HERE COMES DISH:  NETFLIX FLUBS ENTICE COMPETITION

Here we go:

At a press conference scheduled for Friday, Dish Network is expected to announce its entry into the streaming-video market via a Blockbuster-branded service that could emerge as a rival to the recently troubled Netflix.

Variety reports that the title for the press event, “A Stream Come True,” suggests such an announcement. Per the trade, the invitation promises the introduction of “the most comprehensive home entertainment package ever.”

Meanwhile, Netflix’ stock was off around 10% on Tuesday.

And guess who has Dish? *points to self with both thumbs*

‘FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS,’ ‘SMURFS’ WILL BE SONY’S FIRST ULTRAVIOLET TITLES

If you recall, “UltraViolet” is also known as The Cloud, a service that stores your purchased films online so you can access them from anywhere. It’s also known as the service that will save the flailing home video market.

Why would we purchase not-very-good movies online for what is likely to be a price of around $15 to $20 when we can stream all we want for month for $10?

(more…)

I was maybe eight or nine when my sisters, brother and I watched this every single night for a week.  Stations did that back then.  Call it cheap baby-sitting.  But we were riveted.  I’d never seen a man dance like that.  Especially a man I’d seen so many times as a tough-guy gangster type.  I think it was my first notion of…”Oh yeah…he’s an actor.”

—–

Watching it again, lo these many years later, I was struck by several new observations.  First – what a patriot George M. Cohan was!  (And, as is common knowledge, so was Cagney.)   Though Cohan maintained, “I was a good Democrat even [as a child]”… he didn’t feel the modern leftist compulsion to extend the sympathetic lilt of empathy towards one’s avowed enemies.  He knew which side he was on – and said so, in no unequivocal terms. 

Cohan wasn’t politically correct — he and his family put on Minstrel shows!  Innocent, good-natured entertainment back then, offending no one, delighting all; black, white or variegated paisley.  It wasn’t until the class-envy of Marxist political correctness that we insisted on being horrified by such a thing.  (more…)

I think we were all surprised and disappointed when Michael Mann’s $100 million ode to the midwestern bank robbers of the 1930s, Public Enemies, misfired at the box office, A Nightmare on Elm Street or no Donnie Brasco. After all, Captain Jack Sparrow meets Edith Piaf in Capone-era Chicago directed by the man who put De Niro and Pacino together for the first time at Kate Mantelini’s on Wilshire: what’s not to like?

–

Many theories have been offered as to why the public made b.o. enemies of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but the real reason, I think, has yet to be articulated.  And it’s this: Mann, perhaps our greatest living director, taught his cast how to do everything – fight, handle firearms, rob banks, ogle Marion Cotillard… (more…)

Acting’s in the eyes and regardless of the role Jimmy Cagney’s eyes always screamed “caged.” Whether playing George M. Cohan or some middle-aged Coca-Cola executive, watching Cagney is like watching the lit fuse of a firecracker and whether it was with an explosion of song, dance or violence, Cagney never disappointed — he went off. In “White Heat,” director Raoul Walsh’s magnificent closing chapter in a magnificent two-decade series of Warner Brothers’ gangster pictures, Cagney again explodes …only this time, literally.

Jimmy Cagney in the early 1930s

Produced in 1949, within just a few minutes “White Heat” announces itself as something unlike anything that came before starting with the introduction of Verna Jarrett (29 year old Virginia Mayo), a striking, almost regal beauty shown fast asleep in a close up. Walsh immediately knocks the bark off his perfectly groomed leading lady by having her snore like a sailor after a three day bender. The message is clear: don’t believe everything you see. In just a few more minutes things will move even further beyond normal and straight into disturbing.   (more…)