Grindhouse double feature

Tarantino and Rodriguez know movie prices are out of control. Grindhouse, which is out on April 6th, is a double bill – ‘two great movies for the price of one”. It’s like movie madness without the cinema hopping or the chance of being thrown out. Nice one fellas.

I am a thief

Some time in the last 5 years the price of going to the movies went completely out of control. My wife and I can easily blow $40-50 on a movie and a few snacks and in my mind that just isn’t right.

So, how do you change this picture and get better value?

One way is to search out the smaller, independent cinemas and go there instead. They’re usually a lot cheaper and if you pick the right one they are often playing that great alternative film you have been meaning to see for ages (Manufactured Landscapes anyone?).

The other way is to bend your morals and steal your way to better value! (the option I’ve been choosing more and more often). Now every time I go to a big cinema chain I turn my single ticket into a double bill. Pan’s Labyrinth followed by Letters From Iwo Jima, or Children of Men followed by Casino Royal.

It’s a pretty simple trick. Do some research and find a couple of movies you like that are playing right after each other, buy a ticket to the first one and after the film just wander next door for movie number two!

The one hassle is finding two films playing back to back that you actually want to see. So, I was chuffed when my friend Dre sent through a link to this little app. Movie Madness lets anyone in the US or Canada create the perfect double, triple or quadruple bill movie line up by just entering your postcode and selecting your local cinema. For example, the site tells me that today I could check out 4 films in a row at Famous Players Paramount cinema in Toronto with no more than a 10 minute wait between movies. Nice.

So, go out and steal your way to good movie value my friends. Happy watching!

Lunchtime watching

If you’re trawling YouTube at lunchtime today looking for a laugh, I think this is what you’re looking for…

Apparently “mom used to work for a dating service in the 80s. She kept a bunch of tapes and I edited clips of all the best losers.”

[youtube=<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AC5BIuhQBy0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AC5BIuhQBy0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>]

BitTorrent goes legit

Tomorrow BitTorrent will finally launch their much discussed play for the legit download market. BitTorrent.com will become a download store offering around 3000 movies and thousands or games, tv shows and music videos.

From the interviews I’ve read it sounds like Ashwin Navin, the CEO, has been backed into a corner. After the movie studios dictated high prices for BitTorrent to sell films he decided to rent them instead – for between $3 and $4. Of course the rentals are stacked full of DRM (digital rights management) so they are non-shareable and expire 30 days after download or 24 hours after watching them. Oh, boy – that’s some straitjacket style restriction.

The one advantage BitTorrent do have is the advantage they’ve always had – their incredible technology. Their download store will be based on the same per-to-per system that lets people share illegal content so easily that it allegedly accounts for 55% of all internet traffic (although claims vary). This should mean dramatically faster downloads than most other stores: a writer from the NY Times downloaded X-Men 3 in 2 hours on BitTorrent compared to 3 from WalMart.com.

Mathew Ingram has an interesting perspective on the launch over here.

And Gizmodo make a couple of interesting points:

The real question is: “Can BitTorrent compete against itself?” The BT network already offers a vastly superior catalog of content without restrictions (or cost), albeit not so legally. Something else to consider: since they’re using your bandwidth to distribute content users pay for, why aren’t purchases subsidized according to how much someone uploads?

I completely agree with point number two. If I’m helping them make money by seeding their content then I expect a discount, or some kind of incentive.

The brilliance of Michel Gondry

I finally watched Science of Sleep tonight – and loved it. Reminded me how much I like the work of Michel Gondry (he wrote and directed Science of Sleep).

Also reminded me to watch one of my favorite music videos again – Star Guitar by the Chemical Brothers and directed by Michel. Here you go…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBgf2ZxIDZk]

Metropolis

I haven’t seen Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for a few years now but a friend reminded me about it over the weekend. What a film! It’s one worth seeing a few times so you can try all of the alternative soundtracks. I tried the Jeff Mills version a few years back. Incredible.

Slightly related: Rosalynn and I once looked at an apartment in Vancouver. We didn’t rent it but it stuck in our minds because the place had an incredible Metropolis poster on the wall. For the next 2 years we looked everywhere for that poster. We check out all of the poster websites, scoured the poster stores in Vancouver and then Toronto. We even took a special trip to Haight-Ashbury when we were in San Francisco thinking a store there might have it. No luck so far. (If you’re interested – the poster looked a bit like this but had a lot more color in it)