Roku Netflix player is a no-brainer

FedEx delivered my Roku Netflix player today, and after less than 10 minutes of set-up, I was up and watching THE RED BALLOON.

The box, which in theory is competition to Apple TV, Amazon Unbox, etc, is the easiest-to-use piece of electronics I’ve ever encountered. Even my mom could do it! Apple prides itself on brain-dead ease-of-use, and while this thing isn’t quite as sexy as a piece of Apple hardware, it’s as intuitive as anything that’s ever come out of Cupertino.

Not to mention the fact that it’s a measly $100! That’s a one-time charge—no additional subscription required aside from the Netflix subscription you probably already have. No bullshit “expires after X hours”, no taking up hard disk space on my computer on something I’ll only watch once. The quality is somewhere around non-HD digital cable, which is fine for most people and something I can live with. Like Apple TV, HD-quality content is a promised upgrade somewhere down the line.

The Roku player creates the first viable download service, and in my opinion, may become the killer app for downloadable content. Yes I know you can get the same content without the Roku box, but when I want to watch a movie I want to sit on the couch, relax, and watch it on my TV, not on my computer screen. That’s the thinking behind the Apple TV, but the Roku player does it better, simpler and cheaper. It’s the missing link, and now Apple, Microsoft, Sony and everyone else get to play catch-up.

Céline & Julie go through the looking glass

The Brooklyn Academy of Music recently began a 2 week retrospective of Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (aka the Director’s Fortnight) to celebrate that festival’s 40th anniversary, and to kick it off, they’ve presented one of the most challenging and impressive films likely to have ever played in that festival.

Jacques Rivette’s CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING is a brash slice of French New Wave innovation from 1974 that’s remarkable, not only in the confidence with which it plays with conventions, but also in the ripple effect it has had in cinema since. I can confidently say that the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kauffman collaborations, David Lynch’s work (notably MULHOLLAND DRIVE), even Guillermo Del Toro’s fantasy/horror creations are all deeply indebted to this film, whether they know it or not.

I’m not going to write a lengthy synopsis, in part because I’d hate to deprive anyone of the delightful surprises that lurk inside but also because no synopsis could adequately capture this film’s spirit, much less the loopy story that unfolds. (However if a synopsis is what you want, one with spoilers can be found here.)

What I can tell you without hesitation is that this film should be just as highly regarded as an innovative cinematic breakthrough as is BREATHLESS, 2001 and even CITIZEN KANE and METROPOLIS. But how many other films feel so fresh and completely new 30 years later? Rivette ignores all expectations of narrative logic, story continuity, and character development, yet produces a film that engages, thrills and entertains as few others.

The film is long—almost 3 1/2 hours. This is usually a turn off for me, not because of short attention span issues but because I usually find films that run excessively over 2 hours to be bloated; filled with unnecessary exposition, or more often, weighed down by material that the director didn’t have the confidence to cut out. This is definitely (and defiantly) not the case here. I’m embarrassingly unfamiliar with Rivette’s work but I do know it’s almost always long (the prime example being his 12.5 hour opus OUT 1). I think this is what has turned me off from exploring him but after this experience I will be rectifying that soon.

I have to wonder: why has CÉLINE AND JULIE… remained largely unseen and unknown? It’s an injustice to film history, but thankfully an injustice that will be partially undone thanks to BAM and Director’s Fortnight. Not only are they kicking off the retrospective with CÉLINE AND JULIE…, they are running it for a full week. That means that New Yorkers have plenty of opportunities to get familiar with this undersung masterpiece, so if you have any interest in film at all and you’re in NYC, do yourself a favor and make the time to see it while you can. It’s out of print on VHS and has never been on DVD in the US (BFI, who provided the beautiful new print playing at BAM, has a recently released 2-disc PAL DVD for you lucky Europeans.)

So with that, I’ll add something that’s been said many times but has never been more true—if any film deserves the Criterion treatment, this is it. Fingers are crossed.

Earlier this year, the Museum of the Moving Image out in Astoria, Queens shut its doors for a major renovation and expansion.

For me this museum’s main value has been its screening series—almost always interesting and valuable. A recent retrospective, a career-spanning Frank Borzage series, offered an large number of rarely seen films that were great to watch on a big screen. The museum’s chief curator, David Schwartz, is an excellent programmer that is always on the lookout for overlooked gems, old and new, deserving to be seen.

As for the museum itself, it was fairly lacking. A permanent exhibit on the various ways the moving image has been created over the years was mildly interesting but never worth more than one visit. Beyond that, the museum’s focus seemed to be on a revolving exhibition of classic video games—good for a little diversion while waiting for a screening but hardly worth the focus the museum gave it.

So hearing of the closing, which will go until early 2010 or so, was bittersweet. Perhaps a refresh of the facility, which is due to get much larger, will inject some innovative life into the exhibitions, but I’m saddened to go without the aforementioned programs for well over a year (although some of their event programming is continuing at alternative venues).

Perhaps as a sign of the reinvigorated museum to come, this past week saw the launch of a fantastic new online resource. The Moving Image Source is an interesting site that gathers new critical and scholarly writings, an international calendar of film-related events, and a research guide on other online resources.

The lineup of people involved with the site is particularly encouraging: Former Village Voice critic Dennis Lim is editor-in-chief, with contributions from such notable names as Melissa Anderson, Michael Atkinson and Jonathan Rosenbaum, among others. It feels like the site is redeeming the sins of newspaper and magazine editors who have been implying lately that critical writing on film is no longer relevant. Every article in the first edition is an excellent read, and portends great things to come.