Drew Turney
Here are some interesting stats from Moviehole.net’s home territory of Australia in today’s column.
Australia is an interesting test bed for digital media. We’re a far-flung industrialised nation with very high internet penetration, in a hemisphere of the world dominated by developing countries and far from the infrastructure and physical backbones that give North America and Europe their connectivity.
We’ve also spent the better part of 20 years bending over, grabbing our ankles and bracing ourselves on pricing as the privately owned, former public utility owns the copper wire in the ground and therefore has the rest of the providers (and consumers) over a barrel.
It might be changing with the recent arrival of Netflix down under. Many wondered how viable it would be given Australia’s comparatively high price and data caps (unknown in much of the world), but most major ISPs have said they won’t meter Netflix traffic, so Aussies could finally be joining the rest of the world when it comes to streaming media – ironically so considering what early adopters we are.
That’s what figures from a body called the Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association seems to confirm, anyway. It says the 2014 market was worth $1.115bn, and that digital (up 11 percent on 2013) is seeing the end of DVDs (down 10 percent). Read more here
Speaking of Netflix, there seemed to be no stopping them until this past January, when their growth finally slowed for what must be the first time.
In other news, it’s not like there weren’t already plenty of video streaming services around. Now US online store Overstock has launched one.
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=43206
Nickelodeon is putting a service together too;
On VOD now, High Maintenance, an original series on Vimeo about a pot dealer who slips in and out of the lives of his clients – an eclectic array of Brooklynites from a harried personal assistant buying weed for her boss to a misunderstood asexual magician. Rent episodes at HighMaintenance.tv.
Also out, Kill Me Three Times, the black comedy starring Simon Pegg as a ruthless professional killer whose cool, calm approach is nearly bought undone by the personalities in a small coastal surfing town where he just wants to do the job and go home.
Also out, The Atticus Institute (https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-atticus-institute/id951177948?uo=4&at=10lorC), the fictionalised account of the only case of demonic possession recognised by the US government.
And if you like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us and every other zombie property but also the slapstick satire of the Scary Movie series, The Walking Deceased might be for you.
But among the best offerings on VOD right now is Cam Girlz, a documentary about the women, all from very different walks of life, who make a living camming (that’s ‘performing’ on their web camera for paying customers if you don’t know the lingo).
Director Sean Dunne paints a gripping, at times beautiful portrait of a small collection of the women in the industry, letting them tell their own stories and putting a very human face on the often depersonalised field of sex and sexuality online.
