Those crazy cats from The Onion are back with a news story that takes a look at a new tour which gives folks a chance to check out the archaic system that was renting movies. Yes, it's a joke, and your local Blockbuster store is still around (and open!), but I could totally see something like this existing in, say, 10-20 years from now. Follow their news reporters inside an actual Blockbuster store, where they find actors playing Blockbuster employees, as well as actual renters. Real renters! I love the couple who say they can't believe how people used to live like this. Then you get the tourists with cameras taking shots of two "historical performers" having a conversation about a video. Love it!

What do you think? How far are we away from something like this existing in real life? And would you pay a visit? Take the kids?

Today I'm glad to be cheaper than cheap. Had I not been so frugal, I would have bought myself an HD-DVD player this past weekend after seeing a commercial advertising one for less than $150. And then, I would have been excited about renting HD-DVD discs from Netflix, to which I've been a very happy subscriber for more than four years. But then I would have received an email (like the one seen here), stating that Netflix has just decided to exclusively support Blu-ray as its sole hi-def format. Thankfully, I am cheaper than cheap and have no plans to purchase one of those expensive Blu-ray players. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I no longer plan to spend the $20 a month on Netflix.

Actually, my cheapness combined with my laziness will probably keep me a Netflix customer, but I can't imagine others will be so loyal. Apparently Blockbuster's online rental service still offers both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, so perhaps a number of HD fans will be switching over. Of course, also considering how significant a player Netflix is, this could be a heavy hit on the coffin nail for HD-DVD. The decision made by Netflix comes soon after last month's moves by Paramount and Warner Bros. to also go Blu-ray exclusive. It may only be a matter of time before Blockbuster, which primarily rents Blu-ray at its stores, will dump HD-DVD itself.

According to the Netflix emails going out today, any "Saved" HD-DVD selections in your rental queue (meaning for releases not yet out) will be switched to regular DVD by the end of the month. However, it seems you will still be able to rent HD-DVD discs that Netflix already currently offers throughout the year.

The movie-rental chain Blockbuster is expanding its horizons -- into theatrical exhibition, of all places. The corporation has announced that next month it will open its first movie theater, a multiplex, in Cholula, Mexico. The multiplex will be called Blockbuster Cinema, but Blockbuster isn't simply licensing its brand name -- the company will operate the theater under a 10-year agreement. The new 11-screen theater will be located in a shopping center that will also include a Blockbuster rental store.

This surprises me -- it seems like the traditional theatrical model is on the way out, or will need to change drastically, and many companies are trying to find alternatives. In addition, big theater chains are trying to find other events to hold in their multiplexes these days. Of course, I'm thinking of the United States -- I don't know anything about the state of theatrical film exhibition in Mexico, and perhaps theaters are flourishing there. The Hollywood Reporter article linked above does note that Mexico has one of the most saturated markets in Latin American for movie theaters. DVD rentals may not be as easy or popular in that country. Blockbuster's biggest U.S. rental competitor, Netflix, has also branched out -- but into theatrical and DVD distribution through its Red Envelope arm, to enhance the rental business. How is a multiplex in Mexico going to help Blockbuster's primary business goals?

Last year at this same time, I wrote a Monday Morning Poll that attempted to reveal which summer blockbuster would turn out the biggest unsatisfactory performance. Though I'm far from a negative guy (I really do hope all of this year's blockbusters provide highly entertaining moviegoing experiences), sometimes it's fun to try to pick out which film won't please the fans. Back in 2006, prior to the season's official start, I chose Superman Returns to be that film. And, from a personal standpoint, I was right. Not only did the film not live up to my expectations, but Singer's Superman just wasn't believable. He looked more suited to save the day during a fashion catastrophe than a national crisis. But that's me. That's how I felt.

This year, it's a whole different story. The majority of blockbusters are sequels, and all of them look pretty damn awesome. While Michael Bay is always an easy target, his Transformers has the words "visual orgasm" written all over it. Tacky special effects aside, it's hard for me to sit here and say anything bad about Live Free or Die Hard when the franchise has been nothing but kind to the fanboy inside me. Though early reviews are mixed, I'm certain Spider-Man 3 will win over everyone in the end. Shrek the Third, Surf's Up and Ratatouille will all cancel each other out. Regardless of the bad vibe I've been feeling, the legions of Johnny Depp fans will keep Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End from sinking. And, as much as I feel it won't be the best installment in the series, Harry Potter is Harry Potter -- the boy can't can do no wrong.

So, where does that leave us? Well, this year I'm going to drop down a tier and include films like The Simpsons Movie and Rush Hour 3. Yup, these are my picks for most disappointing blockbuster(s) this summer. Yes, The Simpsons fans (including me) have been waiting a long time for this film, but I feel it's too little, too late. The magic has passed, and it's about time we start realizing that. As far as Rush Hour 3 goes, c'mon -- Chris Tucker hasn't acted in six years, Brett Ratner can't do anything without pissing off a few hundred thousand people and, face it, Jackie Chan's shtick has gotten a little old. But that's me.

So, what do you think: Which summer blockbuster do you feel will turn out the most disappointing?

Note: Don't worry, to combat the negative, next week we'll take a look at summer surprises. So start thinking ...

In less than ten years Netflix has become not just a great company but also a great company model. Despite all attempts from Blockbuster and others to compete with the online rental service, Netflix continues to be the champion in its industry. But will the industry eventually be obsolete with all the other internet distribution options? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that DVD rentals will indeed become extinct in the next 20 years, but he says that fortunately for him Netflix is not simply a DVD rental service. "If one thinks of Netflix as a DVD rental business," he told the Wall Street Journal, "one is right to be scared. If one thinks of Netflix as an online movie service with multiple different delivery models, then one's a lot less scared. We're only now starting to deliver the proof points behind that second vision."

One of Netflix's plans for the future is a streaming video-on-demand option, which they began rolling out as a bonus to subscribers in January (I still haven't received my upgrade, which is expected to hit all members by June). Hastings claims that by the end of this year 5,000 films will be available in that format. He defended the relatively small amount (compared to 75,000 titles available via snail mail) by pointing out that Netflix originally started out offering only 1,000 titles on DVD. Netflix has also been planning for the future of high-density discs by stocking every title available on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, though Hastings told the WSJ that the formats are not renting too well, and the competing brands are neck-in-neck neck and neck for this small market. He also said that he expects little increase on interest in the discs until one brand is declared the standard.

Recently, several companies, including Microsoft, Apple and others have started offering content via online download to be watched on your television, iPod or other devices. And this week, Sony announced it was getting into the online content business with downloads for its PSP gaming/media device. Finally, according to The New York Times, Comcast, the nations largest cable operator, will soon begin an experimental program that will make programming available both on-demand via its cable service the same time the programming hits the shelves on DVD.

The program, being tested in Pittsburgh and Denver at the moment, is a bold move that seeks to tap into the burgeoning market for alternatively distributed content -- especially now that overall DVD sales have slowed. Plus, Comcast is already offering over 8000 titles with its video-on-demand service so this new program seems like a logical progression from that service. During the test, users will be able to pay $4 to see a movie the same day they could buy it for $25 at a local store or pay about the same price to rent a DVD from their local Blockbuster.

So, you pay four bucks to watch a movie once via on-demand or you go out and rent the DVD and watch it as many times as you want during the rental period? Or, you buy the DVD and watch it as many times as you like until you get sick of it and sell it on Ebay? Or, you subscribe to Netflix, get DVDs sent to your home, watch them and then send them back to get your next pick. And for that, all you have to do is go to your mailbox -- something you probably already do anyway.

Plus, if you're particularly enterprising, you could, in theory, make a "backup" of the DVDs you get from Netflix and watch them again later -- not that you would or should do that. Sorry Comcast, but I think Netflix is still the way to go -- at least until someone gets a download service going with everything in HD that I can watch as many times as I want as long as I don't try to copy it. That's what I'm waiting for and I think its coming -- maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough. Whatever company finally gets that kind of service going can count on getting my money for sure. Until then, I'll stick with Netflix. But I am curious -- so if you happen to be a Comcast customer participating in this program, let us know how it is.

Get ready to file this one into your WTF folder, folks. According to Variety, The Weinstein Co. has sealed a four-year deal with Blockbuster for them to be the exclusive rental outfit for all Weinstein releases. Yes, that means folks like Netflix will not be allowed to carry any films from the company starting in January. Once again, WTF?

So, to put this in simpler terms, if you're one of those people who might want to wait to watch flicks like Bobby, Shut Up and Sing or School for Scoundrels on DVD, and you only watch films through Netflix, then you're sh*t out of luck. Sure, it seems like a fabulous deal for Blockbuster (who are constantly trying to one-up their rival), but what does The Weinstein Co. get out of this? Well, it appears Blockbuster will market the hell out of all their releases, which includes a slew of front-of-store advertisements. However, while advertisements are great and all, they're now making it that much harder for people to catch their films on DVD. Those friends of mine who rent through Netflix will not sign up or switch to a Blockbuster account just to watch, say, The Dixie Chicks. So, The Weinstein Co. could potentially lose a lot of money here -- a gamble they're willing to take, I suppose.

What do you think?

Gregg Kilday's column in the The Hollywood Reporter about Mission: Impossible III argues that it's the lack of mythology -- "a growing catalog of hints, clues and underlying relationships, that enriches a tale" -- that's responsible for the movie's relative lackluster reception. He cites the Star Wars franchise and shows like The X-Files and Lost in building this mythology outside the movies or tv shows themselves with a host of tie-ins: books, games, Internet chat boards, etc.

Call it mythology or a proliferation of commercial tie-ins, but really Kilday is just talking about a good story in the end: interesting plots, character development, multilayered narratives and arcs. An ever-grinning star surrounded by endless explosions do not a hit make; but we knew that already. With all this attention lately on the strange imploding star that is Tom Cruise, I'm just waiting for some indie director to make Being Tom Cruise. Witness this excellent description of the actor in Anthony Lane's review of M:i:III in The New Yorker: "The stiff-necked jerk of his motions; the grit of his bared teeth; the eyes switched to perennial full beam but never quite blinking, even during tears; his ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon -- what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior? Just who was scared of whom, precisely, in last year's War of the Worlds?" Heh.

Today on Fill-in-the-Blank: Blockbuster accuses Netflix of playa hatin', studio heads refuse to cough up the stats on their bling, and Jennifer Aniston is, apparently, the saddest girl in all the world. Got more name suggestions? Drop 'em as though they were of a significantly high temperature in the comments.

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Hosts
Karina Longworth

Editor
Randall Bennett

Music
Love as Laughter - I'm a bee

Format
5:30, 40.5 MB, MPEG4 (iPod / PSP compatible)

Program
00:00 - Netflix v. Blockbuster
01:56 - Hollywood resists SEC recommendation
02:49 - Avenue Q and Disney teaming up for Nemo musical
03:52 - Breakup ending changed because people love Jennifer Aniston

Netflix queues are hot topics of conversation among my friends, even the non-film geeks. Everyone wants to talk about how long their queues are, what's at the top, and what has been unavailable recently. The latest version of the online queue is pretty fancy; you can rate DVDs, see how your "Netflix friends" rated them, move the DVDs up and down the queue with ease, and so forth.

Netflix is obviously proud of its queue technology -- to the point where the company filed a complaint in court Tuesday against its rival Blockbuster. Netflix has been awarded a couple of patents related to its online rental services; the most recent patent was issued earlier on Tuesday to cover the company's subscription-rental model. Almost immediately after the patent was granted, Netflix accused Blockbuster of infringing the patent and "willfully and deliberately copying Netflix's business methods," according to an article about the legal complaint.

If a court sides with Netflix, Blockbuster might have to change the way the company rents movies online, or pay hefty royalty fees to Netflix. Perhaps Blockbuster will reconsider whether the flat-fee system like Netflix is a real improvement over Blockbuster's old return-date/late-fee structure. On the other hand, I know from a high-tech job I once held that patent violations can be tricky to prove and disputes can take years to resolve. Sometimes they're resolved by one company in the dispute buying out the other, but I can't imagine the two competitors merging quite yet, can you? [via Blue Glow]

Despite stepped-up competition from Blockbuster, Netlix had a great year. Citigroup rated the online DVD distributor as a "Buy" last week, noting that its continued success is increasingly putting brick-and-mortar chains out of business, which should in turn only increase their subscriber base. "This creates a chain reaction that should further help (Netflix) sign new subscribers, as consumers increasingly find themselves having to travel farther to find an in-store rental location," Citigroup said. "Online rental is the only thing we do, and (our) advantage is focus and desperation," CEO Reed Hastings told Reuters on Friday. "So we have nowhere to go, right? It was win or die, and that's very focusing." Their stock is now at $27 a share; Citigroup set its future target at $39. Hastings said the plan for Q1 is to invest heavily in marketing; aquisitions are not palnned for the foreseeable future. "You (make) acquisitions if your current market does not look like it has enough room for you to grow," Hastings said. "And our current market look enormous."

It's one thing if The 'flix is crushing Blockbuster – I think we can all agree that this is not such a bad thing. But what about the independent video store market? I like my local video store (even though I currently owe them about $50 on a Merchant-Ivory film that I forgot to return for two weeks); I like being able to wander in there and moon around for an hour and talk to the owner before picking out my Saturday evening rental. How long do we have before Netflix makes that very experience completely impossible?

As Karina told us, Atom Egoyan is refusing to blur or otherwise edit the big, thrust-filled threesome scene in Where the Truth Lies. He's sticking to his artistic principles and taking his NC-17 rating like a man. Sort of. Word now comes that, though the film's theatrical release will be unaltered, the film will be edited down to an R for home video. Specifically, Egoyan will make changes for Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, neither of which will carry the film without them. In what is possibly the first-ever example of a director being pleased about pan-and-scan, Egoyan thinks that the narrowed frame of the DVD release will enable him to make his film less thrusty without losing much actual footage. Which is good, since he reportedly doesn't have coverage of the scene and would have to totally remove offending sequences instead of simply cutting to less explicit angles.

No doubt whoever owns the DVD rights to this sucker is salivating at the prospect of many different editions, so that Egoyan completeists can be royally fleeced.

There's an absolutely fantastic essay by Chris Anderson on his Long Tail blog on the economics of DVD releases. Why, he asks, do retailers like Best Buy continue to sell DVD new releases at a loss when sales of those titles drops like a rock after two months on the shelves? Of course they are loss leaders, enticing people into the store so that they then look at iPods, printers and such, but what effect does this have on the rest of the retail industry? Niche stores like Blockbuster can't afford to offer the same discounts and often the titles don't become available for sale previously viewed until after that two months line has been crossed.

So, Anderson says, it would make more sense for retailers to look into developing a strategy based on older titles, where the cost of aquiring the product is less since it's been spread out over a longer period of time. The beauty of this approach is that sales price does not fall as fast as the price the retailer pays in aquisition.

I've never rented a movie from Blockbuster. There's always been something foreboding and tyrannical about the video rental chain I've found a bit disconcerting. Perhaps I'm not the only one who feels this way, because Blockbuster Inc. reported a $57.2 million loss in the second quarter, something its CEO is blaming on "malaise" among video renters. That may be true, but I think Blockbuster would do itself a great service by trying to include a bit more humanity in its business model. Every business is out to make money, but I think Blockbuster's public image reflects that more than it should. When Blockbuster decided to offer online rentals in the wake of Netflix's success, it seemed more opportunistic than anything. In a word, it felt phony --a gigantic, soulless chain seeking out the newest way to draw money from its customers. In theory, such a model should work, and perhaps Blockbuster's loss can be attributed to "malaise" among the movie-viewing public, but as technology evolves and changes how movies are rented, an old warhorse like Blockbuster will have to do more than just jump on the next big thing. It has to convince the public that it still cares about them, and not just their pocketbooks.

Guesses, rumors and denials have been all the rage when it comes to the question of whether or not Amazon.com will get into the DVD rental business.  First we had the CEO of Netflix saying he was certain the online giant wouldn't throw their hat in the ring. Then, just last month, Amazon bought CustomFlix, an independent DVD producer, a move I thought would be perfect for online rentals since they would have their own exclusive content. They've also recently begun renting DVDs in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Well, now speculation has ramped back up on news of job postings that seem specifically geared toward the rental business model. There's also the theory espoused by one analyst that Amazon could partner with Blockbuster for online rentals in the same way Wal-Mart recently signed up with Netflix. While an Amazon spokesperson issued a non-denial denial I think everyone agrees it's just a matter of time before this happens.