and she’s far more knowledgeable about the business side of these things than I am. However, I’m still optimistic that Netflix will figure out ways to keep its subscriber base happy even without the big studios, and their programming efforts could bring some real legitimacy and respectability to web-only content.

If they do fail, it’s still going to be a hell of a show in and of itself. I’ll be signing back up for my next round of Netflix in February, for a front row seat to all the fireworks. There have already been some rumblings from the television critics, trying to figure out how they’re going to review the new series in light of Netflix’s unorthodox release approach. “House of Cards” looks very promising from the talent involved, though, and I’m expecting good things from it. Also, there’s the upcoming return of “Arrested Development,” a resurrection I’m not sure would have happened without Netflix. If the whole scheme fails, at least we’ll have gotten some good content out of the experiment.

If these shows and the others are a success though, and do provide a significant financial boost to Netflix, things are going to get even more interesting.
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Warning: Incoming Election Thoughts

I've made a point of not writing about politics in this blog, because it's a tricky subject, and requires a lot more delicacy and sensitivity than I tend to display. However, a presidential election comes but once every four years, and there's no question that it is a major media event, and so some commentary is justifiable. This particular cycle of campaigning and election follies is especially notable for being one of the roughest, meanest, dirtiest, and most disgustingly expensive ones in history. The role of the media has also been heavily discussed and dissected, particularly on the Republican side, in light of the election results. FOX News and other right-slanted news outlets predicted a Mitt Romney win. That obviously didn't happen, leaving them and their viewers to do some serious soul-searching.

I'll be the first to admit my view of the latest election is not especially well informed. I live in a solidly blue state and have shunned traditional forms of media for the past few months, so I've largely avoided any campaign ads. I was the target of a grand total of one "Get Out the Vote" phone call, about a local proposition. The only time I turned on the television was election night. I watched Brian Williams announce the returns for about an hour before they called the race in President Obama's favor, stayed up a little later to watch the speeches, and then went to bed. I followed the campaign through web and print news with some interest, though, and kept up with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," where the election was a favorite subject. From my vantage point, the only period of time where there seemed to be any possibility that Romney would take the White House was after his performance in the first debate, but that momentum faded quickly. I've studied the American political systems and I know the stakes involved were high, but this presidential election was fairly predictable and I doubt the outcome was ever in much question.

As with most elections, I find the media commentary is mostly distracting, rarely informative, and practically inescapable. I know elections have always been popularity contests, but I really hate the way that differences between the parties get magnified by the endless campaigning to the point where we all end up convinced that the other side is full of depraved vermin we don't want to share a country with. I don't remember there being this much vitriol on both sides in any previous election, and I'm pretty sure that the 24 hour news coverage and the internet have a lot to do with that. I admit, being an Obama supporter, there were times when I found myself swayed by the characterizations of Mitt Romney as an evil, heartless, crony-capitalist with designs on looting the US Treasury the way that Bain Capital had preyed on underperforming companies. And I found myself wanting to leap to Barack Obama's defense on policies I didn't know a damn thing about. By my own admission this is completely irrational behavior, and it always reminds me that even though I shun the pundits and the pollsters, they still have an awful lot of influence over my own views.

Governor Romney and President Obama aren't all that far apart in their political positions from what I can tell. However, the election turned them into the living embodiments of the best and worst of their respective parties. The fit wasn't so good for Mitt Romney, who many Republicans vocally disliked during the primary process for being fairly moderate, and having supported certain left-leaning positions in the past. I think what made Romney so unpalatable to so many voters was that while he didn't explicitly adopt some of the right-wing's more extreme positions, like the stances on women's health issues, he let himself appear more to the right than he actually was, and did a very poor job of distancing himself from the fringe. This meant that it was very easy to associate Romney with the "War on Women," the Tea Party extremists, and the 1%. Obama, on the other hand, came out for gay marriage, and stayed consistent on pretty much everything else. The Left has their own fringe, of course, but they weren't really part of the conversation this time out.

The election reflected the ongoing American culture war, and there was clearly a loser this time: FOX News. Their attempts to control the narrative were familiar, reliably coming up with a new scandal or scare-tactic every week. Some of them were sort of plausible, but others were so divorced from reality that FOX essentially had to make up data to sell them, and they went a little too far this time. FOX is great at appealing to the Republican base, but it comes at the expense of alienating everybody else in the country who doesn't subscribe to their worldview, and the election finally made it clear that they were outnumbered and unprepared to deal with it. I admit it was awfully cathartic to watch FOX's house of cards collapse along with Karl Rove's credibility when he tried to challenge the Ohio returns on election night with outdated information. On the other hand, I view the corresponding rise of MSNBC with wariness, because the last thing we need is a liberal version of FOX News sticking the progressives in their own bubble to repeat the cycle.

Mostly, though, I'm just glad for a brief respite before the madness all starts up again for 2016.
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Here Comes Amazon Prime

I've had access to Amazon Prime for a while now, because my household pays the $79 yearly fee for the shipping discounts. The selection's okay, with a couple of significant offerings that Netflix and Hulu don't have, but the interface is a real pain in the neck, and most of the service is geared toward getting you to rent or buy other titles from Amazon’s streaming service. Most of the time I end up browsing through the Prime catalog through the Amazon site on my computer. Still, since content providers are so much friendlier with Amazon, there's always been a strong likelihood that Amazon Prime might become a significant competitor to Netflix and Hulu one day. That day just got a little closer, as Amazon has announced that it is now selling monthly subscriptions for Amazon Prime, priced at $7.99, exactly what Hulu and Netflix also charge.

So how does Amazon Prime stack up against its competitors? Aside from the issues I pointed out, very well at the moment. Prime's streaming selection is smaller than Netflix or Hulu's, but tends to have more new titles. There are no commercials, and I've never had any difficulty with the video quality. The yearly subscription fee won’t change, so if you sign up for the long term, the monthly cost is actually cheaper than Netflix and Hulu. Amazon also lets you buy and rent individual titles through its streaming service. If you want to watch something immediately and are willing to pay for it, there's no need to wait for the DVDs to show up in the mail. And of course there are the perks, which include a sizable library of free Kindle books and the free two-day shipping on most Amazon purchases. If you're a regular Amazon customer, Prime is a very good deal. However, it's not quite good enough to substitute for the other services, which is why I still use Hulu and Netflix even though I already pay for Prime.

Hulu's big advantage is that it has deals in place with almost all the major terrestrial networks to get their content almost immediately after it airs, and presents it for free for a couple of weeks. On Amazon, the same content shows up in the streaming service, but you have to purchase the individual episodes. I had a mild argument with the significant other a few days ago, when he was trying to watch CW’s "Arrow" through the Amazon site. "But it's on Hulu," I kept saying, when he mulled over paying $2 to stream the latest episode. We briefly debated over video quality, and putting up with the annoying Hulu advertisements, and the ability to watch the episodes on our flatscreen, something we can do with our Amazon content, but not with Hulu content yet. In the end, Hulu won. If you're trying to replace your television with a streaming service, it's much more expensive to use Amazon Prime to access current television shows. Paying to rent a measly four episodes of “Arrow” would have bought a full month of access to the entire Hulu Plus library.

Then there's Netflix. I have managed to find several films available for download on Amazon that I haven't been able to find anywhere else, like Roberto Rossellini's "Stromboli" with Ingrid Bergman. However, the overwhelming majority of the older classic films I like watching are available on DVD, and the bundled rental plan that Netflix offers is much more cost effective for me than renting titles individually through Amazon. Newer films especially are marked up to the point where if I want to see a new release before it becomes available on Netflix, I head for Redbox or even the lone remaining Blockbuster in town. I'm not a casual movie viewer who is content to just watch whatever's new on streaming, so selection is extremely important for me. And making me wait an extra month to rent "Moonrise Kingdom" from Redbox or Netflix still doesn't make me want to spend $4 to rent it from Amazon or Itunes.

For the less picky and demanding viewer, though, Amazon Prime is a perfectly good option, and I expect that it’s going to become an even better one now that Prime is being positioned as a real competitor in the streaming business. I fully expect that Amazon will start fixing some of those interface issues, add proper queuing and searching functions, and add some more titles to its library. And it’ll probably become much more popular as a result. One issue I hope they address soon is being able to buy subscriptions for other people, a problem I ran into last year when I tried getting my parents set up with a Prime account. I wasn’t getting them Prime for the streaming service, mind you, but for the free shipping. I still think that’s the best feature of Amazon Prime by a wide margin.
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The Fair Weather Viewer

I watched the first season of Showtime's "Dexter" when an edited version aired on CBS one summer. I loved it, but there was no way I was paying for Showtime, so I left it at that. A couple of years later, I heard a lot of fuss about the fourth season, the one that featured John Lithgow's performance as the Trinity Killer. So I waited for the season to hit DVD, and I rented my way through that one. The reviews of the fifth and sixth seasons were not so glowing, but season seven has gotten a huge amount of buzz, and it looks like I'll be hunting down the DVDs next summer. Thus, "Dexter" has become my prime example of fair weather television viewing, the kind of show that I tune in for when it's good, but tune out when it's not.

In the past, this kind of viewing pattern would have been impossible to maintain. Television reviews on an episode-by-episode and season-by-season basis weren't nearly as accessible and prolific. You couldn't pick and choose between seasons before the advent of DVD box sets and on-demand streaming services. Heck, Amazon and iTunes let you purchase and rent specific episodes, if you really want to split hairs. I prefer watching shows I'm heavily invested in like "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" episode by episode, but when it comes to more casual viewing, sometimes I don't want to deal with the mediocre seasons or more often I just don't want to trudge through a sizable backlog of episodes for a show I've fallen behind on in order to get to the more exciting developments that have happened recently. This is what happened to me on "Merlin," which I stopped following at some point in the middle of the third series, because the storylines were moving at such a glacial pace. Now "Merlin" is in the middle of a much more promising fifth year, and I'm mulling over how much of the fourth I'd actually need to watch to catch up. From what I've read, probably just the first two episodes and the last two episodes. The DVDs should show up Stateside in January, and all the episodes are available for purchase already on iTunes.

The other big piece of this is that I no longer mind waiting for shows to become available. There's so much good television available on home media or streaming, that there's always something waiting in the wings for my attention. I can't watch the seventh season of "Dexter" or the fifth series of "Merlin" right now as they're currently airing, but I've got a growing list of other shows I'm supposed to be checking out or keeping up with to ensure I'm busy in the meantime. I've been letting myself fall behind on more and more shows this year, including "Grimm" and "Person of Interest." "Person of Interest" has been a particular hassle to watch because it's a rare network show where the current season is not available online in any form whatsoever. However, I know that the whole season will be on disc and streaming by next fall, and then I can watch it at my leisure, with the added bonus of skipping through the filler. There are several episode guides that have conveniently pointed out which are the more important mythology episodes that advance the larger plot and which are just standard cases-of-the-week. I like "Person of Interest" enough as a procedural that I would probably watch every episode like I did last year. But it's nice to know I don't have to.

I used to be a serious completist. I would expend considerable time and effort making sure to catch every single episode of the shows I liked. I could program a VCR in my sleep and hoarded empty VHS tapes. The uncertainty of possibly never being able to find a particular episode again after it had aired, and missing something vital, drove my obsessiveness. I can still be this way about the programs that I really care about following, but more and more television is no longer nearly as ephemeral or inaccessible. If I'm uncertain about whether a show is going to be worth my time or not, I can wait until the reviewers weigh in. I can drop a show midseason and come back to it a few years later without too much hassle. This is bad news for content producers because now there is a lot more riding on the quality of their product, and the need to hook viewers early and keep them involved is becoming more and more important.

I know that not everyone has the means or the temperament to watch television shows this way, but I think my mindset is becoming more common, especially as there are so many alternatives to traditional appointment viewing now. Out of all the pilots I watched this year, I'm only following one new show regularly, "The New Normal." The rest, if they develop into anything interesting, are just going to have get in line with everything else on my "to see" list.
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