Things I've been ignoring during MIFF

I've had my head in the cinematic sand for the last two weeks as I've taken in all MIFF has to offer. But around me, the cinematic world has continued to spin. I thought I might quickly catch up with some of those things I would have written about if I didn't have to recap Melbourne's film festival in excessive detail.

1) Aretha Franklin died. Very sad.

Anyone looking to find the cinematic relevance of her passing need look no further than The Blues Brothers. But this is one of those that transcends any particular medium. Franklin was a cultural giant and I feel like she was the voice of good times -- not the TV show, but the feeling of being on top of the world. If you are having a good day and want to strut down the street, who better to celebrate your mood than the soaring voice of Aretha Franklin? I will miss that voice.

We have a terrific Atlantic Records compilation from the years 1966 to 1969 that we've played the kids a couple times on vinyl. It includes "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," "Do Right Woman - Do Right Man," "Respect," "Baby I Love You," "Chain of Fools" and "Think." They were all in rotation last night as we held an impromptu dance party around the dinner table.

2) The Oscars created an insane new category. Very sad.

Best popular film? Ugh.

At first I thought this was going to be a minor curio like best animated feature, but it sounds as though they will present it at or near the end of the show. Ugh.

I agree with the Oscars listening to feedback about how to make the show more relevant. There's nothing more frustrating than an institution that is smugly content with the way it has always done things, unwilling to change.

But I can't say I can get behind this change. Nor can I get behind the idea of presenting some of the 23? 26? categories off screen, during commercial breaks. Sure, we may never see that animated short subject or documentary short, but that's always been a part of my Oscar ballot, dammit, and I cherish it in all its obscurity.

3) MoviePass is still alive. Good ... I guess?

I wrote a few weeks back about the expected demise of MoviePass, but it appears they did not die. Instead, they created new rules that barely prove to be an advantage to their customers, if at all.

So if I'm understanding it correctly, they will now only allow you to see three movies per month on the pass, and they can limit which movies those are based on certain whims or the number of days since the movie's release? Not awesome.

Might as well just go out in a blaze of failed idealism than this lame introduction of a business model that we always assumed was the only way they could be sustainable.

MoviePast

If I were living in the United States, I'm sure I would have written a ton about MoviePass by now. Since I live in Australia, I've written ... let's see ... nothing. Nope, not a single blog label for "moviepass" until the one I'm creating now.

So I'm just in time to comment on the company's death throes.

The "valid thru" date on that card above says 2/18, as an example. But it should say 7/18, because at this point, MoviePass is not likely to make it until August.

I won't recount all the sad, gory details, but the thing that almost all observers expected to happen has happened: MoviePass has run out of money. That's the only thing you can imagine happening when you have to pay movie theater chains $100 to $200 a month for the full price of movie tickets for a customer, and in exchange get only a mere $9.95 from that customer. (Or was it $6.95? The prices changed with some frequency.)

There was some crazy kind of bulk economic theory that this would eventually be a goldmine for them, since the average customer would only go to the movies once a month, or so they thought. As it turns out, when people sign up for a service that will allow them to go to potentially as many as 31 movies a month for less than ten bucks, they want to use it more than once per month.

I don't know if there was some sound logic behind it or if it was always just foolishness, but this company has hours left to live, it seems. The site is down on phones through the U.S., after all showings of the new Mission: Impossible movie had already been blocked.

There's probably a little bit of schadenfreude here, I'm reluctant to admit. See, I have my own "MoviePass" here in Australia, which is my critics card. For $75 a year, I can see movies with the same frequency as American MoviePass customers, with certain restrictions (some theaters don't accept my card, and you can't go on a Saturday night at pretty much any of them). But unlike MoviePass, you could see the same movie a dozen times, theoretically, since each theater only looks at your card and makes you sign a little piece of paper, which they then just file away in some drawer. There's no sharing of information between theaters, as the transaction ends at the point of contact.

So when MoviePass became available at such a low price, I felt like something special about my critics card had been lost. That's ridiculous because they're two different countries and two different sets of circumstances, but I do enjoy telling American friends that I have a kind of payment for my critic work in the form of seeing movies for free. That didn't seem as impressive when MoviePass got them the same thing for only a little more than my $75 per year.

But as we always expected it would, MoviePass ceased to be viable, and now -- or very soon, anyway -- I'm alone in my specialness. Now that it's actually happening, I don't feel any great joy in it, despite those small feelings of schadenfreude I mentioned above. The sense of sorrow that friends of mine have lost something great is the more dominant emotion.

R.I.P., MoviePass. You tried.