Oscar Predictions 2014

Predicting the Oscars have always been fascinating because they are a black box: we know what we think are the factors that go in to deciding who wins (is someone overdue, was the movie they were in a hit, do they have a reputation, are they impersonating a famous person . . . oh yeah, was their performance good?) but in the end we know only the winner’s name, but not the reason why any particular member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted for them. 

The prediction game has gotten less interesting in recent years, what with the advent of so many pre-Oscar awards and the emergence of social media.  A true upset is almost impossible under these circumstances.  The person who wins the Oscar will almost invariably have picked up a Guild award, Golden Globe, or some critics’ association award before the Oscars are awarded.

This year promised to be one of the most boring Oscar years on record, with most of the major awards locked in once the nominations were announced.  However, some last minute changes to the landscape have managed to add an air of uncertainty, although by and large there should be few surprises on March 2^nd.

Best Picture:  Yeah, I’m starting with the big one first, because it is the most interesting.  Most pre-Oscar awards have been going to 12 Years a Slave, with some going to Gravity.  However, I think there are a couple of things to consider before flipping a coin between those two films.  First, the Academy Best Picture winners that have dealt with race have either been light (Driving Miss Daisy) or positive (the abominable Crash, easily the worst Best Picture winner ever).  A dark (pardon the expression) movie like 12 Years might not be some members’ cup of tea.  Science Fiction films taking place in outer space have never been big vote getters when nominated for Best Picture (2001 wasn't even nominated, Star Wars).  The Academy uses a weighted average system of voting, meaning that it is possible for the Least Common Denominator, the film that annoys the fewest people, to win.  So I am predicting an upset and making my pick American Hustle.

What else does Hustle have going for it?  It picked up the Golden Globe for Best Comedy.  It is the second year in a row that director David O. Russell has directed his cast to nominations in all four acting categories, something that has only happened a total of 15 times and not since Reds in 1981 (plus he directed The Fighter which won two acting Oscars and was nominated for Best Picture).  It is an historical film set in the 1970’s, something else Oscar likes (The King’s Speech over The Social Network).  It is a “comedy,” which is a drawback, but it is not a jokefest Animal House kind of comedy but a satire on the era it is set in.  Russell has directed two recent Oscar winners, Christian Bale for The Fighter and Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. 

So my pick for Best Picture is American Hustle.  If I am right I am a genius; if not, hey I took a shot.

Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.  One point against 12 Years a Slave winning Best Picture is that Steve McQueen almost certainly won’t win Best Director (although being nominated is an accomplishment for an actor who has been dead since 1980).  Cuaron made an eye-popping special effects film that contains two great performances by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.  He’s picked up just about every pre-Oscar award including the Golden Globe and BAFTA. 

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey.  When the nominations were first announced, I thought McConaughey’s lightweight filmography (Failure to Launch, Sahara, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) might cost him votes among those who couldn’t take him seriously as an actor.  But he has added gravitas to his career with recent work in films like Mud and The Lincoln Lawyer, and he’s just about run the table of the pre-Oscar awards.  I’m pulling for Chiwetel Ejiofor just because he starred in Joss Whedon’s Serenity and I always pull for anyone associated with Joss.  But Oscar LOVES actors who make physical transformations for roles (Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote), so McConaughey’s got the nod.  My dark horse is Bruce Dern, a respected older actor who’s been nominated before, but older actors usually win in the Supporting category (Alan Arkin, James Coburn).

Best Actress: Cate Blanchette.  This was a stone lock until the flap over child abuse charges were leveled at Woody Allen.  It might cost Cate some votes, but she’s an Oscar winner for The Aviator and gave the stand-out performance in a weak year for Best Actress candidates.

Supporting Actor and Actress:  Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong’o.  They've almost run the table  (Nyong’o lost the Golden Globe to Jennifer Lawrence, but the Academy’s not going to give her an award two years in a row) and the run won’t stop in Oscar night.

Best Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave.  It will get votes from those who will vote for it for Best Picture, and from those who DON’T vote for it for Best Picture as a consolation prize.

Best Original Screenplay: American Hustle.  There is a strong correlation between winning best picture and winning best screenplay, since I am picking Hustle to win Best Picture I have to be consistent.  Also, the main rival is Spike Jonze’s Her, which is wonderful but again might put some Oscar voters off with the Sci-Fi aspects.  

Best Original song:  When a rap song wins Best Song, it's time to eliminate the category; when a song whose lyrics are in Hindi wins Best Song, it's time to eliminate the category; when a song called "Man or Muppet" wins Best Song, it is past time to eliminate the category.

In Memoriam: Harold Ramis

In Memoriam: Harold Ramis

There was a lot of talk recently about Mount Rushmore when Lebron James made his choice about which iconic NBA stars he would put on “his” basketball Mount Rushmore (of course he then announced by the end of his career he would knock one of them off).  For whatever reason, any talk about the best of anything always requires choosing four to put on that category’s Mount Rushmore.

If you were to choose the Mount Rushmore of film comedies since 1978 it would not be insane to nominate Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.  You’d almost have to bump Caddyshack in favor of Airplane!, and you could lobby for something from Woody Allen or the Judd Apatow family, but otherwise that’s a solid group of comedies for enshrinement.  What do they have in common?  Harold Ramis.

Unlike other noted film comedy writer/directors like Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin or Preston Stuges, Ramis was not a singular comedic voice.  His best work was usually in collaboration with others, and his acting work was always in smaller roles.  But the fact that he had some input on so many classic comedies indicates that his comic instincts were formidable.

Putting out a few quality comedies could be a fluke; Ramis was associated with several comedies that were game-changers.  He was a co-writer on Animal House, a movie that transformed the movie industry by showing that a low-budget comedy could generate a huge box office if it was smart and took chances.  He co-wrote and co-starred in Ghostbusters, a film that proved that a big-budget comedy could generate a huge box office if it was smart and took chances (a lesson lost on Steven Spielberg when he made 1941).  He directed and co-wrote Caddyshack, which proved that one way to success is to just get out of Bill Murray’s way and let him ad lib.

And then there is Groundhog Day, which is Harold Ramis’ “Annie Hall,” the film where he went from making “funny” films and managed to combine laughter with heart.  In contrast to his early work which reveled in anarchy (thanks to stars like John Belushi and Bill Murray), Groundhog Day was a screenplay executed with mathematical precision (almost literally; people have tried to estimate exactly how many times weatherman Phil Connor re-lived the same day over and over and over).  It was a film whose unique structure required precision in plotting, character development and dialogue, and Ramis was more than up to the challenge.  Ignored by the Oscars, Ramis won a BAFTA award for Best Original Screenplay.  It was also the first film where Bill Murray’s acting was taken seriously, possibly contributing to his eventual nomination for Lost in Translation.

Unlike Woody Allen, Ramis did not follow Groundhog Day with a series of equally prestigious films.  In fact, his post-Groundhog Day efforts are a litany of mediocre comedies; the only one that stands out at all is Analyze This, which was one of the first films to successfully make hay out of the comedic acting chops of Robert deNiro.  Bedazzled was a poor idea poorly executed; why on Earth would anyone try to improve upon the Dudley Moore/Peter Cook original, especially with Elizabeth Hurley in the role as the Devil (Roger Ebert pointed out that if the Devil looked like Elizabeth Hurley, why is the poor guy selling his soul asking for another woman)?  Year One attempted to tap into the John Belushi zeitgeist with arguably his closest approximation, Jack Black, but it didn’t work. 

But why focus on the negative?  Animal House.  Caddyshack.  Vacation.  Ghostbusters.  Back to School.  Groundhog Day.  Now THAT’s a resume.

Sports and Society

We are at a point in history when a derogatory stereotype can be shattered.  Michael Sam, a defensive football player from Missouri, has publicly come out as being gay.  This presents a tremendous opportunity to thoroughly debunk a long-held, deeply ingrained stereotype, namely that all football players are raw meat eating, psychotic homophobes.

Several NFL player tweeted that they didn't have a problem with an openly gay football player.  Almost every quote mentioned on ESPN expressing doubts about whether an openly gay player would be accepted in the NFL came from nameless executives.  None of them said they wouldn't want a gay player on their teams; they all said that they didn't THINK a gay player would be accepted by athletes.

I’m not saying Michael Sam would be welcomed by every player in every locker room.  Given what Richie Incognito did to toughen up a fellow player who was straight, heaven knows what would happen if Sam was an inhabitant of the Miami Dolphins locker room.  But the coach of the Green Bay Packers said he’d be accepted there, and presumably other teams (not to foster another cliche, but maybe the San Francisco 49ers) would not have a problem with a gay player on the roster.

Maybe football players are more evolved than society gives them credit for.  Maybe young football players have been exposed to more openly gay performers, friends, and relatives than older NFL executives.  Maybe not 100% of football players are testosterone fueled idiots who instinctively hate gays, women and nerds.  Sure, there will be some haters; and maybe the percentage of football players harboring anti-gay feeling is higher than that of the general public.  But maybe that percentage is a lot smaller than people assume.

The most noteworthy thing about the whole Michael Sam story is that he came out to his teammates several months ago, and every single one of them respected his privacy and kept his secret.  This is at a time where teenage kids tweet every stupid thought that passes through their heads (oops, that’s another stereotype).  And yet an entire team of macho football players respected Michael Sam so much that not a single one disclosed his announcement. 

Attitudes about gays is notoriously generational.  Someone once said that all that has to happen for gay marriage to be voted into law in most states is a good flu epidemic that might thin the herd of elderly voters.  Ellen DeGeneres is hosting the Academy Awards next month; coming out didn’t hurt her career.  We’ve come a long way from the 1930’s when Hollywood studios ran brothels on their lots and required unmarried actors to “prove” they weren't gay with prostitutes once a week.

We shall have to see what happens with Michael Sam and the NFL draft, and if he is drafted how his presence is dealt with.  One thing is already obvious; societal attitudes towards gays have tipped so far that those who do have a problem with a gay football player are treading lightly and remaining anonymous.  Maybe they’re the ones who are now in a closet harboring a secret they dare not reveal.

Meanwhile, in college basketball, Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart was suspended three games for shoving a Texas Tech fan after the fan directed a comment towards Smart as he was getting up after falling into the crowd.  Smart said he thought he heard a racial taunt; evidence seems to indicate that the fan actually called him a “piece of crap.” 

I have two comments on the entire situation.  First, I am not one to condone violence, but if a 54 year old fat white guy says to a young, athletic African-American, “You’re a piece of crap,” shouldn’t he expect a lot more than a shove?  Can you imagine any context when a fat 54 year old white guy could go up to a young, athletic African American man, call him excrement, and violence would NOT ensue?  Either this guy is dumber than a sack of Texas dirt, or he felt that he was protected by Texas Tech and was thus free to hurl insults at the other team.

Second, both Smart and the fan used the same tired excuse in their apologies; both said that the action that they took “wasn't me.”  I am sick of people committing some heinous act, usually on camera so it can’t be denied, and then saying, “That’s not who I am.”  No, that’s EXACTLY who you are.  The Texas Tech fan is someone who loves to sit close to the court and yell insults at the athletes representing the other team (the idea that this is the first time he EVER yelled an insult at a member of the other team defies credibility), and there had been concerns about Smart’s previous incidents of displaying temper.  People, you are what you do.  I just wish someone would be caught punching an opposing player in the back of the head and apologize by saying, “I’m sorry I got caught.”

Sports is a microcosm of society.  Sometimes sports is ahead of the curve (Jackie Robinson) and sometimes it has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21^st century (instant replay in baseball).  Michael Sam proves we've come a long way; the Marcus Smart incident proves we have a long way to go.

TV Review: Sherlock

Warning: Here there be spoilers

After two long years the series Sherlock returned to American television with three new episodes, once again proving that the British model of television production is a far cry from its American counterpart.  American networks are reducing their commitment to new shows (Sleepy Hollow is arguably the biggest hit of the season but Fox is only producing 13 episodes instead of the usual 22), but for the BBC to call three episodes a season is pushing things well beyond where US networks are willing to go.

The third season of Sherlock is, in my view, the weakest of the three seasons taken as a whole.  It did not produce an episode as weak as season one’s The Blind Banker or season two’s The Hounds of Baskerville, but neither did it approach the giddy heights of The Great Game or A Scandal in Belgravia.  It never really produced a reasonable explanation for Sherlock not being dead after the events of The Reichenbach Fall, although it did have a great deal of fun in refusing to play fair and say what happened.  And the season finale dealt with a villain so underwhelming that the possible return of Moriarty in the waning seconds of the third episode is a decided relief.

But let’s focus on the positive, starting with the acting of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.  While I still consider Cumberbatch to be the third best Holmes ever (Jeremy Brett is numero uno, followed by Basil Rathbone) Cumberbatch and Freeman are the best pair to inhabit the Doyle characters.  They are, to steal a line from The Simpsons, the original Odd Couple: Holmes is dynamic, flamboyant, a force of nature, while Watson is quiet, unassuming, and possesses an unending supply of British reserve.  Watson knows Holmes so well, yet is endlessly surprised by him.  This process of discovery is wonderfully portrayed by Freeman in the facial reactions he gives to Holmes.

The third season continues to flesh out the supporting players while adding one major new one.  Lestrade (Holmes can never remember his first name, a tip of the cap to the Doyle Canon which never supplied him with one) is still defending Holmes, still there when he calls for help even if it turns out he needs assistance with his Best Man speech at Watson’s wedding.  Molly Hooper, the morgue attendant at St. Bart’s Hospital, is still horribly in love with Holmes even after being given greater access to the object of her affections and thus a chance to see what a jerk he is.  Anderson, Holmes biggest detractor on the police force, is now the leader of a Holmes fan group.  Holmes’ brother Mycroft (played by series co-creator Mark Gatiss, who gave himself a great part) is still as supercilious and contemptuous as ever.

The addition is Mary Morstan Watson (Amanda Abbington), the woman Watson proposes to just as Holmes comes out of hiding after being thought dead for two years, and whom he marries is episode two.  Creators Gatiss and Steven Moffatt do a great job of inserting her into the delicate chemistry of Holmes and Watson; she’s not an impediment to their further adventures, she’s a catalyst.  Holmes immediately deduces there is something “off” about her (when he first reads her the word “Liar” is prominent among his deductions), but he allows Watson’s feelings to cloud his judgment.  It’s just possible she “gets” Holmes even better than Watson does (“I’m not John,” she says to Holmes at one point, “I can tell when you’re fibbing.”).

The biggest weakness of season three is that it doesn’t quite measure up to the expectations that have been established.  Unfair, but true.  It is probably impossible for the creators to ever match A Scandal in Belgravia, which had a wonderfully twisty plot that somehow all pulled together, snappy dialog (Watson: “I was a soldier, I killed people!” Holmes: “You were a doctor.”  Watson: “I had bad days!”) and the heady infusion of Lara Pulver as Irene Adler, aka “The Woman.”  Episode one of season three, The Empty Hearse, was cleverly set up but ultimately its “blow up Parliament on Guy Fawkes Day” plot came across as a mild rip-off of (or homage to) V For Vendetta.  Probably the best episode of season three was the middle one, The Sign of Three, where Holmes solves one attempted murder and thwarts another during his Best Man speech at Watson’s wedding.  Actually, the eight year old ring bearer in fact solves the crimes, which has to be a little embarrassing for Holmes.  The third episode, His Last Vow, featured a villain whose modus operandi made little sense; he was a blackmailer who apparently memorized whatever dirty information he got his hands on and then destroyed the supporting documents.  His entire ability to blackmail people was based on a bluff; all it would take is one person to sue him and his game would be up.

His Last Vow also demonstrates the increasing tendency of the stories to autocorrect Holmes’ erroneous deductions.  Early on Holmes is shot and he deduces that his life depends on whether he falls backwards or forwards.  Let’s skip over the utter implausibility of that and skip ahead to where Holmes states that the shooter aimed carefully and in fact did not want him dead.  So the shooter knew that Holmes would choose the correct way to fall?  That an ambulance would arrive in the usual 8 minutes and not be delayed long enough to allow Holmes to bleed to death?  That it is possible to shoot someone in the abdomen and know EXACTLY how long it will take them to bleed to death?  Holmes was either wrong when he decided that falling backwards was the only way to survive, or wrong when he decided the shooter didn’t want to kill him.  Either way, he is fallible.

Of course these complaints are dwarfed by the cleverness of the plots, the subtlety of the acting and the visual flair of the direction.  His Last Vow ended with a cliffhanger almost as impossible as the one that ended season two, with an apparently alive Moriarty declaring he was back and asking, “Miss me?”  After watching all three episodes of season three of Sherlock, I have to say yes, we did.  Season three started out with the creators of Sherlock resurrecting Holmes; let’s see if they can bring his arch nemesis back to life as well.  The problem is that it might take another two years.

What has Pete Carroll been smoking?

Let’s face it, the two week break between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl is a complete waste of time.  Nothing interesting has happened at Media Day since MTV sent Downtown Julie Brown to cover the event wearing a miniskirt.  The fear of providing bulletin board material reduces even a player like Richard Sherman to platitudes like “both teams are real competitors.” 

So the media leaped to attention when Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll responded to a question from a reporter by opining that the NFL should look into the use of medical marijuana in treating player concussions.

The problem here is not the message but the messenger.  Washington, home of the Seattle Seahawks, is one of two states in the country to legalize recreational marijuana use (the other is Colorado, home of the Denver Broncos; coincidence?), and Pete Carroll’s team has (allegedly) lost more notable players to suspensions over marijuana use than any other team.  So naturally he is going to endorse any policy that would undermine the league’s potential penalties against his players’ off field drug usage.  He is, after all, often described as a players’ coach.

Roger Goodell, in full legal advice mode, has also said that the NFL should look into anything that could improve player safety, because the League is all about player safety.  At least it will until it turns into the National Flag Football League.  But maybe Goodell should think a bit about the ramifications of approving the use of medical marijuana to treat concussions.  The first consequence is that the number of concussions is going to rise dramatically.

Imagine the first play of the first game of the season.  The kicker kicks off, the ball tumbles through the air and is caught by the return man, who dashes out of the end zone and is brought down at the 25 yard line.  Immediately half the players on the field grab their heads.  “Ow, my head!  My head!  I’ve got a . . . a . . . I can’t remember the word!  I need help!  Who’s got a joint?”

The incidence of players claiming to have concussions would rise exponentially.  There is a precedent, namely the uptick in NFL players claiming they were found in violation of the NFL’s anti-amphetamine policy because they took Adderall to treat ADHD.  Richard Sherman was once quoted as saying "about half" the league took Adderall, but there’s no way of knowing how accurate he intended that statement to be; if he is right, then the 50% or so of NFL players taking Adderall would slightly exceed the 5% rate of ADHD among adults.  Of course there is no way to be sure about anything because of the secrecy behind the league’s drug testing policies, and the number of players who have formally asked for an exemption to testing because of a prescription for Adderall is still low (and undisclosed), but the NFL has acknowledged that positive tests for amphetamine use has increased significantly in recent years.

Should we be surprised that the coach of a football team that resides in a state where marijuana is legal, and who has had players suspended supposedly for marijuana use, would endorse the use of medical marijuana to treat concussions, the biggest hot button issue facing the league?  The league has a problem with concussions; Carroll has a problem with players being suspended for getting high.  He just wants to solve both problems by having the league undermine its drug testing policy by approving of medical marijuana, which would make testing for recreational marijuana impossible.

Pete Carroll is smart.  Pete Carroll is a players’ coach.  Pete Carroll is just trying to gain an edge for Pete Carroll’s team.  But if he thinks the NFL is going to jump on the medical marijuana bandwagon, then you have to ask, “What’s he been smoking?”

Movie review: Nebraska

I don’t know if this is linguistically accurate, but I've often thought of melancholy as being in the shallow end of the tragedy pool.  Tragedy is looking back on your life and seeing children dying, businesses failing or ambitions thwarted; melancholy is looking back and realizing that you were given lousy options and you still chose poorly.  You married the slightly less unattractive girl but she turned out to be mean and corrosive; you left the family farm for something better and ended up working yourself to death in the city with nothing to show for it; you see relatives at a family reunion that you haven’t seen in years and you wonder what you have in common with these jerks other than DNA.

Alexander Payne’s latest film, Nebraska, drips with melancholy but never wallows in it.  It is peopled with characters from small towns who have small minds and small ambitions, and great regrets about how little progress they made in achieving those dreams.  This isn't the stuff of Shakespeare; no kings, no princes, no dynasties up for grabs, but as the line from Death of a Salesman goes, attention must be paid.

The plot of Nebraska comes from what I believe was a real incident a few years ago when an elderly man made his way to the headquarters of Publishers Clearinghouse because he believed he was the “winner” of a one million dollar prize.  In the movie an aged tippler named Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is determined to walk from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska because he is convinced he won a million dollars in a sweepstakes and no one will drive him there because they all realize it’s a con.  His younger son, Davy (Will Forte) agrees to drive him to Lincoln, partly to spend some time with his Dad, partly to get him to shut up about the million dollars.

As with much literature (see, The Odyssey) the trip does not go smoothly and father and son end up spending several days in the father’s hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska.  During the extended stay old friendships are renewed, old scars are re-opened, and Davy makes the uncomfortable realization, that many middle-aged children have, that his elderly parents were once horny teenagers.

The mood of melancholy is enhanced by the cinematography, which is in black and white.  To be more accurate, it is filmed not in black and white but in grey; sometimes the sky is so washed out it looks as if scenes were filmed in front of a white sheet. The film may have been shot on the most glorious spring day in Nebraska history, but every scene looks like it was filmed by Ingmar Bergman during a Scandinavian winter.

Nebraska has received 6 Oscar nominations, all deserved (as if the Academy would nominate someone undeserving): Best Picture, Best Director (Alexander Payne), Best Actor (Bruce Dern), Best Supporting Actress (June Squibb), Best Screenplay (Bob Nelson), Best Cinematography (Phedon Papamichael).  It’s always tough evaluating older actors; you can never be sure how much is acting and how much is just them being, well, old.  Dern is an old pro and a previous nominee, and the Academy has been known to give Oscars to older actors who have knocked around a lot (Christopher Plummer, Alan Arkin, Nick Nolte, James Coburn) so he may have a shot. 

Nebraska is a film that can be appreciated by anyone with an elderly parent who resists all attempts to convince them of anything; or has carried on a feud with a relative so long that neither can recall the details; or by any child who has visited their parents’ hometown and been amazed that they made it out of there alive.  It makes you happy, but also a little melancholy.

The war on piracy: can't we just take away their rum and eye patches?

There is a war going on in this country.  No, not the war on poverty.  Or drugs.  Or terrorism.  Or Christmas.  Or the designated hitter.  I mean the War on Piracy, and I don’t mean the kind depicted in Captain Phillips.  The entertainment industry has decided that the reason for lousy profits isn’t creative bankruptcy, multi-million dollar production deals with talentless stars, or everybody hopping on the latest perceived trend until it is milked drier than Justin Bieber after rehab (not my best metaphor).  It’s those darned kids using computers to steal content instead of buying it like they should.

Hollywood has tried a number of tactics in this war, from stern warning from Humphrey Bogart about the immorality of intellectual property theft (showing a clip from Casablanca, where Bogart’s character sleeps with another man’s wife, kills a man trying to alert the authorities that a wanted man is escaping, then stiffs his friend on a bet they made by saying it’s for “expenses”) to developing anti-theft technology that takes the average teenager about 30 seconds to circumvent.  But now they mean business.

Now when you rent a DVD from Netflix or Redbox, odds are that when you click on “special features” you’ll get a screen saying that the disc is intended for rental only and to access the special features you will need to purchase the DVD.  That’ll teach those punks to copy movies for free, they won’t get access to the director’s commentary!

This shows a complete lack of understanding about why people buy movies as oppose to rent them.  You don’t buy a movie to hear the director’s commentary or watch the “making of” video about how they blew stuff up so realistically.  You buy the DVD because you love the film and want to watch it over and over, and watch it with the commentary over and over, and watch the making of videos over and over.  You buy the DVD because you are obsessive about wanting to own the film. 

If you don’t want to own the film, not gaining access to the director’s commentary is not going to make you shell out the bucks needed to obtain the DVD.  However, if you are on the fence, a good Special Features collection might tip the balance.  But since rental DVDs don’t let you see the special features, then you will remain on the side of the fence where you are happy being able to get the DVD from Netflix in a couple of days, or from Redbox as long as they carry it.

Netflix has significantly reduced my impetus to buy DVDs.  But if I know the disc has quality commentaries by the director, the actor, the cinematographer, and the caterer, then just maybe I’ll want to own it rather than spend the two days it will take to get it from Netflix.  Hollywood’s anti-piracy policy makes me less likely, not more likely, to buy a DVD.

Hollywood’s lack of profitability has more to do with the endless stream of remakes, reboots, and sequels (Paranormal Activity 9: There’s Something Behind the Couch!  Boo!) than piracy.  Studio executives who are out of touch with what audiences want (if they were ever in touch) find it easier to blame piracy than to take a chances on new creative people who have wacky ideas about what audiences want.  So they can pat themselves on the back by creating “rental use only” DVDs, but it won’t result in any increase in sales or reduce the number of illegal downloads.

A girlfriend once told me that her mother told her that a man doesn’t buy a cow if he can get the milk for free; I replied that the best way to sell a high quality product is to give out free samples.  Okay, that encounter didn't end the way I’d hoped.  But I stand by the idea that if you want people to buy a product, they need to know how good the product is, and telling people that they can only access Special Features by buying a DVD doesn't do the trick.