Streaming Is the New Cable, Exhibit 498

Plus: a hitman’s assignment!

‘Arrival’ (MovieStillsDB)

Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that we’re doing another Across the Movie Aisle live show! On Tuesday, April 9 we’re going to be at the Bryant Street Drafthouse in Washington, D.C., to host a screening of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival. Tickets are going fast, so pick yours up now.

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There was some drama this week when folks realized that Tubi, a free ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) service, was streaming movies that had been edited to remove some more adult-oriented content. Sex, violence, that sort of thing. Censorship! The last bastion of freedom in video streaming was dead!

First things first: The “censorship” in question is roughly equivalent to saying TNT censors movies by trimming nudity or airing TV dubs that turn f-bombs into “frozen.” As Justin LaLiberty of the wonderful boutique Blu-ray producer Vinegar Syndrome noted, Tubi can’t actually edit anything on its own. They just show what they’re given. Now: they can ask for edits; they could even make edits a requirement for airing. One of my followers on Twitter, Geoff Ryan, noted he had to make some cuts to one of his films for AVOD services. But it’s not like Tubi is taking scissors to the material.

Lots of filmmakers are willing to do this because the AVOD services are actually one of the best ways to make money as indie filmmakers because the payouts are directly tied to advertisements. But the ads are only going to be there if the content being advertised against is less salacious. I talked about AVOD payouts with Abe Goldfarb, my guest on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood this week. You should listen to the whole thing when it drops tomorrow, but, as a sneak preview, Abe said AVOD has been a large and surprising source of revenue for his film, First Time Caller. The revenue in question comes from ads.

That ads are, inevitably, going to lead to neutered content is something I’ve tried to hammer home time and again, in interviews with folks like Matthew Ball and Peter Biskind. Shifting from a subscriber-based economic model to an advertising-to-subscribers-based economic model leaves creators and consumers alike beholden to the desires of suits who don’t want their wares butting up against butts. The recent golden age of television never could’ve come to pass if HBO had been forced to care about how Tony Soprano might offend cereal salesmen.

The larger point here is that this is yet more proof we’ve simply reinvented the wheel: we broke cable, shifted people to streaming, realized streaming wasn’t a good way to make money, and are now bringing back basic cable. Ads? They’re back! “This program has been edited for television”? It’s back! The interesting thing about Tubi is that it’s the first reinvention of cable that might actually be slightly superior to what we moved away from: Tubi has an enormous selection of films and TV shows—more than 50,000, according to their About page—many of which aren’t available anywhere else. It offers folks instant access to them, for free, and asks only that you deal with some annoying programmatic ads in exchange.

So yeah, some stuff on Tubi is probably edited. If you don’t want to watch edited programming, track down the movie or show in question on DVD or Blu-ray or 4K. No one’s sneaking into your house to get rid of offensive titles from your shelves. But Tubi is a free service that relies on ads. What do I always say? You get what you pay for.

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This Friday’s Across the Movie Aisle is keyed to Vulture’s list of the 100 greatest action sequences, part of the annual stunt awards. Read the Vulture list! Listen to the episode!

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Links!

This week I wrote about the newish Amazon show Mr. and Mrs. Smith, HBO’s Tokyo Vice, and FX on Hulu’s Shogun remake. Specifically, what I wanted to get folks to consider is the importance of place on these shows. How shooting in real locations imparts a bit of panache to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and drives home the sense of alienation felt by the lead in Tokyo Vice. How the inability to shoot in location or build city-sized sets for Shogun reduces its verisimilitude.

RIP Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragon Ball series of comics/cartoons. Gene Park wrote an obit for the Post, which you should read if you want to understand his impact on the world of action storytelling. You can’t understand the boom in popularity of anime/manga in America amongst millennials and succeeding generations without understanding the way Dragon Ball Z burst onto the scene in the early 2000s.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, John Wick Chapter Four cleaned up at the stunt awards. It’s not my favorite movie of the series, but it undoubtedly had four or five of the best individual action sequences of the year.

Mythic Quest is shooting its fourth season, which is great news because Mythic Quest is one of the most underrated shows on streaming.

Jake Paul is boxing Mike Tyson live on Netflix from Cowboys Stadium in July. I dunno what else to add to that.

The armorer for the film Rust—the Alec Baldwin picture on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed when a gun he was using on set fired a real bullet—was convicted of involuntary manslaughter this week.

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Assigned Viewing: Sicario (Prime Video)

‘Sicario’ (MovieStillsDB

Been rewatching a bunch of Villeneuve this week as prep for our Arrival live show, and Sicario remains a searing picture. Beautifully lensed by Roger Deakins, powerfully acted by Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, and Emily Blunt, and every shot perfectly lined up by Villeneuve, is pretty much impeccable from start to finish.