Knocking streaming, trying streaming

I've been playing fast and loose lately with the idea that streaming movies sucks.

So instead of just resting on that general pronouncement, I thought I'd put it to the test. Get some actual evidence to support my claim by watching Big Fan, which I recently discovered is available through Netflix for immediate streaming. My wife has a Netflix account, so I got down to business yesterday after work.

The results were mixed. Some of the problems I encountered had to do with my computer, some had to do with the streaming itself. But since all the problems are germane to the experience of watching a streamed movie -- you need a computer to stream, after all -- they are all relevant in this analysis.

Forthwith:

1) I couldn't get the position of my laptop screen correct for the night shots. Daytime footage in Big Fan was fine, but at night, I couldn't get the right angle to make out the contrasts. I'd angle it either too much past 90 degrees, and the light from the window behind me would wash it out, or too much short of 90 degrees, which meant I was getting my own reflection in the screen. (Why not just do exactly 90 degrees -- ha ha). With the smaller laptop screen, you have to position it closer to yourself to create the same screen size you'd get while watching the TV screen from your couch. But I really don't want a reflected image of myself watching the movie while I'm watching the movie.

2) The image was stuttering and freezing. I kind of knew I wouldn't get actual buffering, where the movie stops while the progress bar shows you how much buffering is required before you can start watching again. The combination of Netflix' product and my internet (to be honest, I don't really know how it works) would ensure that my viewing experience would exceed this minimal standard. But that doesn't mean there weren't problems in the smooth delivery of the movie. In fact, when Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan, the incurable Giants fan of the title and his equally incurable buddy, showed up in the parking lot for some tailgaiting -- and, without tickets, ended up staying in the lot for the entire game -- I thought the quick freezes might have been some kind of hip technique utilized by director Robert Siegel. So I jumped back a minute in the movie just to see if the freezes were in the same spots, which would confirm or refute that theory. They weren't in the same spots, which meant this was purely a shortcoming of the streaming. The fact that you have to check, because it might be a problem with the delivery method, is a big difference from watching it through a DVD player, where you'd be certain it was an artistic feature intended by the director.

3) My laptop overheated. At about the 30-minute mark of the movie, the computer shut down. Given that the laptop was sunken into the comforter on my bed, I shouldn't have been surprised -- cut off the air flow from underneath, and the computer takes evasive action to protect itself. However, I also have a method to prevent this kind of thing from happening, a laptop cooling pad that slides under my laptop and projects cool air through a fan onto the underside of the computer. The actual fan is broken, but the square slab of plastic should still provide a buffer between the computer and whatever surface it's resting on, using the opening for the fan as an airstream that prevents the computer from feeling smothered. So streaming this movie must have really required a lot of effort from my computer, because it still overheated despite the presence of this buffer.

At this point I was feeling pretty pessimistic about streaming. Because the computer needed a few minutes to cool down before it would power back on, I walked around and put away some laundry, sharing my observations about the experience with my wife. Being a strong Netflix proponent and a regular streamer herself -- albeit on a Mac rather than a PC, and here I go again opening myself up to being chastised for preferring the "inferior product" -- she seemed to take the fact that it wasn't working out for me a little personally.

And then:

4) The final hour of the movie went by without incident. In fact, in a happy bit of unexpectedness that I attribute to both Firefox and Netflix, the movie resumed in the exact spot where it was when the computer crashed. Firefox did the job of restoring the session, and Netflix did the job of not canceling my viewing. I didn't dare hope for that, since my wife prepared me for the fact that I'd have to start over and search forward to the spot where I'd left off. What was really strange was that the movie was no longer halting and stuttering. Maybe my computer needed to be rebooted for some other reason, which is why Big Fan wasn't streaming perfectly to begin with. In order to prevent another overheating, I added a second buffer underneath the cooling pad.

So I'm glad I did it. For one, it was really nice just to finish watching Big Fan, and not have to do anything more -- not have to return it to the video store or drop it in the mail to get my next movie, not even have to eject it. Nor did watching Big Fan "count" against my wife's account, either by delaying her access to her next title, or by being one of a limited number of streamed movies she can watch per month. Accessing it instantly is obviously a huge advantage, especially since that's one of the main ways I give Blockbuster props: I credit them with allowing me "instant gratification" by being able to pick out a movie at the store, rather than having to wait for the mail. It goes without saying that picking something out online is an instanter version of instant gratification than that, even if the selection is limited. Finally, there's the fact that I wouldn't even have been able to watch Big Fan yesterday without this method, due to the inability to procure a DVD that I discussed on Sunday.

But I'm still not entirely sold. I can't deny the problems that plagued me -- and really distracted me -- during my first half-hour of watching Big Fan. Whether I need to get a different computer, or have a method to hook it up to my TV, is not really the point. The point is that for me, streaming involves using the tools I currently have, at this point in time. It's only as useful to me, practically speaking, as those tools allow it to be. Watching a little indie like Big Fan on my laptop may work out fine, but if I want to watch a grandiose epic, I'll still vastly prefer a physical DVD that I can slide into my player, for the largest picture and best sound available.

Baby steps, streaming, baby steps. Hey, only two days ago, I was cursing your name.

Not a big fan of this trend

(Seems like an appropriate poster for conference championship Sunday, doesn't it? Go Saints!)

Yesterday I wrote about being thwarted in my attempt to see a movie, largely due to a comedy of errors. Today it's an institutionalized thwarting I want to write about.

The other movie I tried to pick up two weeks ago, in addition to Hustle & Flow, which I discussed yesterday, was Big Fan, the indie from last fall in which Patton Oswalt plays ... well, plays a big fan of the New York Giants. It's directed by Robert Siegel, the writer of The Wrestler (my favorite film of last year), and involves a nightclub altercation with a player, as well as a large amount of unnerving, obsessive behavior.

There's been awards buzz around Oswalt's performance, though as time goes on, it seems unlikely that enough people will see it to cast a vote for him. Especially if they are relying on Blockbuster. Which, of course, Academy members wouldn't be, but stay with me, I'm trying to make a point here.

I'm hugely interested in this movie. It's one of the ones I knew I'd see prior to my February 2nd deadline for closing out my 2009 rankings, and the reason I've been so confident is that it's already on DVD. Then it's just a matter of prioritizing it over the other movies that are already on DVD.

Or so I thought.

It turns out, it wasn't actually available on DVD two Sundays ago -- I thought it was already out after Oswalt appeared on The Tonight Show to promote it -- but it did become available two days later, on Tuesday, the day of the week on which DVDs are always released.

Of course, "available" is a relative term here.

When I went to Blockbuster this past Friday, my first choice was Big Fan. I hadn't specifically looked for it again since two weeks ago, but its time had definitely arrived.

Except, as you have no doubt anticipated by now, it wasn't there. I thought I might have just been looking in the wrong place, because there was also a special section for the best movies of 2009. But nope. Not there either.

I asked the Blockbuster clerk about it. I could tell she was one of the helpful ones, not one of the ones who "just works here." She looked it up and told me that corporate hadn't sent out any copies, and that it would probably be quite a long wait to get it online. When I asked her why they chose not to stock what seemed like a pretty mainstream film -- and oversold Oswalt's performance, saying he was going to get an Oscar nomination for it, as if the strength of my indignation might prompt her to reach below the counter and produce a copy -- she said she didn't know. She was clearly frustrated, too: "Sometimes I think it's just a bunch of monkeys at keyboards making these decisions." Thus kicked off a head-shaking discussion about where the industry was going, and how neither of us was satisfied with the future prospect of having to stream most movies we wanted to see.

This Big Fan scenario has thrown out of whack my whole understanding of just how much things are changing. When I saw that Blockbuster wasn't carrying Hustle & Flow in stores anymore (only later recognizing that it may have just been out at the time I looked for it), that was something of a shock, but it was nothing compared to this. Until now, the one area where Blockbuster had been beyond reproach was its new release section, which makes a certain amount of business sense. New releases are the only rentals you can count on to fly off the shelves. To meet that demand, Blockbuster will order literally a hundred copies of certain movies for each store. Those copies obviously rent enough to make it worth having to dispose of the extra inventory once the demand dies down. Some of those extras will sell as previously viewed copies, and maybe the rest will be dumped in a landfill, but either way, they made their money on the initial spike of interest.

You'd expect that kind of thing for your Transformers and your Iron Mans and your Dark Knights, but Blockbuster has also been quite good about stocking the obscure titles. There may only be one copy, but they'll have it. At any given time, the new release wall is strewn with random shit you've never heard of -- a lot of it straight-to-video, sure, but plenty of independent or foreign films that had limited theatrical releases.

Like Big Fan. You'd think that would be a slam dunk. Patton Oswalt is not a household name, but neither is he an unknown -- he voiced the main character in Ratatouille, after all. Yet here it was, unavailable -- the first time I had ever seen that. The first time I'd tried to find a new release at Blockbuster, and not even seen the cardboard copy of its poster indicating that it should usually reside in that spot. There was simply no evidence of it, because it didn't exist.

And this is a big deal, because you can't rely on being able to get a new release online. Not surprisingly, new releases often have the words "Short Wait" or "Long Wait" next to them online, because there are so many other people who want to see them the same time you do. "Long Wait" is what it currently says next to Big Fan.

For me, this is traditionally where the store comes in, and it's one of Blockbuster's big advantages over Netflix. The demand for that movie may be high at the store as well, but they seem to have budgeted more copies. Or, failing that, I can just go to a different store. I'm not saying there haven't been times when a particular movie is difficult to get, just that you can always find it with a little elbow grease and persistence.

I tried to use such elbow grease yesterday. I went to a second Blockbuster, to see if maybe it was only that particular Blockbuster that had not been shipped the title. But there was no Big Fan here either -- neither an actual copy, nor an empty spot where it was supposed to be. Infuriatingly, however, there was a copy of a movie called Big Stan -- several copies, in fact, as if taunting me. Big Stan is a comedy starring Rob Schneider as a guy who learns kung fu to defend himself in prison. Not an acceptable substitute. But, ironically, it does demonstrate what I was saying about Blockbuster's deep new release section.

So now I'm faced with an interesting scenario: A movie becomes available on DVD three weeks before my ranking deadline, and, short of buying it, I may have no way of seeing it at all.

Not so fast.

The other trend I wanted to write about in this piece had to do with Blockbuster's primary rival, Netflix. Last week, news broke that Netflix had reached an agreement with Warner Brothers to hold off on offering that studio's new releases for 28 days after they become available for purchase. In exchange, Netflix would get to stream more of that studio's movies. To me, who is still clinging to the physical DVD, this was a step in a direction that made me nervous -- and, according to the article I read, just the first such agreement Netflix wanted to make with various studios. It's all part of the same worrisome trend, and for a moment, I considered calling this post "The DVD new release: an endangered species."

Not having much more hope for the presence of Big Fan on Netflix, especially considering where that company is heading, I nonetheless figured I ought to search Big Fan on my wife's Netflix account, just to be thorough. Maybe I'd find that Netflix has some kind of exclusive rights to the movie, which prevents Blockbuster from carrying it in stores. Maybe at the very least I'd see whether I could expect the same "Long Wait" for a DVD of Big Fan through Netflix. If not, perhaps I'd depend on my wife's kindness in order to see it, and get it moved to the top of her queue.

In fact, I discovered, the thing that I fear might actually be the thing that saves me on this particular movie. Lo and behold, Big Fan is available for immediate streaming. Just like that, I went from not knowing when I'd get to see this movie, to possibly watching it right now.

We're forced to adopt changes in various industries all the time, whether we like those changes or not. Maybe this is one trend I'll end up embracing after all.

I can tell you this: When I'm watching Big Fan sometime this week -- at the exact moment of my choosing, and even on my own laptop as long as my wife is logged in to her Netflix account on it -- I'll definitely be able to see its value. Which, only yesterday, I didn't think I'd be able to see.

That's how things change ... gradually. Then before you know it, you're a big fan of the thing you thought was your biggest rival.

Maybe there's a Blockbuster vs. Netflix lesson in there as well.

A depressing pursuit

As I was driving down Ventura Blvd. toward the Arclight theater in Sherman Oaks yesterday, I was thinking, "Do I really want to see Nine?"

And as I circled the parking garage looking for a parking space, I was thinking, "Do I really want to see Nine?"

And as I boarded the escalator bound for the theater, I was thinking, "Do I really want to see Nine?"

And as I shelled out $14.50 via credit card on an automated ticket-buying station, I was thinking, "Do I really want to see Nine?"

And as the movie was starting, and here I was, seeing Nine, I thought, "What am I doing here?"

It was a depressing feeling. And I don't think I ever recovered from the funk over the course of the rest of the day.

Stuffing your rankings to get in as many movies as possible from the previous year can be a depressing pursuit.

It's like this every January. On Oscar nomination morning, which is February 2nd this year, I finalize my entire list of films seen in the previous calendar year, from favorite to least favorite. That morning arrives three weeks from tomorrow -- about ten days later than last year -- so it's officially "crunch time." Which means a lot of half-hearted trips to the theater and perfunctory rentals from the video store.

Yesterday, I had a little of both.

First off there was Nine. Nine was fine. The general argument by critics is that it's hard to identify exactly what's wrong with it, but there's nothing about it that argues strongly for its existence. (Oh, and that the songs are not the least bit hummable -- I agree, with one exception: the song "Be Italian," which plays during the trailer.)

Still, there were good reasons why I wanted to see Nine, maybe more so than the average moviegoer. The main one was that I loved Chicago, which was also directed by Rob Marshall. Nine looked quite similar to Chicago -- musical number fantasies interspersed with realistic scenes of plot development -- so I thought there was a decent chance I'd find it similarly charming. Plus I thought the material from Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, on which the original Broadway musical was based, is fruitful subject matter: A film director catalogs the influences the various women in his life have had on him, while vainly trying to come up with a script for his ninth movie, which will begin shooting any day now.

I also tried to tell myself that the main reason I didn't want to see it -- that it had gotten middling to poor reviews -- was not a very good reason. I have a personal creed of staying true to my initial interest in seeing a movie, regardless of what other critics have said about it. I am trying to recreate the conditions that would exist if I had been assigned to review the film as a new release, without the benefit of any previous reviews to influence me.

But as much as I have that shining ideal in mind, I'm a pragmatist as well. And as I was electronically feeding $14.50 into the coffers of the Arclight yesterday afternoon, all I could think about was all the other ways I might have spent that $14.50. It was easy for me to see the exact cost associated with adding one movie to my year-end list. And it didn't seem there was any way it was as valuable to me as the amount I was spending on it.

See, what I'm really going for with this list is a good representation of the films that were released in 2009, from January through December. The ones from January through September are easy -- you can get them on DVD. However, you have to pay theatrical prices for films released between October and December. So every year there is a film for which I half-heartedly shell out $14.50, just for that intangible value of ranking it. Last year, it was Revolutionary Road, which I believe my wife and I also saw in this theater -- I guess we were randomly up in the San Fernando Valley that time as well.

Yesterday itself probably had something to do with my mood, with making it a bad day to see a movie about which I was less than enthused. I was tired from staying up too late on Saturday night, and drinking too much wine, then getting up before 9 on Sunday morning to get ready for the morning playoff football game, which I watched at a friend's house in the Valley. The Baltimore Ravens slaughtered my New England Patriots -- it was 24-0 after one quarter -- so that kind of set the mood for the day. But if Nine had been a movie I really felt like I was seeing for the right reasons, I wouldn't have cared -- I didn't watch much football this season, and losses don't linger with me for very long these days. But combine all the factors -- tired, lost football game, pointless movie, then it almost being dark when I finally got home -- and it left me in quite the funk.

Of course, the trip to the Blockbuster didn't make things any easier.

I also wanted to pick up a 2009 movie on my way home, even though we already had one store rental -- the dolphin-clubbing documentary The Cove -- unwatched at home. But I had an in-store exchange burning a hole in my pocket, so I stopped at a Blockbuster I used to visit more when I lived in my old apartment. It was here that I became yet more dispirited.

I could tell right away that something was different. There were fewer rental aisles than I ever remembered there being, and in their place were bargain bins of previously viewed movies, a display selling a random assortment of books, and just plain unused real estate. I guess they were probably in the midst of moving things around, or had just done so, as there was a guy affixing category cards reading "DRAMA" to the top of one of the aisles.

Maybe that explained the denuded quality of this particular Blockbuster, but I suspected that the changing face of the rental industry also had something to do with it. I still like the spontaneity of going to a brick-and-mortar store and just picking out a movie, but that's no longer a supportable business model. It doesn't make sense for them to have any but the most frequently rented titles, or the newest releases, stocked in the store. And in fact, because of the poor returns on much of what is offered at the physical Blockbuster stores, Blockbuster has revealed that it will close a number of its locations. Yesterday seemed to be my first preview of that inevitability.

While this made me glum -- I'm an old-school guy who mourns every such change (the closing of the music stores hit me particularly hard) -- my inability to find the first two movies I was looking for made it all the worse.

The other thing I am trying to accomplish this month is to re-watch some favorites from the last decade, in order to come up with a best-of-the-decade list. Toward that end I wanted to bring home Hustle & Flow, my favorite film of 2005, which my wife had just endorsed watching again with me. Needless to say, I could not find it yesterday at Blockbuster, and their new method for stacking the DVDs made it difficult to tell whether they even carried it anymore. This seemed strange -- Hustle & Flow struck me as a highly mainstream title, which won the Oscar for best original song only four years ago (and had a best actor nominee that year for Terrence Howard as well). But here it wasn't, unavailable at this Blockbuster. I scoured the drama section multiple times before giving up. Seeming to anticipate this very moment of customer dissatisfaction, there were signs throughout the drama section that read "Can't find the drama title you're looking for? Don't be sad. We can mail it to you. Over 95,000 titles available." So there they are, openly acknowledging that it no longer makes sense to stockpile inventory. The times, they're always a-changin'.

It was looking for my second movie, Big Fan, that made things even worse. I had seen Patton Oswalt appear on Conan O'Brien almost a week ago, last Monday, to promote the upcoming DVD release. So I had assumed it was coming out the next day -- DVDs almost always release on a Tuesday. Yet it was nowhere to be found among Blockbuster's new releases, and it was also not advertised up on their Upcoming Releases board. I took this as a really bad sign -- that Blockbuster wasn't even ordering all the new releases anymore, even ones that feature a performance that may receive an Oscar nomination. (Upon getting home, I discovered that the movie wasn't actually being released until tomorrow, so Oswalt just went on Conan's show unusually early. Maybe he needed to get on before Conan started becoming surly about his future at NBC.)

So instead of Hustle & Flow, instead of Big Fan, I rented Woody Allen's Whatever Works, starring Larry David. Another film I have not heard great things about. Another perfunctory rental.

I guess what really bothers me is that I don't know any other way to be. I love movies and I love making my list. I wouldn't trade it. Of course, if either one started really troubling me I could just stop doing it. I wouldn't stop going to the movies, but I could do what most people do -- only see the ones they really want to see. The list of yearly rankings could just fall by the wayside if I really started to find my own standards too tedious to meet.

Obviously, the answer is that I would never do either of these things. I just have to understand that it isn't always a joyful pursuit -- sometimes it has a trudging, mechanical quality to it. Sometimes you just have to do "whatever works" to get the job done.

Three more weeks. Eyes on the prize, Vance. Eyes on the prize.