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The Shutting Down of FilmStruck and the False Promise of Streaming Classics (newyorker.com)
The FilmStruck indie, arthouse and classic film subscription-streaming service will shut down next month, Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks announced this week. The New Yorker's film critic Richard Brody writes: The site isn't accepting any new subscribers, and it's a good bet that it won't be adding films, either. In the year and a half that I've been offering recommendations here of movies to stream, FilmStruck titles have featured prominently. One could keep busy, happy, and cinematically sustained for a long time on the sole basis of FilmStruck movies, and all the more so with the inclusion of movies from Turner Classic Movies. (The movie diet wouldn't be an entirely balanced one: the site does poorly with such domains as American independent filmmaking, African cinema, and the past forty years of film history. Its over-all flaw is its reliance on recognized classics: the programming of the site is more responsive than it is proactive, and it might have been improved by more personalized, idiosyncratic selections that would have made it more like a permanent online film festival.)
The site instead offered various modes of promotional outreach. Some, such as essays, and some home-produced videos, were significant works in themselves, but the site over all diluted its offerings with a home page of diversions and distractions that felt like a tawdry sampling of multiplex ballyhoo raising an unwelcome racket amid the art-house tranquillity. That conspicuously commercial waiting room to the classic-cinema library suggests the culture clash at the heart of the enterprise, the one that arises from its odd original fusion of Criterion with TCM, which was then a part of Time Warner -- and which foreshadowed its doom. That air of doom arises from more than the inherent conflicts of the high-culture outpost and the mass-market colossus. Slate's arts and culture critic Joanna Scutts writes: FilmStruck did not care who you were: It set out to teach you something new, not just to feed you more helpings of what you already know you like. It employed a team of smart women and brought in directors like Barry Jenkins to record short, passionate introductions to films they loved. Its personality shone through tightly curated collections, from a timely gathering of all the previous incarnations of A Star Is Born, to a larger batch of Japanese horror titles, to deep dives into a particular director or cinematographer. It offered up inventive double-feature pairings and led you through its extensive archives in ways that were creative, cheeky, thought-provoking, and unpretentious. It made it clear that a passion for art-house and classic film was not exclusive to old white men. That kind of personality, that kind of discoverability, that kind of curation, can't be replicated by an algorithm. It takes time, money, and effort. It takes thought and education. It takes human beings.
The site instead offered various modes of promotional outreach. Some, such as essays, and some home-produced videos, were significant works in themselves, but the site over all diluted its offerings with a home page of diversions and distractions that felt like a tawdry sampling of multiplex ballyhoo raising an unwelcome racket amid the art-house tranquillity. That conspicuously commercial waiting room to the classic-cinema library suggests the culture clash at the heart of the enterprise, the one that arises from its odd original fusion of Criterion with TCM, which was then a part of Time Warner -- and which foreshadowed its doom. That air of doom arises from more than the inherent conflicts of the high-culture outpost and the mass-market colossus. Slate's arts and culture critic Joanna Scutts writes: FilmStruck did not care who you were: It set out to teach you something new, not just to feed you more helpings of what you already know you like. It employed a team of smart women and brought in directors like Barry Jenkins to record short, passionate introductions to films they loved. Its personality shone through tightly curated collections, from a timely gathering of all the previous incarnations of A Star Is Born, to a larger batch of Japanese horror titles, to deep dives into a particular director or cinematographer. It offered up inventive double-feature pairings and led you through its extensive archives in ways that were creative, cheeky, thought-provoking, and unpretentious. It made it clear that a passion for art-house and classic film was not exclusive to old white men. That kind of personality, that kind of discoverability, that kind of curation, can't be replicated by an algorithm. It takes time, money, and effort. It takes thought and education. It takes human beings.
"It made it clear that a passion for art-house and classic film was not exclusive to old white men"
WHO CLAIMS THIS?
I haven't even finished watching "Black Mirror" on Netflix, or "The Motorhome Experiment" on Youtube, or any of the movies I have waiting to watch. I have video games that I bought, still in their shrink wrap because I didn't have time to play them. I always mean to go back to that excellent restaurant I ate at, but it will probably go out of business before I find the time to return to it. I'll probably end up watching the Incredibles 2 in some flight on a tiny screen in the back of the seat in front.
Too many options to entertain in my time, and too little time for all the options.
Classic Turner you say? Pass.
This really goes to show the weakness of streaming. Sometimes a company is streaming exactly what you want, and owns the content - but will just decide to shut down that access anyway because they don't see quite enough profit in it.
That is why, even though it seems like madness these days, I still prefer to buy a handful of movies I really want to see again off and on.
You can even imagine some distant future where a corporate AI conglomerate that takes over Netflix vanishes some Netflix original content you enjoyed, for some inscrutable reason...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...it's to buy and own your own media.
Don't misunderstand me. This service sounds like something to which I'd have subscribed, had I known about it. I have no idea why the service shut down, but you can bet it was due to licensing arrangements and the like. All you know is that you are now deprived of something valuable.
I know that streaming is the shit right now, and that guys like me who still buy audio and video discs and run their own home media servers are viewed as retrogrades. On the other hand, I'm not subject to the caprices of those who run those services, or those who cause those services to be shut down. I get to watch La Jetee any time I like.
Here's hoping FilmStruck comes back, or something even better replaces it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
They had better advertising when closing down then any other time, I probably would've signed up if I'd known.
Obsession with skin color is a red flag, and probably means they're willing to sacrifice quality to satisfy it. It's very likely that nothing of value was lost here.
Right wing movie themes:
1) Boy isn't the world a better place when the letter of the law trumps reason?
2) Rich and powerful men exploit working people and it's amazing.
3) The police protect a community of white people from immigrants getting uppity and trying to carve out a life anywhere, "please just anywhere they can have a quiet life."
4) The elderly realize theyâ(TM)re a burden on society and we choose to starve them off all resources unless they go back to work or were rich.
5) Let's make sure we stack the odds in our favor so the minority stay in power in a supposed democracy.
6) Let's all get together so that people who live kinda weird private lives can't do it in a public way. Ideally by putting them in jail, but lefitimizing being a dick to them is a good option too.
7) GUNS! In the hands of every citizen, especially children!
8) Why chasing profit is more socially responsible than human rights, FTW.
9) I got to the end of my life and I am sooooo glad I worked my ass off and ignored my family.
I've never even heard of it before today, but I still know exactly what happened to it.
10) I used to think love was the answer, but I realized war as sanctioned by the military industrial complex was more effective.
11) I'm so glad the courts are biased against weird people and people who look weird, scary, different and poor.
12) Life is better when people just know their place and acknowledge there's no point in trying to go against the established norm.
13) Bully: The bully in school was right to bully me. Iâ(TM)m a real loser.
14) Bully 2: That rich kid really was genetically superior
15) Bully 3: And his kids are better than mine.
16) The United States takes over Mexico, China and why not Canada too, for fun, profits and peace on earth at the end of a gun and 24/7 surveillance.
17) Women really do deserve less pay for a lot of obvious reasons.
18) America is awesome, because it's stolen from Native people most of whom have been killed in a genocide long forgotten and it's so so good. They were, like basically animals anyway.
I say 'Congratulations, you have just proven yourself to be racist, and sexist', and I'm not even white.
BTW, you continue to live in America - so stop trying to signal virtue, its like smoking a cigar while explaining to children how to live healthy..
Sometimes people who are over educated but lack any depth may see many movies as right wing radical - we can start with '300' - nationalistic and militaristic pigs defending their country from multiculturalism. Braveheart? Man - the main guy was as right wing radical as they come and the director and actor playing main roles were as right wing as they come too. Apocalyptica - even better - we know that Indians never oppressed and slaughtered each other. Ooooops I used the wrong word or? These were not Indians. Man how easy it is to out oneself as right wing old white man...... I think we can better just leave it at that. Never ending saga of Star Wars is a fight between forces of order (empire) and unorder (republic) both use extreme violence and the only good thing about them is that they both fail to achieve absolute dominance. The rebels looks better tho I admit. I suppose to avoid confusion as to what side is 'good'. I think the problem is right here - you can re-interpret any work of art. In fact you can leave it for people to discuss this. If a work is good it will be so multilayered that you cannot simply say it is right/left wing. You just need brains and open mind. Language w/o bans on vocabulary would also be good.
Well, Richard, why don't you start up your own fucking streaming site then? I mean, since you think that adding all of that is so fucking easy. I'm sure you'll make a goddamned fortune.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I've seen Polygon articles with less pretentious virtue-signalling. And that's saying something.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well, by the standards of the modern left, pretty much all movies made by a white male are now verboten. So, almost every English-speaking movie ever made?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Granted, I spend zero time looking for the next cool thing, but I had never heard of this service before, and I probably would have subscribed had I known about it. My kids are too young to watch some of my favorite movies from when I was a child, but so many of the classics that used to be shown on Turner Classic Movies are appropriate for many ages, and those films are not available on Netflix or Amazon. Looking at the comments, the management completely missed an entire category of film buffs. More "old white men" subscribing to the service might have kept it afloat. I bet they had interesting advertising algorithms.
Make love, not reality television.
I resent the use of the phrase "old white men" - a tryptych of abuse- to describe something you don't like. Hyper-liberal women really push women's privilege when they use this odious combination to describe men. They don't expect to be taken as hypocrites.
E Proelio Veritas.
I was surprised I liked that site. Same goes for the youtube channel Omeleto. They post short films every so often from a variety of genres. Many times they're hit or miss. But that's what I like about it. It's nice to see if someone is trying to do something different.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
It employed a team of smart women
It made it clear that a passion for art-house and classic film was not exclusive to old white men.
Gee, with an approach like that, how could it fail????
Oh, is that the one where he protects the reputation of the justice system by showing it was unbiased and justly convicted a black man 25 years ago?
A diverse group of nature loving creatures puts down their differences and follow a gay wizard to fight power hungry authoritarian monsters? I'm not sure right wing means what you think it means...
I watched that as a child, but all I remember about it was Arnold sweating a lot... How is it right wing?
AT&T and Warner Bros also pulled the plug on a service called DramaFever that showed Korean dramas without any warning what so ever. When I found out they shut down that service, I was so upset! That was my escape from everyday life. Those scumbags have gained my animosity and I won't be buying or watching anything from them.
When it comes to movies they fall under copyright and there is a reason we have those laws.
That is a great point, after the expiration of copyright I agree that a company no longer has the right (moral or otherwise) to bury something... of course that means someone elsewhere has to have kept the material to release it, but at least they can...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I too am very sad to see them go.
It made what could have been an article about streaming services, how they are managed and advertised, became a SJW discussion.
Old guy here, I have seen pretty much every old movie so there's not much missing for me. No need to watch Ben Hur or Singing In The Rain three times a month. Now what would interest me are old movies ***rarely*** shown if any. If want to watch Diana Dors and Mamie Van Doren movies, probably buy the DVD. Trudyscousin posted about buy your own discs which many perceive as retrogrades but with your own media you have control.
Regarding old movies, back in the 1950s there were several major movie studios and something like 400 movies per year were produced. I'm sure many were stinkers but there probably some films that if were seen again probably be highly acclaimed. I think many of those films are long gone due to deterioration. If film still good, it could be the copyright owner still demands huge sum of money to have it broadcasted (note that copyrights never expire i.e. Mickey Mouse court rulings). But then there's some renegades out there that taped on VHS back in 1980s when TV stations showed old movies late at night. Occasionally someone will post on a list videotape copy for sale.
mfwright@batnet.com
The real reason it's shutting down because Hollywood doesn't want the new generations to see the old movies in order to compare them to the crap the studios put out today.
As an old white guy I can say I enjoyed watching movies from around the world and that spanned the generations. I had at least 1 more year of serious mining of their collection, maybe longer as they kept adding new stuff.
As for buying watching movies, I found I don't watch many movies more than one or twice. Some I do, but those are definitely the minority. FilmStruck was a great resource. I hope someone else will pick up the banner once they are gone!
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Granted, I spend zero time looking for the next cool thing, but I had never heard of this service before, and I probably would have subscribed had I known about it. My kids are too young to watch some of my favorite movies from http://trichejeuxmobiles.onlin...