Denver Nights

Mon, 22 May 2006 11:36:21 +0000

El Chapultepec is a little jazz club on Market St in LoDo. The Walnut Room just north of everything offers live music and a sweet mile high club pizza made “kitchen sink style.

Netflix Expands Queues

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 06:28:05 +0000

This is old news, but Netflix{#XfFSogqWv7s&offerid=78684.10000076&type=3&subid=0} now offers multiple queues for each account. Queues, of course, are the movie wish lists each Netflix customer keeps; when you return a movie, they send out the next movie in your queue.

Global Threats, As Seen Through Eyes Of Movie Producers and Insurers

Tue, 31 May 2005 08:16:06 +0000

Jonathan Crowe points out this Risks In Global Filmmaking Map by Aon, the entertainment industry insurance company.

NY Times on Netflix

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:47:06 +0000

The New York Times did a Netflix story. The Author, William Grimes, seemed to like it, but…

[My wife and I] each judge the other’s selections harshly. I scored a major victory with “Mon Oncle” by Jacques Tati, a director I once dismissed as tedious, annoying and far too French. He is now a god in our house. But I have had my back against the wall after “L’Atalante,” a film I had never seen but knew to be, by expert consensus, a towering masterpiece. Less than 10 minutes after the opening credits rolled, the atmosphere in the living room grew frosty. I lost control of the mouse for a week. At least I had the foresight to sneak off and watch “Russian Ark” on my own.

That’s the fun of Netflix. Along with savage recriminations, my home now resonates with high-toned animated discussion of directors, cinematographers and camera angles. Once again I’m the moviegoer I was in college, when Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut were in full stride, and adventure was in the air, and bright-eyed cinéastes could sit through a film like “El Topo” and not demand their money back. It’s not available on Netflix, alas, but the Web site does propose an alternative, a compilation of “Ed Sullivan” shows featuring Topo Gigio. Close enough.

Interesting enough, but Netflix — and services yet to appear — are a sign of things to come: a world of entertainment shaped by the consumer, not by marketers.

Netflix executives say their edge over the competition is not their library but the way the library is presented to users, who are asked to rate the films they have seen. By sifting through the ratings, about 400 million of them at present, and analyzing buying patterns, a company program called CineMatch generates rental suggestions specific to each user.

“Lost in Translation will outperform most $300 million films for us, and that’s because of our ratings and recommendations,” said Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix. “Monster will be huge for us, and that’s not because our subscribers are more sophisticated than the general moviegoing public, but because our merchandising system is much more specific.”

It will be a world of what you want, and only what you want, as clearly marked by your previous purchases and selections. You’ll never be upset by products that you don’t want, even if you didn’t know you didn’t want them, nor will you have to tolerate contrary opinions or debate.

entertainment on MaisonBisson

Denver Nights

Netflix Expands Queues

Global Threats, As Seen Through Eyes Of Movie Producers and Insurers

NY Times on Netflix