In an age where Hollywood studios finally seem to be wising up to the value of streaming rights to their content, I’ve been questioning the continued viability of all-you-can-watch subscription services like Netflix. But, if the company is able to continue inking deals like the one they made today, we could all be safely watching gobs of cheap movies through their platform for the foreseeable future. What’s this deal I speak of? Brothers Harvey and Bob’s Weinstein Company has made an agreement with the service to make a host of their recent films available for streaming on Netflix exclusively, instead of sending them to cable. That includes titles like the Madonna-directed W.E., the Shakespeare adaptation Coriolanus, and probably the crown jewel of the deal, Best Picture Nominee The Artist. As usually happens when deals like this are made, ass-kissing by both sides commenced. Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos said, “We couldn’t be happier to be working again with Harvey and Bob, who have an unmatched track record of creating critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies.” He then added, “The Artist is a symbol of the Weinsteins’ triumphant return to the top of the film business. Through deep passion, great taste and phenomenal vision, Harvey and Bob continue to surprise audiences and make history.” You hear that? These returning heroes are making history. That Uggie was one cute dog.

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

Redbox kiosks have their good points and their bad points. On the one hand, you can’t beat renting newish home video releases for just a buck a night. That price beats any of the brick and mortar video stores and any of the VOD services that are baked into people’s home electronics. But, on the other hand, I kind of see them as the multiplex of the home video industry. By putting brick and mortar video stores out of business while offering a much more limited selection, they’re just reinforcing the idea in the moviegoing public’s mind that there are only two or three huge movies out that are worth paying attention to at any given time, indie and art films be damned. Still, you can’t beat that price, so Redbox’s parent company Coinstar has seen profits grow and their stock prices soar over the past couple of years. And now that things have gone so well, Coinstar is looking to capitalize on that success by making moves to take over the entire home video landscape. Dueling reports on Redbox activity have hit the financial world today, and both could have big impacts on the future of how we watch movies at home.

Recent times have been tough for once-unstoppable giant Netflix. The end of a deal with Starz that afforded them streaming rights to a bevy of films ended, leaving customers complaining about the dwindling selection of the Watch Instantly feature. A separation of the streaming service and the DVD by mail service created a huge price hike that saw customers canceling their accounts in record numbers. A creation of a new company called Quikster lead to the entire Internet pointing and laughing. It’s like those guys can’t catch a break! You know what they say though, “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I think it’s fancy-speak for “just chill.” Netflix may not be doomed after all. As a matter of fact, the New York Times has recently broke the news that the company has just struck a new, very important deal with DreamWorks that will give them exclusive rights to a whole host of their films. That potentially means access to kids’ stuff like Antz, Shrek, and Kung Fu Panda, dramas like Almost Famous, A Beautiful Mind, and American Beauty, and comedies like Road Trip and Old School. This is quite a coup for a company that people have spent the last week predicting the death of. Normally exclusive rights to studio collections like this go to HBO, who has a whole warehouse of money to throw at studios, Scrooge McDuck style. Striking this new deal with Netflix over HBO has a couple

There was a brief period where Netflix worked so well that it was like magic. For a small fee you could consume as many movies as you wanted from a gigantic library, through DVDs sent back and forth in the mail between you and the service. Then the company launched their Watch Instantly service, and suddenly you could watch a portion of their library even more easily by streaming them right from the website. At first that was a free option, built right into your subscription, but eventually the pricing structures switched around so that you were paying a bit for both. Not a problem, Netflix was still a near magical service that allowed film enthusiasts, even those who lived in the country and not in cultural epicenters, greater access to more movies than they’ve ever had in their lives. Eventually use of Watch Instantly exploded, it was a hugely popular service that had lower overhead costs than shipping DVDs through mail, Netflix seemed to have two huge cash cows in their hands. But that’s where the problems started.

There has been a lot of fervor over the recent news that Netflix is now splitting it’s mailed DVD and streaming video services in two and charging a big increase if you want to keep doing both. Comments sections on blogs are full of hate, the social media sites are all full of complaining. Today brings more good news for people who love bad news. If you’re one of those people, like Roger Ebert, who doesn’t feel that they need to continue on getting DVDs in the mail and are going with streaming only, the way you consume your Netflix movies is going to change dramatically. Streaming only customers don’t get a queue. Felix Simon, in his Reuters blog, opines that this means Netflix is moving toward a business model that relies less on giving customers a broad choice of films to watch, and more on bringing them the big Hollywood releases in the most convenient way. As Netflix has to spend more of its efforts picking and choosing where the money they dish out for streaming rights goes, chances are that less and less art house films are going to be available for Instant Watch. Maybe Criterion felt this wind blowing in when they moved their movies over to Hulu.

Netflix announced a new pricing scheme today, and if you believe the spin they’re putting on it over at the official Netflix blog, their new packages are the cheapest they’ve ever offered! Except, for the first time ever, you will now need to have multiple packages to keep all of your services. So probably you’re going to be paying a lot more. Oh, bummer. What they’ve done is split their Instant Watch service and their DVD by mail service into two separate things. Both the Instant service and the one DVD at a time service will cost $7.99, which means you will now need to pay $15.98 a month if you want to continue watching movies both ways. And seeing how Instant Watch is a great feature, but nowhere near comprehensive when it comes to film library, you’re probably going to want to keep watching both ways. The other reason (in addition to a false sense of savings) Netflix gives for this move is their realization that there are enough customers out there who are only interested in physical media and don’t do streaming to keep their mail business alive longer than they anticipated. Last year, when they announced their first ever streaming-only plan and started treating DVD mailing as a $2 dollar add-on, it seemed like they were taking the first steps toward ending their mail service, which has much higher overhead than streaming for the company. Now it appears that they realize the original model of sending out

I’m not what anyone could call a financial commentator by any stretch of the imagination, but Blockbuster was a big part of how pretty much all of us saw our movies for a big chunk of our lives, so I’ve been following it’s business woes with some interest lately. Here’s the long and short of it: Their business strategy started failing, bankruptcy was filed, it was decided that they would be auctioned off as a whole rather than dissolved and sold piecemeal, and now that auction has happened. When all was said and done, the big winner of the day was Dish Network. It’s reported that they will be spending $320 million for the acquisition with around $228 million being in cash. The purchase includes more than 1700 stores that are still in existence.

Less than a week ago we reported that video kiosk king Redbox would be getting into the streaming video game in order to present a challenge to the ruler of that realm Netflix. However, it was shrugged off as not much of a threat due to their plan of charging for individual movies not being as enticing as Netflix’s unlimited streaming, once a month subscription fee. Well a new challenger has entered the battlefield, and this one looks like it could be more formidable. Today Amazon announced on their homepage that they would begin unlimited streaming of their online collection of movies to Amazon Prime members. What is an Amazon Prime member? It is a $79 dollar a year club that, to this point, got you unlimited free 2 day shipping on Amazon orders. Add to that perk unlimited streaming of movies and you might have something people want to sign up for. $79 dollars a year divided by 12 months in a year comes out to about $6.59 a month. That’s well over a dollar a month cheaper than Netflix’s current unlimited streaming plan of $7.99 a month. Will the savings be enough to get people to switch? The answer to who will reign supreme in the streaming video war will probably come down to who can maintain the largest catalogue of available content. Amazon is off to a good start with 5,000 movies and TV shows available. Their list of titles can be perused: here Which way will

From the people that brought you Sneezing Panda, it’s a movie rental concept that will rival Netflix, Redbox, and that guy that comes over sometimes and acts out all the parts to Sleepless in Seattle for you despite the restraining order.