Netflix Movies On-Demand

The future of television is on our doorstep. The merging of the internet and downloadable content to your television is fast approaching. You'll hear often about ITunes and ITV from Apple, but I think one of the major players in all of this will be Netflix. They changed the movie rental paradigm by offering no late fees and access to blockbusters to independents and just about everything in between.

Now, as a FREE part of my subscription I can watch over 2000 movies online in full screen for free.

I just go to the website where I normally determine which DVD will be mailed to me next and now all I have to do is hit the Watch Now button, select a movie and hit play and wallah, the movie starts showing on my computer. Amazing.

Eventually, such a service will be viewed on my television as opposed to my computer screen, but the fact that I can watch movies in great quality whenever I want is pretty amazing stuff.

If I want to see Casablanca RIGHT NOW, I can. Or North by Northwest. Or Chinatown. Or A Streetcar Named Desire. All available immediately.

Sometimes, technology rocks.

The Prestige (2006)

There are three steps to a magic trick... the setup, the turn (in which an ordinary object does something extraordinary, such as disappear) and the prestige (when the ordinary object is restored through extraordinary means).

The prestige is the payoff, the secret that makes the illusion work.

The film, The Prestige, helmed by Memento and Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan, is an interesting, dark and ultimately disturbing film about magic, competition, obsession and its impact on life. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play competing magicians who end up going to some extraordinary means to remain at the top of the game.

The film also stars Michael Caine, Piper Perabo and Scarlett Johansson as co-horts and love interests who feel the full weight of Jackman and Bale's destructive competition.

And, like the magic trick, the film is an illusion of sorts in and of itself, with Act One as the setup, Act Two as the turn and Act Three as the prestige.

You'll be thinking about this film for some time afterwards.

Sex Machine (2006)

The microcinema effort Sex Machine, written by John Oak Dalton and Christopher Sharpe and directed by Sharpe, is an interesting cross between film noir, horror and pulp comics. The story opens with the protagonist, a heavily bandaged man, awakening to find himself standing over three corpses while holding a smoking gun at another man kneeling on the ground, pleading for his life. The protagonist finds that his right arm is from a black man, his left from a white man, the arm heavily tatooed with the phrase Sex Machine. His head covered in gauze much like the invisible man and an electrode located under his skin in his neck shorting out, sending painful electrical charges through this body.

That's the opening of the film. Pretty cool.

The protagonist Frank (ala Frankenstein) escapes and hides in a hotel room while he deals with the pain of recovering from the surgery that pieced him together while, at the same time, struggling to understand the flashes of random memories that penetrate his mind. Once he's able to put his past into some coherent mess, he heads back home to his best friend and old girlfriend, struggling how to pursue a normal life while being hunted by the people that created him.

The film itself is very impressive conceptually, cinematically and directorially. I've rarely seen a microcinema effort look this good or directed with such inventive and interesting visual ways. Major kudos to Sharpe and cinematographer Shogo Nakagawa from such a great look.

The acting is hit and miss, which often occurs in films at this level and the pacing is uneven, but lead actor John Howell is wonderful as Frank and manages the complex role very well.

Because microcinema is filmmaking with minimal budgets, it allows the filmmaker to take chances and Sex Machine does just that.