Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Rolling over the television range like a dust storm, HBO’s publicity campaign for its New Orleans mini-series, Treme, is gritty and gustful. Multiple characters strut and cake walk through languid sub plots. There are about 115 million HUTS in American (households using television). About 41 million of those get HBO.

When you’re talking multimillions of dollars per episode plus promotion, the question is: what’s the benefit? In the old days HBO justified the giant costs of these tent pole shows by saying they cut down the churn. That means they stopped people from disconnecting.

Today, there is less need to address churn because the subscriber base keeps growing nicely; in large part because of big mass appeal shows like Treme. But HBO still reaches little more than about one third of the HUTS. They’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Many of those HUTS are filled with younger viewers who are more comfortable watching on laptops and smart phones. Let’s put HBO’s 41 million subscribers in perspective. Hulu, the online TV service, passed the 41 million unique viewer mark in the summer of 2009. Then it was less than two years old. It took HBO forty years to achieve the same number.

HBO understands this, and is launching it’s own online service called “TV Everywhere.” But you need to be a cable subscriber in order to get it. This is not an audience builder; it is merely a cable customer convenience. The premium cable services like HBO, Showtime, and Starz need to redefine themselves as streaming content providers instead of cable premium services. Since MovieWithMe.com is about streaming media, we want to encourage them.

Jeff Bewkes (Time Warner CEO) ought to look at Hertz and Zip Car. Hertz sees itself as a car rental company. Zip Car sees itself as a convenience company. You rent from Hertz to go someplace, you rent from Zip Car to do errands. Hertz makes you come to its offices, rents by the day and punishes you if you don’t put in gas. Zip Car tells you where the nearest car is parked, gives you the keys and gas ( and your membership card does the rest).

Isn’t this what all those HULU watchers want? Time for Time-Warner to see the HULUS from the HUTS.

Netflix is a pay service, so ads (so far) have not been an issue. Or are they? Even though Netflix is ad free, most of the DVDs it rents are not. They usually contain at least three trailers for other films. These are placed by the distributor, not Netflix. (If you know the secret of the “skip” button on your remote, you can usually get by them). If this is acceptable on DVDs, can streamed movies remain immune, or will streaming ads be too tantalizing to resist?

I doubt if anyone in Hollywood has thought of the question yet. But their counterparts in streaming TV sure have. The battle raging right now is between TV networks and Hulu…that plucky online service, (which they own), that has become #2 to YouTube in streaming content. The networks and their content providers want Hulu to increase its ads per hour from six to nine. That would put them just about even with over-the-air TV. Hulu is resisting. Even though studies show people will sit still for more ads, Hulu doubts it. I think they are right.

There is increasing pressure from legacy media to either cram more commercials onto streaming services, or place the services behind pay walls. Either way the public loses, and ultimately the advertisers or content owners lose too. The future clearly belongs to two concepts: embedded ads targeted for relevance, and freemium pay walls (part free, part pay).

Servicing this new environment takes imagination. As much imagination as creating the shows or movies that draw people to the ads. Actually, it has always been thus. The media business is flaying in an era when it should be thrusting towards new concepts like ads as characters, ads as instruction manuals, ads as value added content.

Some of the cleverest ideas have come from amateur ads on YouTube. Most companies fear this because they can not control the outcome, nor can they measure it.Like it our not, it is part of the future, and the future is out of their control.

One of the benefits of Netflix’s streaming service, Watch Instantly, is the size of subtitles. I could kiss the ground, or CEO Reed Hastings, every time I see big yellow subtitles appear on my flat screen TV. Now Netflix Watch Instantly is coming to the new Apple iPad.

Netflix never built and app for the iPhone, so this is a big deal.My reasoning: the iPhone screen is just too small to read subtitles. Because Hollywood cold-shouldered Watch Instantly, a large part of the catalogue is subtitled foreign films. Someone at Netflix understood (at least in my fantasy) that providing an app for the iPhone with a diminished viewing experience would frustrate users. Better to wait than to do something half-ass-ed.

The iPad screen is large enough to accommodate good picture size, different aspect rations (wide screen or normal), and readable subtitles.Netflix will give iTunes some competition. Would you rather have a $10 subscription or pay $5.00 for each film?

The great good will of Netflix is understanding actually movie watching for those of us who like foreign movies. Most subtitles are either too small to see on TV or computer, or the white type blends with backgrounds.

On most films produced in the last two decades, this is easy to fix. The subtitles are usually carried in a separate file on the digital master. That is why you can choose your language from the main menu. Writing a program to automatically reformat the size, color, and font of subtitles is not difficult, yet few DVD distributors have bothered to do it.

With the iPad app, Netflix is announcing more strongly its intention to eventually banish the red envelope and make steaming the company’s main business. Now they should change its clunky name, Watch Instantly, to Instant Watch: since most of the users have already shortened it to that anyway.

When profits are threatened, the first instinct of any business is to protect its main revenue sources. With Cable TV, this is subscriptions. What’s the threat? Between Cable and Satellite, about 85% of American homes are served. Of that number, about 60% are Cable wired, making it the big Gorilla. That is why most of the cable channels are just that: owned by the Cable cabal, not satellite.

The cabal is feeling challenged these days. Younger viewers accustomed using Internet for access to everything see less reason to invest in a cable subscription. Hulu.com has risen to one of the most popular sites on the web with its offering of TV programs, less commercials, and Internet style search. And it’s free.

Cable’s answer to Hulu, first proposed by Time-Warner Chairman/Chief exec Jeff Bewkes, is “TV Everywhere.” Bewkes was formerly head of the HBO division and is sensitive to viewer defection from cable. Since his main customers for HBO, CNN and other Time/Warner-owned channels are the cable companies, he has to make them happy. TV Everywhere works like this: you will pay, as you do now, for all the channels you don’t want to get the few you really do want, but in addition, you’ll get a special code so you can watch these channels on the Internet as well.

Understand? You will again pay for what you don’t want (cable) to get what you do want (Internet). The advantage TV Everywhere will have over free Hulu is news, sports, and The Daily Show. You can’t currently get those on Hulu. Do the cable companies really expect you to pay full cable rates for the few things you really want? Hasn’t the iTunes model shown us that consumers prefer to select and pay for their preferred songs? Isn’t TV Everywhere another version of the old CD album?

Jeff Bewkes is a smart guy and I am sure he knows this. My guess is he’s egging on the cable industry to fail withTV Everywhere so he can introduce something similar to iTunes, direct from producers to consumers, cutting out the cable company middleman.

He knows the cable guys are hung up on the word “free.” They supply the pipes for most of our internet connections but get a measly 50 bucks a month for it. Without additional revenue from offering tiers of channels you must pay for but don’t want, plus more from set top boxes (STBs), video recorders (DVRs), and high definition (HD) service; they would cry poverty.

That old revenue model is sure tough to change. My guess is it must, and very soon. Napster appeared in 1999, and was shut down by recording industry lawsuits two years later. Six months after, iTunes was introduced.

How long will it be before the next unshaven entrepreneur explains how Comcast’s TV Everywhere drove him to invent his TV workaround out of concern for the millions of fed up cable watchers? Maybe he’s already here. Avnar Ronen, a slick Israeli, is doing the talk show circuit selling Boxee; his bid to be the ITunes of TV.He’s savvy enough to know he must offer it free at first, capture the market, and add pay services later.

Boxee says they will introduce their own STB this summer. You won’t even need a computer to connect, just a wifi signal. As soon as the numbers look appealing, you can bet the cable channels will start making deals. What would you pay for CNN? Comedy Central, HBO? Or would you rather pay for just Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, and Larry David? You’ll get it any way you want to pay for it. Cable will still supply the pipes, but the programming revenue may circumvent them entirely.

I took a tour of downtown Philadelphia last weekend. The tour guide remarked that the AT&T building looks like a giant RJ-11 telephone wall jack and the Comcast Center looks like a giant USB flash drive. Will these be two memorials to a past age of glory when connection was more important than content?

Every conceivable solution has been proposed for the current dearth of financing for independent movies. Every major film festival offers a seminar where desperate filmmakers can pay to hear how much money they can make on YouTube and iTunes. The only people usually making money are the event organizers.

What is the solution to a broken system where advertising and promotion costs have jumped out of reach of most filmmakers, and theaters are even reluctant to rent a screen for a week? My solution is Penny Movies. That doesn’t mean making films for a penny. The costs of production have dropped because of ever cheaper digital cameras and computer post-production. But even filmmakers need to eat.

Penny movies are an idea that goes back to penny novels. Penny novels, or dime novels as they became with inflation, were popular from the 1850’s. They were eight page newspaper-like weekly publications featuring romance, adventure, crime, and fantasy. All the genres that are still popular today on TV and in the movies.

The nearest we have to them are probably South American telenovelas on Spanish TV. One of the most popular genres is called “narconovelas:”telenovelas about the romance of the illegal drug trade. A Colombian production that has swept the rating is Sin Senos No Hay Paraiso. Translation: “Without Breasts there is no Paradise.” Don’t tell me that wouldn’t clean up on A&E slotted just after “Breaking Bad.”

How can struggle filmmakers cash in on this? The first step is making films people want to see. Someone in Hollywood once said, “Genuine artistic merit is a great reason to make a movie but let us not forget that simple melodrama, rough action, and sexual desire have been the mainstays of drama for 3000 years.”

Here’s my plan. Filmmakers will post their first installment of three minutes on YouTube with a link to a pay site for further installments. The second installment costs a penny. If you like that, you can see the third for a little more, and if that proves popular, the price of every succeeding installment goes up according to demand. Filmmakers would need to create installments that left you wanting more. Difficult, but isn’t that what we call storytelling?

You say this can’t work? Go to Amiestreet.com. This is a music site where the price of songs is determined by listener demand. The more who like it, the more it costs. Of course, Aime Street’s biggest hit was Ashley Dupre’s What We Want. (She was Eliot Spitzer’s call girl). But they are still in business despite no new scandal singers.

I’ve registered PennyMovies. All filmmakers are welcome to test their first installments on the “Contender” page of MovieWithMe.com. Let’s hope it’s time some hot, original story ideas start appearing-hopefully in English.

Americans hate cable. They hate the price, they hate the service, they hate the selection. Now there is something new to hate: cable wars with broadcast networks. The major broadcast networks have always had the option of offering their programs to the cable companies on the basis of either “must carry” or “retransmission.”

Under the FCC’s “must carry” rule, a network (through its local station) has the right to insist that the local cable operator transmit its programming. If the network does not insist, and the cable operator still wants to carry the programming, he must pay the network for the cable retransmission of network programs at a rate negotiated between the two parties.None of this mattered much for many years, but now the networks say they need those cable fees to survive.

This new desire for cash has led to the Cable Wars. The biggest so far is Cablevision vs. ABC/Disney. ABC threatened to cut off the Academy Awards 2010 show to New York City area subscribers if Cablevision did not meet its subscriber fee demands. The show is always pretty bad, but people wanted to at least have the option to see it. The war went to the newspapers where Cablevision subscribers read between the lines and saw both sides preparing them for rate increases. (We didn’t want to raise you bill but they made us do it!)

Too much has been written about this. The one guy who sees beyond it (besides me) is Holman W. Jenkins writing the World Business column on the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal (be careful using this link, the Journal has a pay wall).

There’s no doubt the cable companies’ current business plan is doomed. (Unload your stock in the next few years.) The systems are too old to fix, the fees too high, and the three-in-one plan with VOIP phone service is about $35 a month more than Skype. (Skype is free). The only place cable companies can raise revenue is by offering you higher speeds and more content on their broadband pipes.

The broadband explosion already underway is toward video. How will a system designed in the 1960’s for military data be expected to transmit iTunes movies and Google Earth? Any plumber who ever cut costs and put in a one-inch water pipe instead of a two-inch one knows the answer: drip drip drip.

The ready solution to this cyber gridlock is expanding the bandwidth allocated to broadband wifi and mobile. This is why Google is rushing to build super speed wifi networks in cities across the country. They are counting on citizen delighted with the results pressuring the FCC to free up more bandwidth.

Where will it come from? The bandwidth hogs are the over-the-air TV stations who have been hoarding bandwidth since the analogue days when they needed lots more of it than they do with new digital transmission. The easy answer to the coming download doomsday is to snatch this unused reserve bandwidth and award it to wifi and mobile.

But the Internet is still as fast as the slowest part. If packets are routed to Venezuela on their way to New York, “loading” will mean “slow” in two languages. The longer view solution says we should modify the way digital video is delivered to portable devices so that it can use a wider spectrum. The old word for that spectrum is Television.

In the future, TV will send packets rather than programs, and mobile receivers will filter these to give you only the movie you want, just like broadband Internet. “As fast as the slowest part” will no longer apply. But getting there takes vision; and a lot of courage not to give in to the technology of the near moment at the expense of the technology of the farther future.

In the 1960’s, Los Angeles dug up a magnificent interurban rail system and replaced it with roads. Cars were faster and did not need rails. In the 1990’s Los Angles began the expensive process of re-acquiring and re-railing the old rights-of-way to put in a new interurban rail system. Now rails are faster than cars. Think what they could have saved by just leaving things alone for thirty years?

Hopefully, this will be the last word on the Academy Awards: get out of high school. The Golden Globes has grown into a slick TV show while the Oscars is still a high school musical. The problem with Oscar is he thinks he is the BMOC (big man on campus). But while he is waiting his college acceptance letter s to the top schools, kids like Grammy and Globe are kicking butt.

The biggest embarrassment this year was the banishment of The Hurt Locker producer Nick Chartier because he wrote emails to Academy members asking votes for his team and cited the unfairness of the other team’s (Avatar) giant budget for uniforms and equipment. Oscar punished him by banning him from awards night and not allowing him to collect his trophy on stage with the other kids..

Now doesn’t this sound like high school? Kids would call it pathetic. Parents and teachers would call it silly. Only at Hollywood High is this kind of behavior taken seriously. You can just hear the kids saying, “But Mom, it’s REALLY important.”

Ratings were up this year; proving turmoil and more nominees do make it more interesting. But the audience is fickle, and higher ratings might be a blip on the Neilsen graph. Here are some suggestions to make Oscar more telegenic. Produce an Oscar YouTube race where contestants vie for the amateur Oscar (voted by the Academy members). Interview Academy members waiting in Hollywood unemployment lines and hear how anger they are and how that effects how they will cast their vote. Organize and annual Academy versus Golden Globes softball game.

Once you leave high school for the real world, you’ve got to learn to compete or the next guy will get your job.

The big news of the day in the American movie biz is a footnote to the rest of the world. After a decade of playing “you pay for it,” the American movie industry has finally found outside investors to convert chain movie theaters all over the country to digital projection. About 14,000 screens in multiplex theaters are involved. Wall Street Journal readers from Australia to France might puzzle at why it takes J.P. Morgan Chase bankers to do this.

The American theater owners are giants: AMC, Cinemark, and Regal control most of the theaters in the US. You mean to tell me they can’t finance their own modernization? Apparently they’d rather be in the popcorn business. The acronym for this stimulus package is: KASIMA. The bankers coined this. It stands for “Kicking And Screaming Into the Modern Age.”

The real motivation for these later-day conversos to digital is their failing business model. Movie-going in the US has become a weekend recreation. Monday through Wednesday you can throw a bowling bowl down the aisle of any theater and not hit anyone. Digital projection means theaters can import signals from a variety of events from sporting matches to Glenn Beck. (Mr. Beck already appears on about 450 screens already converted, as does the Metropolitan Opera-though not together. Both are very popular).

Freedom to dip into multiple sources of programming and not depend exclusively on the Hollywood pipeline is the dream of movie theater chains. But having the means is not having the motivation. Once Hollywood is not the only source of product for the theaters, who books the shows and who does the promotion? Even though it might cost $250,000 to equip a Regal Cinema, it costs less than $5000 to put the same capabilities for simulcast satellite delivery in any playhouse, club, or restaurant. These venues become competition for the theater chain oligarchy. Do you want to watch a soccer match munching popcorn or eating steak and drinking beer?

MovieWithMe.com’s sister company, AudienceSource.us is already busy programming for all of these venues. The future of digital delivery of special simulcast events belongs to the packagers and their wiliness in promotion. It’s relatively easy to push people into movie theaters with 25 million dollars of Hollywood ad money, but how do you do it on two dollars and ninety-five cents? That’s the real conundrum for the digital future, and the KASIMA crowd hasn’t a clue.

Don’t be misled by the headline, I really mean Vudu, the company that was trying to stay afloat selling overpriced boxes pre-loaded with Hollywood movies. Then they made the wise choice to ditch the boxes in favor of a website only, pay per view approach. Now that has paid off handsomely with Walmart buying them out. Walmart (Wal-Mart) plans to run their own streaming service onto the new streaming capable TVs and Blu-rays they sell.

The reasoning is okay as far as it goes, but I don’t think that is far enough.First let’s take the Blu-ray. Nobody has come up with a good reason to buy it unless you are a gamer, or you enjoy seeing movie images so sharp you can see the sweat under every actor’s arms. But people have been buying the players because it’s a cheap way to get streaming movies. The reasoning: for the price of the player, you get streaming services AND Blu-ray (if you ever choose to buy an overpriced Blu-ray disk).

But is Walmart missing something? The reason streaming devices are exciting is because everyone wants total access to the net on their TVs. Why keep a cable subscription if you can get Hulu on your 50 inch flat screen TV? Movies are a small part of it, though an important part. That’s why God invented Netflix. What we don’t need is more add-on devices giving us the ability to pay to buy and rent movies that are the same movies we can get other places (no studio allows movies to go on any of the services including Netflix, Vudu or Roxio Cinema Now before the DVDs are in the stores).

I think I would rather put a new movie in my Netflix queue and wait until it shows up in my mailbox(or streaming) like an old friend I forgot. Walmart would probably argue that their new Vudu service is not for me, it is for the less sophisticated movie watcher. Okay, if you are buying and promoting a service for the unwashed, why are you selling organic produce in your Walmart food markets? I think Mr. Organic is the same shopper that might be interested in a new TV with a streaming device. And if he reads Cnet, he’ll know your Vudu is, at least at present, way behind the curve (it can’t be used on MAC, it requires its own player to be downloaded etc).

Congratulations to the venture capitalists who just got a big pay day on Vudu. I am sure they are breathing a sigh of relief all the way to the bank.

The old joke about the Golden Globes is they can’t find a restaurant for the awards dinner because all the members are waiters. It’s fashionable for anybody with a blog, column, show, or street corner shopping cart to comment on the awards: so it’s my turn. Certainly The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which gives out the Golden Globes, has its best days behind it. Who can forget 1981 when they all got Rolex watches from Pia Zadora’s husband and decided to award her the Golden Globe for her role in Butterfly?

That was the Hollywood that made us smile. Journalists could be bought just like anyone else. The world was in balance. The HFPA show was banned from TV after that incident, but it didn’t last. They had a good name, “Golden Globes,” a nice statuette that looked good clutched to bosoms, and a date early enough that cable TV could use the news to tub thump for the Oscars. For the last decade the HFPA’s biggest problem has been where to spend all the money.

Now there is a new problem: no press. World-class newspapers like the Zagreb Daily Star and the Kharkiv Sun are going out of business fast. The HFPA members are out of jobs. So are they still a foreign press association when the presses have stopped? Legitimate journalists who work for well-known papers in London and Paris were never welcome at the HFPA. They preferred to draw their membership from the obscure (if you couldn’t write well, at least you could wait tables well).

They may need to change the name to the HFA and forget the word “press.” Nobody would notice. The irony: 90 plus waiters, horse players, and lottery squatters who make up the HFPA pick pretty much the same winners as over 5000 supposed film professionals in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.