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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Capturing A Critic In Your DVR

It seems kind of obvious, but I was immediately rocked by this New York Times story about Tivo making a deal which will allow users to sign up to have the picks of a Chicago Trib TV critic automatically downloaded to their Tivos.
What struck me immediately was… how much would someone pay to have Roger Ebert’s 15 or 20 or 30 movie picks a month automatically downloaded to their DVR? But really, regardless of payment, what a great way, using delivery services you already pay for, to get a direct experience based on the taste of tastemakers in whom you really believe!
Sign me up for Scorsese’s Top 10 movies from across the DirecTV line-up next month!
This idea matches up magnificently with a project like Cinetic’s problematic but interesting effort to find some kind of outlet for a couple hundred indies and foreign language films a year – ridiculously overstated in the story as the 3600 submissions to Sundance each year

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7 Responses to “Capturing A Critic In Your DVR”

  1. IOIOIOI says:

    These picks are mine and all times are CENTRAL!
    Coming up at 4:10 am on THRILLER MAX is INTERNAL AFFAIRS! Spend the morning enjoying an over the top villian role by Richard Gere and Laurie Metcalf playing a lesbian cop for some reason. Good times all-around.
    Afterwards at 6:30 am on RETROPLEX… the MANHATTAN PROJECT! Get ready for this weekends SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE by watching one of Cynthia Nixon’s (as well as Doctor James Wilson himself… Robert Sean Leonard billed as “Robert Leonard”) as the girlfriend of Christopher Collet’s character. Who just happens to build one of the strongest ever nuclear bombs via high-yeld weapons grade plutonium. Only available at the secret lab in which his mom’s boyfriend — John Lithgow — happens to work. Richard Jenkins and John Mahoney co-star.
    Follow that up with SOAPDISH at 8:30 on HBO. It’s a whacky movie about Soap Operas that Momma Walker is hysterical in.
    Take a restroom break and return to your couch at 10:40am to watch an overlooked but awesome stop-motion animation film… James and the Giant Peach on STARZ KIDS. A film with more heart than the close to entire Dreamworks Animated slate… combined.
    Go get yourself some lunch and return at 1:05 pm to watch a truly great film… HOFFA on ENCORE MYSTERY. If you have never seen HOFFA. Make sure you do. It is worth your time.
    After you realize that you are spending all day on the couch doing nothing. You can flip over to THE KARATE KID, PART TWO on AMC! There may be commercials, but there may also be Daniel LaRusso chopping down blocks of ice with his bare-hands depending if it was cut for time or not.
    Wrap up your diner, return to the couch, and watch Running Scared on… hold on a minute. This is not the awesomeness that is the 1986 RUNNING SCARED. This is another CAMERON BRIGHT film. So… scratch that… and watch IDIOCRACY on HBO COMEDY at 7pm. Enjoy Not Sure and his hijinks in a future world that has a drink… with electrolytes.
    Give yourself some time to check email, return text messages, and make phone calls, then turn to FOX MOVIE CHANNEL at 9 pm to watch the DIRECTOR’S CUT of the ABYSS.
    Finally… at 12:40… finish your day by watching Lea Thompson and Victoria Jackson in a film that would never ever get green-lit today… CASUAL SEX! Also enjoy a rather decent performance from one Andrew Clay.
    That has been your recommendations for Wednesday, May 28th, 2008. Here’s the recommendation for Thursday: LOST! Good day.

  2. The Pope says:

    It’s a great idea. And perhaps one that will be able to maintain a position for film critics. And, what with technology the way it is going, instead of just having a recommended list, why not provide a review of the film after the film? You know, like Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Marcia Nasatir on The Reel Geezers. It would be better to have someone on screen discussing the film rather than, in this age, having to actually read it. I remember the BBC did a great season in the 1980s when the great Derek Malcolm (formerly of The Guardian), would introduce a double bill… succinct, informative and most likely provocative.

  3. I am personally a fan of being introduced to a movie. Whether it be by the director/star or a critic. It adds a nice touch.
    …moving on…

  4. Exigence says:

    I had a film studies prof who every monday morning would take out that week’s tv guide and provide recommendations for movies – he’d normally give about 15 a week, and I really did see some films that I never would have watched otherwise. I always appreciated that he did that.

  5. ThatAutGuy says:

    I would love something like this – I believe the function of a guide will soon be way more important than classic networks/stations. It’s all about what you watch, not which station you watch it on anymore.
    And wouldn’t it be funny to see critics play such a key role in the future of TV – despite all the talk about how they don’t influence movie grosses anymore, etc… We’d end up with stations desperately trying to fight for critics, just to get more viewers for their product.

  6. Bennett says:

    In a Netflix/DVR age I seem to Not have a problem of WHAT to watch, but trying to find the TIME to watch everything I have in my DVR or my Netfix Que…I often hear about a movie(or a television show) and just slap it in my que…I guess that is why I have a list of over 200 movies..I used to get annoyed when I would go through the effort to rent a movie to only find out it was terrible, but with netflix…I have definately chilled out.

  7. Hallick says:

    “Have you seen the film that launched David Gordon Green and the KY film movement

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon