Tired of being a studio head, possibly, or just wanting to lower his threshold of responsibility, Stephen Spielberg wants out and NBC is in negotiation to buy Dreamworks. Yes, that Dreamworks which brought us movies like Saving Private Ryan, Shrek (and the sequel) and recently Madagascar and War of The Worlds (WOW) is on the block:

NBC Universal, the media and entertainment arm of GE - the world’s biggest conglomerate - is deep in negotiations to buy the DreamWorks’ slate of forthcoming releases, the television library and a back-catalogue of 60 films, for a putative $1bn (£551m). Spielberg’s ambition to lever his money-making creativity into movie moguldom has failed.

Whatever becomes of this possible acquistion, Spielberg is teaming up with Harrison Ford for the fourth Indiana Jones, so he is far and away not leaving the director’s chair. I wonder if this will make his films more interesting. I really haven’t been excited about anything from Spielberg since Jurassic Park (1993). AI was godawful, WOW did not have the wow-factor. Shrek? Good for the kids but a few too many fart jokes to hold my interest. Didn’t even get through the sequel.

I think this is more about quality than anything else and I hope that Spielberg gets back to his grittier Jaws days. Enough of the quasi-twilight zone mushy ending garbage. The world can only take one E.T. And I’ve heard that Drew Barrymore actually would like Spielberg to remake that. Please no more phone home.

In April 2004 we blogged that CNN Money was reporting that at some point in 2005 Netflix would be entering the Video On Demand (VOD) business. Well, that time appears to be much closer now as a few customers spotted pieces of the upcoming download area at Netflix and blogged about it. The Mercury News went to the horses mouth for an explanation and update:

“We have said we’re committed to testing a product this year and we expect the test to be of a very modest nature,” said Netflix spokesman Ken Ross, who declined to discuss the timing of the launch or the nature of the service. A pair of software glitches on the Netflix site apparently displayed references to the download service.

In September 2004, the rumour was that Netflix would have some sort of joint venture with TiVO which the article above continues to perpetuate.

TiVO badly needs some kind of partnership as it’s stock price is going south quickly with the announcement that DirecTV, where it gets some 70% of its business, is going to be releasing its own PVR service, possibly as early as August or September of this year.

We’ve caught several movies recently, including last night Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. None of us cared for it, but probably because we compared it too much to the original movie. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 83% so the critics seemed to enjoy this one. We didn’t like the modernized Oompa Loompa songs, Johnny Depp’s portrayal of the eccentric Wonka, the child actors or the ending. MIA is the bubble lift incident with Grandpa Joe and Charlie, but there are other scenes. We did like the squirrel scene which replaced the golden goose from the original. I enjoyed reading Dahl as a kid — especially his twist ending short stories like Lamb to the Slaughter — and this movie is darker and more ironic like Dahl’s many stories, but it was just too weird and Michael Jacksonesq for me. I probably would have enjoyed it much more if I didn’t compare it to the original which is a timeless classic. I wish they’d stop remaking classics. Miracle on 34th Street sucked as a remake too. Grade: D

On the other hand, we all liked Fantastic Four. It’s clobberin’ time! This is post #13 in the vacation 2005 series.

tag: vacation2005

Just got back from a late showing of Bewitched. Nicole Kidman plays a sexy Samantha and Will Ferrell continues being overexposed (literally in one part) on the silver screen. The movie was a real snore and actually made me snore at one point. It follows the return of the old TV show Bewitched which dealt with a real witch marrying a mortal. Almost everything that made that campy show fun was missing from the remake which might have worked as a 60 minute remake on HBO but suffers as a motion picture. There are a few funny parts, but not enough mischievious witchcraft. Should have seen Batman Begins instead or maybe even Herbie (which has been almost as badly panned by critics) and given the broom to this dud. Perhaps the most excited I became was when were leaving and saw one of the employees putting up the sign letters for War of the Worlds above. Looks like they are going to be showing that in five of the 10 theaters. You know a movie blows when the exit is the best part of the film. Bewitched, begone. Review: F

Google Video launched a new player today with their video search that returns playable videos (see my lame Hulk review here). It’s based on VLC, an open source video player.

Hmm, not sure why having their own player was necessary but everybody else seems to have one so why not Google too? Could this be the rumblings of a throwdown call with Windows Media Player?

John Batelle muses on the subject:

I’m pretty sure that once Google’s VLC implementation is stared at by enough folks, a stand alone player with hooks into Google Video search and many others will not be far behind.

One thing is for sure, Google’s stock wasn’t hurt by this announcement. It closed the day at $304.10.

Huge blow to P2p software developers because now they can be held liable for copyright infringement of their users, says the Supreme Court ruling in MGM Studios vs. Grokster cast 04-480:

the Court said: “We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties” — that is, computer users using free downloading software.

Being liable for the actions of users is a very slippery slope, IMO. I do not believe that this was the right decision by the courts. I can see MGM being concerned about copyright and piracy, but there has to be a better way then going after developers. Has to be.

Lots of talk about Netflix throttling (thanks Dave). We are still pretty new at the Netflix game, but we haven’t experienced any throttling. We send the movies back on Monday, they receive Tuesday, and we receive Wednesday.

All seems pretty reasonable to me so far, however, several people in that thread point out that it’s always good in the beginning and it gets much worse over time. Any readers experience any Netflix throttling issues?

Ok, I’ll come clean and admit it: I thought about catching the midnight showing of Mr. and Mrs. Smith last night. I didn’t think this way for Star Wars episode III, however I did catch that on opening day, but there’s something strangely attractive to Jolie and Pitt’s new action flick. I even snuck a rare, quick peek before seeing the movie at the Rotten Tomatoes blurb reviews (fresh rating of 67%). I wonder what the crowds were like last night. It’s that overpriced theater popcorn that sucks me in.

Anybody else going to catch this flick? The trailer makes it look like an entertaining yarn, whatever that means on a scale of reliability.

As a new member of Netflix — I know, I’m a seriously late adopter to DVD-by-mail (read some of why here) — we are horror movie flick hounds and the new Seed of Chucky movie is due out tomorrow on DVD. It happened to be in our queue and on Saturday we sent back Ladder 49. Check out the picture above and see that Netflix shipped it today so we would have it tomorrow on launch day. No need to go to the store, it will be waiting in the mailbox the day it comes out. Nice perk!

We’re going to cancel Starz with the OnDemand this week on cable. HBO seems to have better regular series like the new reality one with Lisa Kudrow. We’ll be getting HBO with OnDemand instead. Would like to have them all, but well, paying $125/month for cable is too much considering we don’t watch TV that much.

Ok, well, not quite Jurassic Park yet, but impressively scientists have made progress in connecting the DNA sequence of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago.

“In hundreds or thousands of years from now, we may have advanced our technology so we can create creatures from DNA sequence information,” Dr Eddy Rubin, director of the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, told the BBC News website.

They were able to use a fossilised tooth and bones of cave bears found in Austria to sequence the DNA. Fascinating stuff!