We Americans love a good David vs Goliath battle, but in our hearts we love a good Goliath vs Goliath battle better. So let’s look a few years into the future when old media and new media meet their Waterloo.

Okay, Netflix isn’t really new media. It’s a DVD rental company that hit on a formula to take down Blockbuster. But Netflix’s fearless leader, Reed Hastings, sees the future in streaming movies onto your flat screen TV. His company is pretty persistent in building the streaming service. Netflix, along with Amazon.com forms the backbone of MovieWithMe.com filtering service since we only review films that are available on these two sites.

We like that Netflix is persistent about the customer experience. If you are a subscriber, you’ll occasionally receive an email after yo’ve viewed a film on your big screen asking “how was the picture quality?” I can’t think of any cable company that has every cared about my picture quality.

Netflix qualifies as a new media player not only because of its emphasis on streaming, but because it is snapping up old media content. The recent billion dollar deal with Epix (MGM, Paramount, Lion’s Gate Films) shows how serious they are. Their next salvo will be to acquire more, and more recent, TV shows.

Inevitably this will lead them to HBO, a Time Warner division that has produced some of the best TV content (and represents about 25% of T-W operating profit). HBO is only available on cable/satellite. You pay about $26 to subscribe to a premium tier that includes HBO and T-W collects about seven dollars for every subscriber.

That’s great but it has its limits. About 41 million of the 90 million viewers in America pay for HBO/Cinemx. It took HBO forty years to reach that figure. Netflix has about 19 million subscribers and it took twelve years. At that rate, they’ll catch up to HBO within the decade, if not sooner. When they do, things will get interesting.

Currently restricting HBO/Cinemax’s audience to premium cable and satellite subscribers is leaving a lot of money on the table. More disturbing, the business model of cable/satellite depends on tier pricing in an era that has already evolved to a la carte pricing (iTunes, Amazon.com). Could HBO make a lot more money offering premiere programming to Netflix, iTunes and Amazon at the same time as cable satellite subscribers? Estimates are they could make three-quarters of a billion dollars more.

What’s holding them back is their exclusive contract with cable/satellite. Looking for some wiggle room in those contracts, Jeff Bewkes, head of Time-Warner, has announced HBO GO, a screwy idea that allows you to see HBO on your computer but only if you already subscribe to HBO via cable/satellite. I think he’s smart enough to push this idea because he knows it will fail. Then he can call his cable buddies and say, “see, I told you.”

The obvious answer is for HBO to free itself from cable’s walled garden. Estimates are that HBO/Cinemax will lose 1.5 million cable/satellite subscribers this year. The hot topic at cable conventions is “cord cutting.” That’s the industry phrase for subscribers who cancel their subscriptions after deciding they’ve paid long enough for channels they don’t want, service they hate, and providers that shut off favorite channels in negotiation disputes with content companies (like Cablevision vs Fox).

What if Netflix made Time-Warner an offer for HBO they couldn’t refuse? Netflix has the cash, the clout, and the growth. Could T-W stockholders refuse? Seem outlandish? It was just ten years ago that AOL purchased T-W for 164 billion dollars and the stockholders (at first) loved that deal. That one didn’t work out so well, but this deal would be different. Netflix’s objective is only access to HBO programming, not buying the entire company. Netflix wants content for cash. That has a nice ring to it.

Today Google announced the purchase of CBS affiliate WKRC in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company is rumored to be in advanced negotiations for key network affiliates in Denver, New Orleans, Tampa, San Diego and Atlanta. Incredible? Can’t be true? Maybe not in 2010, but come back in a year and see how the game has advanced. Google has more cash than many foreign countries, so nothing is beyond its reach.

The media story of the next decade is going to be about the painful transfer of power from old media to new media. It promises to be a fight to the death between giant hairy mammoths lunging and trumpeting. There’s no doubt who is going to win but the clever moves, the bravado, the hubris will make spectacular business drama. That is, unless you own cable company stock.

Why is this important to MovieWithMe users? Because our sole purpose is to be your filter for an every larger list of foreign and independent films available from the two giants of new media distribution: Amazon and Netflix. Wherever Google TV or Apple TV or anyone else who is an app and hardware supplier clears a path, Amazon and Netflix will be there faster than a herd stampeding caribou.

The recent debut of Google TV and upgraded Apple TV has been underwhelming. The reason: the program suppliers like CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX have announced reluctance to grant them rights to their shows. Why? Because they have very lucrative deals with the cable companies and they don’t want to cannibalize their market.

So here’s the hypothetical: Google makes their own work around. They know that many of the network affiliates in major cities are owned by newspaper companies. These companies are in hard times. Not only are the newspapers doing badly but the over-the-air TV stations aren’t doing particularly well either. If a good offer came along, they’d sell.

So let’s say Google picks up half a dozen CBS affiliate stations in major markets and announces its intention to stream the network programming from local servers. Suddenly Cincinnati viewers could get CBS on broadband. Wow. It would take about three nanoseconds for CBS to cut off WKRC.

But then Google would cut off CBS, Suddenly CBS would be dark in half a dozen cites they count on for Nielsen ratings and advertising sales. There would be a lot of screaming to the FCC about restraint of trade and license revocation. But the precedent for networks cutting off signals already exits with cable, and the precedent of putting a local signal on a dedicated feed like cable or, broadband started with Ted Turner almost forty years ago.

There is not much doubt about would win this future, fictional round, but TV executives and Wall Street analysts should already be sweating.

Does anybody see this as an old Hollywood story? Young genius betrays best friend by throwing in with hot agent who promises him fame. So much has been written about The Social Network that it is becomng a social pastime. Even David Brooks of the New York Times used it as a cautionary tale of morality versus meritocracy in one of his columns.

The film certainly is meritorious: and a very good watch. Aaron Sorkin, the writer, is a gifted playwright and screenwriter who has given us A Few Good Men and the TV series The West Wing. He’s as familiar with Hollywood showbiz as Francis Ford Coppola was with big Italian families when he wrote The Godfather.

Here’s how The Social Network translates in Hollywoodese. Mark Zuckerberg is the boy genius who wants to make it. He’s a star in his own mind even if he can’t get the girl.If he could sing he might be Elvis. He can’t sing, but he’s a wiz at computer code. The blue-blood jocks, the Winklevoss twins, have a neat idea for a website (they are played by one actor, Armie Hammer, who manages not to step on his brother’s lines). They want to hire Mark but he keeps putting them off.

Mark’s working on his own idea, inspired by his hurt at being dumped by the girl. If he were Elvis, he’d write the song that becomes a hit that she hears and comes back to him. The Facebook of Harvard becomes a hit but the girl doesn’t like what he says about her in the lyrics and tells him to take a hike. The Winklevoss twins don’t know it was all for the girl and believe he stole their idea.

At Harvard, ideas are the province of gentlemen. In Hollywood ideas are as free as the wind. It is expected that hot ideas will have many fathers. As Mark goes through marathon programming sessions anyone should assume hundreds of kids in dorm rooms around the country are looking for ways to improve on MySpace and Friendster. The Winkevoss twins don’t see it this way because they are rich WASPS and Mark is a little Jew from Long Island. Remember those 1930′s and 40′s Depression era movies where the rich guy always told Claudette Colbert to keep away from that trashy Clark Gable?

Mark knows he can’t make it alone so he enlists Eduardo, his best and only friend, as his business partner. Like a good agent, Eduardo believes in Mark’s talent and fights to get him parts (money). But Eduardo is sweet, so we know he will get steamrolled. Meanwhile the Winklevoss twins complain to the president of Harvard. He’s the studio boss. He understands “free as the wind” even if they don’t. He throws them out of his office.

Enter Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the opportunist. Sean is the coked up high-powered Hollywood agent who whispers to Mark that he’s going to make him the biggest star ever. Mark agonizes for about two seconds before dumping Eduardo.

Like all good Hollywood stories, The Social Network is told in flashbacks from the courtroom scene. We’re compelled to know the tragic, complex skein of events that led Mark to stand before judge and jury. (It’s not really judge and jury, it is a deposition hearing. But it’s a story device familiar from a hundred movies).

Poor Mark has to defend himself against the twins, Eduardo, and a bunch of sharpie lawyers. Everybody is a Sunday moralist except Mark, who remains defiant and dedicated to his creation. The moralists all want money, so we know they’re not really moral. A nice young lady lawyer who should have been Mark’s girlfriend explains that it is cheaper to pay than to play with a jury trial.

Everyone gets their big payout and exists, leaving Mark isolated and alone with his computer, just as he was in his Harvard dorm room. He vainly tries to get the girl who ditched him to accept him as a Facebook friend. This is the “Rosebud” moment (see the ending of Citizen Kane). Fade out.

I don’t mean to belittle an excellent movie, only to show its roots, and to wonder why none of the millions of words written about it have picked up on The Old Hollywood Story.

Mostly Martha (Germany 2002, 106 min, dir: Sandra Nettelbeck, cast: Martina Gedeck, August Zirner). No Reservations (USA 2007, 104 min, dir: Scott Hicks, cast Katherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart Bob Balaban)

An expensive meal in a posh restaurant leaves you full and poorer. Next morning, can you remember what you ate? These two films are a mash-up of good cooking and elegant service. So why does one delight and the other push us away from the table?

Let’s cut the cute talk. Mostly Martha is mostly director Sandra Nettelbeck coaxing a charming performance out of Martina Gedeck. If you think Gedeck is just another breezy actress who is a natural for this part, take a look at her in The Lives of Others and The Baader Meinhof Complex. From neurotic chef who never has a hair out of place to brooding terrorist, she’s got an amazing range.

Then try Katherine Zeta-Jones in the same role, directed by Scott Hicks. It’s an easy comparison because both films have the same story almost scene for scene. Didn’t anybody say, “wait a minute, do we really need to copy even the song by Paolo Conte (Via con Me)? Martha is the lonely perfectionist who rules over a chic restaurant kitchen. Everything changes when her niece is suddenly orphaned and must come to live with her. Complications mean a sous chef needs to help her cook. Enter August Zirner (German version) and Aaron Eckhart (USA).

I kind of prefer Eckhart, even though he tries too hard. And Zeta-Jones is okay, even though Gedeck is more gegrubel (brooding). Mostly Martha was a big hit in Germany. No Reservations was a dud here. Why? Every Make & Remake comparison is different, but here I think it is about expectations. German audiences liked sexy aunt Martha slowly getting seduced by a man, and food. It’s Kultur (culture).

American audiences don’t give a shit about Kultur. If it’s food: there should be a lot of it, and if it sex: let’s get their clothes off. Here’s a place where a pie-in-the-face food fight followed by hot sex on the prep counter might have given us so memorable a scene that it would be endlessly played in those Academy Award clip reels of classic movies. But instead we got a gentle remake. Toss the souffle and gives us Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream ice cream. Fuck Kultur, Americans want to eat.

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.

Thank You For Smoking (USA, 2005, 92 min, dir: Jason Reitman, cast: Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello)

Why are Hollywood moguls always portrayed as hucksters in movies? Because they are brilliant con men. Thank You for Smoking is a puff that will be remembered because it was director Jason Reitman’s first feature (based on Christopher Buckley’s book). Most of it doesn’t rise above Saturday Night Live: a very low bar to jump. One exception is the Hollywood mogul scene (see clip). “Mogul” is a term Hollywood appropriated from “Mughul:” a dynasty of kings descended from Genghis Kahn. That’s like claiming you own the Brooklyn Bridge because Washington Roebling (who built it) was your great great uncle.

In an effort to forward the tobacco lobby’s campaign to get people smoking again, their chief spokesman, Nick, visits a Hollywood super agent. In short order, in front of a Japanese print meant to invoke the Hollywood mogul’s bible, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War; the Powerful One outlines a movie to promote smoking. Set it in the future, he consuls. People are put off by smoking now, but in a future, on a space station, it could be cool again.

It is parody. It is also brilliant. His description of a future couple lighting up cigarettes after weightless sex evokes an image of kinky sensuality. Therein lies the contradiction that goes through dozens of films where the Hollywood mogul scene is played out: he is always a misanthropic con man who is brilliant. Take a look at the mogul scenes in these movies: Alex in Wonderland (1970), The Last Tycoon (1976), The Player (1992), Swimming With Sharks (1994), Wag the Dog (1997), Tropic Thunder (2008) and don’t forget six years of the HBO series, Entourage.

Even the Motion Picture Academy has noted this brilliance by inventing a special mogul Oscar award. They call it the Irving G. Thalberg Award for “Creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” Thalberg, a Hollywood exec and producer of the 1930′s, was the prototype for the Hollywood mogul. He cast a shadow so long that F. Scott Fitzgerald used him for his hero, Monroe Stahr, in his unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western. (Robert De Niro played him in the movie, The Last Tycoon).

Producers fight to force the Academy to give them a “Thalberg.” It’s not a regular Oscar, it’s a separate award modeled on the head of Irving Thalberg. The question I asked myself when I saw the Hollywood mogul scene in Thank You for Smoking was: what motivates such extraordinary brilliance that we never tire of parodying it? Most Hollywood insiders would give you a short answer: money. They are wrong. You can make money lots of other ways and you don’t have to read screenplays all weekend. I think it is the need to tell stories.

In the soul of every great con man is a great storyteller. How else can you convince the mark to put down his money? Motion pictures were merely a new medium for the flimflammer’s art. And who is to say all great art doesn’t have at least a little of the same brilliance? If we could get Michelangelo to kick back and talk in his office, he’d probably tell us he had a great idea for a naked David placed right in the public’s eye: where they’d have to look up at his penis from below. “Wow, ” he’d say with his feet on his desk and his hands gesturing, “I can see the crowds!”