On the eve of the Berlinale, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa joins us to talk about waterboarding Denzel Washington and the mind games of Safe House. Plus, we look forward to a few films to catch in Berlin, and it’s Matt Singer versus Alison Willmore in a Filmspotting: SVU showdown of Movie News Quizzing. Download This Episode

We try to keep cursing in the headlines down a minimum in case small children or animals are toddling by an RSS feed, but seriously, Netflix‘s very public business-making decisions lately have demanded a little swearing. It’s a company that started with an innovative idea, but it’s also a company that provides DVDs through the postal service and streaming video. Beyond that, it shouldn’t be rocket surgery. Of course, maybe it’s not that the company has made a few bad decisions lately, but that so many have been broadcast or celebrated publicly before slinking back into the shadows of shame that is what’s so damning. The latest blunder disguised as a shrewd move? Netflix is responding to its stock prices by killing Qwikster before it was even implemented. The company had intended to split their DVD and streaming services into two products, meaning that dual-users would have had to create a Qwikster account and keep up with their Netflix streaming queue. Two queues is apparently way too much for our media-addled minds (especially when you also have Get Glue and Four Square to check into). It’s excellent to see a company respond to such vehement negative customer response, but it’s also one more sign of weakness. Instead of moving forward with the service and letting customers get used to it (or, hell, even grow to like it), Netflix has admitted it was moronic by aborting it. Hopefully this is the last bad dance step. In a short, sweet email to [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The other day I reached what one could consider the pinnacle of anger – Dr. Cole Abaius (retired) approached me about writing a Boiling Point about Netflix. Apparently the streaming and disc rental service got the good doctor angry and he did what any logical person would do – approached me to get even angrier on his behalf. At first I was somewhat reluctant to aim the anger rifle at Netflix. After all, I’ve been a subscriber for about six years and my experience has been mostly positive. For most of that six years, for a reasonable price you could get a lot of movies shipped to the comfort of your own home and later, even stream them right to your computer. But then, while using the official Netflix app, I became aware of many of its shortcomings and started getting angry. The floodgates opened – not only was I angry at the app, but I was angry at all of Netflix.

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as LearningSpnshinIndy and GreedoSh0t1st in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the two ponder whether Netflix is dramatically changing their own movie-watching habits, whether it’s something to fight against, and whether doing your laundry during a documentary is something that should be punishable by death. Unsurprisingly, they learn way more about themselves than they ever wanted to know, and an intervention follows. Is it okay to pause a movie and come back to it later? Are our attention spans really waning? Or is this a new test for a movie’s quality?

Indie film producer Ted Hope and former high-ranking Facebook employee Chris Kelly have joined the board of a new website that allows users to stream from a library of indie and art films. I guess that’s a sign that people think this thing’s going to go places. At first glance Fandor might seem like it is a redundant service, given the existence of Netflix and Amazon, but upon inspection it actually takes a number of innovative approaches that make it an interesting new content provider to watch. The idea of making the online movie watching experience more social isn’t a new one; people have been tossing it around for a while. Netflix used to have more of a social platform built into it’s site, but they could never really figure out what they wanted to do with it, and ultimately stripped most of it away. It was just announced that The Dark Knight will become the first movie available to stream on Facebook, and I think the answer to making online movie watching more social is right there. Netflix shouldn’t have stumbled around trying to figure out their own social platform, they should have concentrated on integrating their service deeply with Facebook. One of the creators of Fandor, Jonathan Marlow, says, “Some have embraced the notion of inventing the Facebook of movies. We realized Facebook was the Facebook of movies.”

In an increasingly technology obsessed world, some people aren’t willing to put their gadgets down long enough to watch a movie. Or heck, even have a conversation with another human being. You’ve seen it happen a million times. Somebody refuses to turn off their cell phone in a theater despite the on screen warnings before the feature. Someone you’re trying to talk to at work won’t look up from their Facebook page long enough to give you their full attention. The President cancels a press conference because he’s playing Angry Birds. Okay, so that last one might be speculation, but this type of behavior is a real problem we’re facing. Well Warner Bros. isn’t letting it get in the way of their efforts to distribute films. Not too long ago they became the first company to distribute films as iOS apps, and now they have made a deal to stream their films through Facebook. The first app versions of films they created were Inception and The Dark Knight. The launching of Facebook streaming begins with just The Dark Knight. Before they’re done with you, Warner Bros. is going to make sure you’ve watched that film on every screen you own.

Online movie streaming and at home DVD distributing company Netflix has announced that they have amassed over 20 million subscribers.  They had projected to add 3.6 million subscribers in 2010, but ended up doubling that figure due to the astonishing growth in popularity of their instant streaming feature.  With all of these new paying customers profits are through the roof, rights to more content is being gobbled up, and brick and mortar video rental stores are nearly a kitschy memory.

It looks as if the folks at Hulu are once again looking for ways to keep me from being productive. Now I might be able to ignore work and watch old episodes of Doogie Howser, M.D. on my iPhone.