there's been a lot of discussion about the points he raised, but i was surprised by a fact he mentioned about the most popular film on netflix:
We also know there's an opening for quality based on data from the good folks at Netflix. Yes, they rent plenty of tentpole movie dvds, just like everyone else. But they also have the most accurate collaborative filtering technology I've seen. Type in 50 movies you like, and Netflix will tell you--with remarkable accuracy--what other films you will like.so i wrote netflix and asked them if this was accurate and how it was determined. here's what steve swasey of netflix's public relations had to say:
This is how a relatively obscure film from 1974 became the most popular picture among Netflix's six million subscribers: because it's really good. The movie, by the way, is "The Conversation."
Christopher,david seems to be on the right track. i found the article. here's the relevant section:
"Crash" is the #1 rented film of all time at Netflix. Below I’ve pasted the Top 100 list off my Netflix account.
“The Conversation” is not on the Top 100 list.
Netflix has 8.7 million members, not 6 million.
Mark Gill may be citing a New York Times article by David Leonhardt from a few years ago in which David wrote that Netflix gives life to hidden movies like “The Conversation.” But I don’t really know.
The company's servers also sift through the one billion ratings in its system to tell you which movies that you might like, based on which ones you have already liked.so not exactly the most popular movie on netflix. at all.
The result is a vast movie meritocracy that gives a film a second or third life simply because — get this — it's good. Last year, "The Conversation" (average rating: four stars) was the 13th-most-watched movie from the early 1970's on Netflix.
makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of mark's facts, and the relevance of the conclusions he draws from them.
1 deep thoughts:
The more I read about these sorts of things, the more I realize that a lot of what people call "Independent Film" is this idea of "Like Hollywood, but we can do some really crazy shit." Or, even more likely, "Like Hollywood, except with Me."
When filmmakers and writers let the conversation by owned by companies that were essentially smaller versions of Hollywood studios and called themselves "independents", then it was time to nuke from orbit and move on.
Compare any of this with any filmmaker or set of guys putting together a film from guts and time and desire, using money from wherever they can get it, and, most importantly, getting it out there without turning around and selling it into the studio system anyway, well, then we'll talk about "independent film".
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