9 Years of NUTS4R2

Floating Downstream

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.
It is not dying... it is not dying.”
Tomorrow Never Knows, Revolver, Lennon and McCartney

Okay, so that’s nine years today that I’ve been posting up what are mostly film, book and TV reviews to this site.

I’d planned on saying something about streaming content from places like Netflix, Amazon Prime and the upcoming Disney channel because, frankly, it’s still a hot topic on forums like Twitter. However, I looked back at what I talked about in my eight year anniversary blog and it looks like I covered a lot of it there.

That being said, I still want to go over a few basic things about the huge amount of streaming channels because the people who are all for them, as they feel everyone can access them are, it seems to me, somehow missing the point. There’s also a huge plus to some of these content streams but, I suspect, that huge plus point may severely diminish or completely disappear over the next ten years or so.

So, point one... yeah, Steven Spielberg’s absolutely right when he says movies funded and released almost purely on a streaming platform/channel, even if they have a very brief theatrical release, should not be up for Oscar consideration. Oscars are for theatrical release content and anything else is TV movies and not, specifically, a branch of the art that the Academy Awards were invented to honour. Not that I place much stock in the Oscars myself but it’s an award for a specific kind of entertainment route and I don’t think the rest deserve the chance to encroach on that space. There are other awards they can win which aren’t The Oscars.

Point two,  if you only have a very limited theatrical release... and I’m talking about a few days of single performances or none at all... then a lot of people really don’t have access without indulging in the strange, almost emotional blackmail of shelling out a subscription charge for each channel. And if they are going to do that then the customer needs to find the time to watch more than a couple of hours per month to make it worth their while (although, same with cinema I suppose... to an extent). A great deal of these exclusive streaming releases don’t even get any kind of home entertainment release on the likes of DVD or Blu Ray (especially not over here in the UK)... so not only can some people not even access them in a justifiable manner, they also can’t own a copy to put on their shelf for viewing whenever they want. I have piles of some 500-1000 Blu Rays/DVDs sitting around from the last ten years waiting to be watched and reviewed for this blog. Do you think I'd be able to hold onto any of that lot for that amount of time on a streaming channel?

Which brings me to point three... people who are subscribing to these are subscribing to a moveable feast. Shows and movies come and go as, bizarrely, the channels remove them from their service at various points in time. So, unlike a DVD or Blu Ray, you can’t just watch what you are paying for any time you want to. These things disappear at the whim of the powers that be so you are stuck without the product you want when you require it and, if you’re using something on there because you want to analyse it for, lets say, a film studies qualification... then you may find yourself stuck without warning and with not much that could be done about it. DVD and Blu Ray purchases prevent that from happening to you.

Now, as I said, there’s a huge benefit, at the moment, to directors and writers working exclusively with companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime and that is... more creative freedom. I think it was Duncan Jones who said his Netflix film Mute (reviewed by me here) would not have been funded or released another way and I’m assuming that’s because a major studio would not indulge his full creative input or be more relaxed about what the artist wants to do as some of these streaming services are apt to be, for the moment. So I can understand the appeal for some directors, even if their product doesn’t make it into cinemas. However... how long is it before these new streaming services get more of an idea of what their core audience want and start imposing tighter creative restrictions on the directors? I’m sure, for example, Disney are being much more precious and controlling about their new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian in terms of creative control. So I can’t see much, if any, leeway given when it comes to ‘final cut’ on shows like this. I may be wrong but... well, I can only speculate. I suspect we won’t be seeing it on DVD or Blu Ray anytime soon though, since Disney need some kind of carrot to hook their new channel customers with. We shall see how that one plays out, I guess.

Oh...well there you are. Even though I tackled the same subject as last year’s anniversary post, I’ve clarified some of my thoughts on the issue here, I think. The birth of streaming online and on TV has created problems, I think, for the industry and, as importantly, for the end users which we’re only just beginning to grasp. Whether we can turn the phenomenon of streaming content into something which is a more positive, genuinely accessible force for the continuing success of the art form is anyone’s guess at the moment. In the meantime, people can go round their friend’s house to watch something if they don’t have the stream in question or, you know, pick up a free bootleg... which seem to be appearing every now and again at the various places one might expect to see these things. This kind of amounts to the same thing as borrowing a friend’s password and, so far, I’ve not seen any of these discs actually for sale on the black market but, if the content holders continue to withhold from cinemas and home video releases, I’m sure it will become an issue at some point soon for them.

Anyway... those are my thoughts on streaming media providers at the moment and, if some of this seems vague or unclear, please bear in mind that I’m in a lot of pain right now and spaced out on nausea inducing antibiotics as I type this stuff. So cut me a little slack there.

So all it really needs now for me to finish my post off with is this... if you’ve read this far.

Thanks to you all for reading and continuing to read my blog. Each and every one of you, whether you agree with my views or not, is very much appreciated and I hope you continue to come back here when you can. It makes this whole time consuming affair of holding down a day job and then watching and writing about stuff on a regular basis a little lighter, in the end.

Happy reading and please come back soon.

NUTS4R2

8 Year Anniversary Post

The Eightful Eight

That’s 8 years.

If you started reading my posts since my first one... that’s how long I’ve been reviewing films on this blog for.

Things have changed a little over the years, though.

When I first started writing this thing, in fairly short reviews for a little while until I started churning out longer articles, I could pretty much review what I liked in terms of the films and books I had laying around. While that’s still technically true now, we are living in an age where, in terms of the moving image at least, there is an abundance of new product... way more than I can personally feel comfortable with.

Quite often these days I just want to sit back and watch a movie I haven’t seen at home but... nope, no time. There’s two to four new cinema releases that week (out of many) and I need to see as many as I can cram into the little time I have left after writing about them rather than spend time on the couch. The blu ray and book piles just keep getting bigger and bigger... because I’m busy neglecting them for watching as much of the new stuff at the cinema that I possibly can. Its just crazy. The last two years in particular have seen, as far as I’m concerned, a lot more movie candidates for spending hours with at the local flea pit than many years before. And even if a majority of them are not all that good... they nearly always look like they’re going to be of some interest to me.

Meanwhile, over in stark contradiction land, we have my other main problem as a blogger these days. Exclusive content distributed by channels like Netflix and Amazon.

I was lucky to see Duncan Jones’ new movie Mute (reviewed here) because, although it’s 'almost' exclusive to Netflix, it did get a few screenings in London and I was lucky enough to catch one of them. Not something I would have been able to check out if I was left to the mercy of the monthly bill for various digital channels.

Films like The Cloverfield Paradox are completely unavailable to me unless I go the bootleg route. You’d think that, since the fourth Cloverfield movie is supposed to hit cinemas this year, the people who made it would want me to see the third one somehow. After all... I’m not going to see the fourth one at the cinema unless I’ve seen the previous instalment. I don’t watch film series' out of sequence. End of.

I also have no chance of seeing Annihilation in this country unless I can snag a copy of the US Blu Ray when it comes out (in the US, the movie had a proper cinema release)... which does nothing to endear me to Netflix either, I can tell you.

Now I can see that, with the kind of audience you’d get on a digital subscription chanel, this practice might be good for the art of film in some ways. After all, the target audience can’t be as narrowly youthful as the cinematic one and that means a wider range of product... albeit, it means that product makes less money back per item (which will also finish them off at some point if they’re not careful). However, it also restricts certain works of art which might have reached an audience via the window of cinema and... that's also a pretty big shop window for Blu Ray and DVD release purchases. This part of the non-crossing over audience are being ignored and, as someone not willing to pay stupid monthly fees for channels like Netflix at the moment (let alone having the time to watch much on there), this is a real kick in the teeth. It also means I can’t review these films for the blog when they come out so... not so great for me.

Yes, I know I’m simultaneously moaning about the abundance of product at the cinema while at the same time pointing out that it’s being excluded in terms of showing specific product but, what can I say, mankind is, perhaps, inherently contradictory.

And that’s me done on this one and I appreciate that this is a very short post but the anniversary took me by surprise again this year. I don’t know why I always think it’s in April.

Once again, I’d like to thank all of you who read this... from dedicated, long term readers to people who have only read a few posts or, you know, only this one... for spending some time here. It’s much appreciated and means a lot to me.

All the best to you.

NUTS4R2
21st March 2018.