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Epic Tale of Bloated 'Blues Brothers' Production Shows Us What Not to Do

06.15.13 @ 3:30PM Tags : bluesbrothers, budget, filmmaking, production, universal

Almost everybody (at least people I know of a certain age) loves The Blues Brothers, the 1980 John Landis comedy full of celebrity cameos, car chases, musical numbers, and a brilliant performance by John Belushi. The film, the brainchild of Dan Aykroyd, had a very troubled production history, which was detailed in a recent Vanity Fair article. It serves as a great example for any indie filmmaker of what not to do when making a film. More »

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Netflix Streaming Loses 2000 Titles as Universal & MGM Licenses Expire

05.1.13 @ 11:27PM Tags : archiveinstant, mgm, netflix, online, onlinevideo, streaming, universal, warnerbros, webseries

While the phenomenon of title evaporation is nothing new to Netflix, one of the service’s most significant catalog losses will come with the expiration of licensing agreements with Warner Bros., Universal, and MGM. Starting today and continuing over the course of May, InstantWatcher tracks 1,794 previously available films that will no longer be streamed on Netflix. This news piggy-backs that of Warner Archive Instant, an offering that — very literal title notwithstanding — should be quite familiar to Netflix viewers. Click below for details on what perennial picks will be removed from the Netflix catalog, some additional info on Warner’s Archive Instant, plus what Netflix itself has to say about all this as well. More »

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Universal and Sony Record Companies Caught Faking Billions of YouTube Views

12.31.12 @ 8:33AM Tags : music, records, sony, universal, youtube

A few weeks ago I first saw a web ad that ran something close to, “Know who probably buys clothes? People who watch fashion videos… YouTube Ads work.” It struck me as fairly profound, though obvious at the same time, because it rings pretty true. Of course, how true it rings is contingent on people actually watching videos to see those ads — something that’s simply not happening (at least as much as it appears) when views are artificially generated. We’ve covered view inflation and cheating YouTube before — but now, YouTube has accused two of the largest record companies in the world of ‘click fraud,’ and has ‘confiscated’ an unprecedented two billion views as a result. Talk about your parent catching you “clicking yourself” under their roof, huh? More »