Superman: Doomsday - Number ONE on Netflix W.i.N.!!!

Holy crap!

First up, how awesome is it watching Netflix step up its game. They're getting some great flicks up on Watch it Now. Just over the last several days I've caught Grindhouse, Fido, and Superman: Doomsday. Just great!

I was very pleasantly surprised to see S:D at the top of the W.i.N. Top 50. It's a great comicbook flick that's right up there with work like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Kind of dark, a little more grown up, a little more sophisticated Superman.

The movie deals with the origin of Doomsday, the death, and return of Superman. That's a lot of ground to cover in 75 minutes, but the film handles it pretty gracefully.
It needs to be said, this is not a movie for kids. This is not Super Friends. The movie is PG-13, and I think that's fair. The art direction is dark, almost grim, and some of the action can be pretty brutal. The theme is totally Superman though, as we watch people struggle and arrive at doing the right thing even though they could be hurt or killed. Anyone can be a hero. You just have to try.

Andrea Romano casts and directs an incredible group of actors. I'm a really big fan of her work, and this is another great example of what she brings to a project.

I was pleasantly surprised with Adam Baldwin as Clark/Supes. He tends to play such cocky characters on camera (Jayne!!!) that it took me a while to reconcile that with the humble and honest Clark he delivers.

I thought Anne Heche turned out a great performance as Lois. Smart, savvy, and strong. My favorite Lois's are the non-victim ones.

I wasn't sure what to think of James Marsters as Lex. Truth be told, I think I've just been really well conditioned by Clancy Brown's Lex from Justice League Unlimited (if you haven't yet, you need to check out Clancy's performance in "The Great Brain Robbery" from Season 2 of JL:U, classic!) that hearing any other voice was going to make me critical. Marsters' Lex is very good, but for me, lacked the authority of Brown, and seemed a bit more conniving than bold.

Ray Wise as Perry White is PERFECT! Gruff and surly without drifting into a J. Jonah Jameson impersonation. Channeling a little Ed Asner, which is exactly the way I've always heard Perry in my head. I love Ray's work, and am very proud to say I got to work with him at Abram's. A great actor that really puts his all into his work (Good Night, and Good Luck), and is very gracious, humble, and fun to work with.

And there are so many other great actors rounding out the cast, John DiMaggio, Swoosie Kurtz, Tom Kenny (woot), Cree Summer, Adam Wylie, a Kevin Smith cameo, and more.

I think the movie's only drawback is its brevity. They have to cover more than a years worth of comics in just over an hour. That means some things need to be left out, like Doomsday's rampage (he originally took out the Justice League), and the "SuperMEN" saga that followed Supes' Death. In the comics four different men stood up to try and fill the void left by Superman before his return. In the movie there is only one.
That being said it's a really fun flick, and if you're a fan of Supes, or of comics, it's totally worth checking out.



And if you have Netflix you can stream it for free!

It's so cool seeing this film topping the Netflix charts...

WOOT! Netflix Watch It Now Goes UNLIMITED!!!

ALL RIGHT!
This is awesome folks! I'm a huge fan of Watch It Now!

Apparently to combat Apple's announcement that iTunes will become a video rental service (lame), Netflix is dropping the hammer.
For all customers on plans higher than the $4.99, there will no longer be any restriction on W.I.N. With over 6000 titles ready to stream, that's really sweet. Mrs. Audio Guy and I use it to crunch a ton of old TV shows. They've got a great little catalog of BBC TV up and ready, Faulty Towers anyone?

If you're running a PC with an S-Video port (or if your TV will handle a VGA or DVI connector), GO BUY A CABLE NOW. A $20 cable allowed us to watch streaming online video from the comfort of our couch, and now we'll pretty much never go back to a video rental place!


Anywho read up on the full announcement here (Yahoo Biz via AP).

Thanks for the heads up David!

This is what happens without Net Neutrality! ISPs to BBC: We will throttle iPlayer unless you pay up

Yeah,
This is no longer academic.
This is no longer theoretical.
Without Net Neutrality the ISP's have been given carte blanche to pretty much black mail anyone they want over bandwidth consumption.
We're only just seeing the beginnings now:

"Network neutrality debates aren't theoretical in the UK, where ISPs have banded together to tell the BBC that its iPlayer TV "catch-up" service will destroy their networks. The choice: be throttled or pay up."

read more | digg story

It made me SO angry watching that Ted Stevens video (where he explains to us proles that the internet is a "series of tubes"), and then watching the FTC cave on Neutrality. A lot of businesses are going to be pissed when their bandwidth bills surge.

Do you like online shopping (at major marketplaces such as Amazon or Ebay)?
Those sites use a lot of Bandwidth.
Do you like streaming movies and music (Youtube, Netflix, iTunes)?
Those sites use TONS of Bandwidth.

All of these services and many more are going to become substantially more expensive unless Neutrality is protected.

Just for a little levity, here's the Ninja's explanation of Net Neutrality:

Audiobooks Are Getting Hip!

Two quick stories for ya'll in this post.

The first is from Business Week, about the Netflix of audiobooks, Simply Audiobooks.

"Today, the 47-employee Toronto-based company is the most successful independent player in the online audiobook rental market. That market consists of about 10 independent players, including booksfree.com and jiggerbug.com, that compete with mainstream book publishers like Random House as well as offline mom-and-pops operating in brick-and-mortar locations."

Check it out here.

The second is from Open Culture about audiobook pricing becoming more sensible.
"Until recently, the book world applied an irrational logic to downloadable audiobooks and podcasts. As we noted back in February, the paper version of the bestselling business book, The Long Tail, ran consumers $16.47 on Amazon. And yet the cheaper-to-produce audio version implausibly amounted to $31.95 on iTunes and $27.99 on Audible. Did it make sense? Hardly!"
Check it out here.
someaudioguy some audio guy voice over narration audiobooks announcer reading voice acting recording production