Cinema Hype

Well, Mom and Dad, it looks like you’re off the hook.* Whatever it was I said I wanted for Christmas this year, forget about it.** You see, Netflix already took care of all my heart’s desires, and all it took was one quick e-mail.

That’s right: Instant Viewing for Mac users.

Of course, it took them long enough. They’ve been promising Instant Viewing for the rest of us for eighteen months now, and my wait, well, it hasn’t been pretty.

But now? With the words “Hey, smug Mac user, come use unlimited hours of our streaming video,” all is forgiven. I’ve been let loose in the world of instant gratification, and it is a blessed, blessed (and dangerous) thing. (In the interest of full disclosure, the official First CH Instant Movie of Joy was Enchanted. Judge me how you will.) Now I can cross movies off of my queue before I even remember to put them on in the first place. How did I miss Birds of America in the theater, for example? It doesn’t matter now: I can just zip through it. Likewise Paris, Je T’aime and, I don’t know, Ernest Scared Stupid (I said I can, not I will). Whenever I want! It’s magic!

They don’t have everything, of course. I’ll still have to track down Rebecca on VHS if I want to move on with Project 501, and I’ll keep up my two-disc unlimited plan for regular movie-watching. But it feels good, doesn’t it? The future? Just like they told us—movies sent to your home, so you can watch them right after you’ve teleported back from outer space, or wherever it is you’ve been? Maybe not quite. But I’ll take what I can get, and watching movies on my little white laptop whenever I want is a pretty good compromise.

*Not true.
**Also a lie.

Netflix, instant viewing, mac

You know, when it comes to the future, there seems to be a lot of hubbub around flying cars. Of all the Jetsons-style technology that children of the 70s have craved over the years, it seems like the hovercraft/personal spaceship is the big-ticket item, and there’s some degree of unrest over the fact that most of us still have four wheels on the ground. Me? It’s not that I don’t want to be airborne, but I’m willing to look elsewhere for evidence that The Future is Now.

Like, say, the internets. (Surprise!) Remember Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon’s absurdly popular internet movie in three acts? How it was the first big-name internet project to come about without the backing of a studio? Well, now the Information Superhighway can add to its resume The Princess of Nebraska, a full-length independent film by well-known director Wayne Wang, which will be offered online for free in September.

You may not know Wang’s name, but you know his movies: he directed The Joy Luck Club, plus a slew of so-so dramas (Anywhere But Here, Because of Winn-Dixie), as well as the gloriously titled but apparently lesser-known Life is Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive. The Princess of Nebraska, about a pregnant Chinese girl in the Midwest, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to generally positive reviews, and it turns out it’s a companion piece to a theatrical release, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which means each film might give the other a boost in viewership. Although free online releases for studio films sound unlikely at best, it’s notable that this is even happening. Whether they know it or not (I suspect they do, and probably don’t look kindly on it), this is competition for viewers’ time and attention—just one more step towards a new system of movie-making and movie-releasing.

So I can totally wait for my flying car.