Watch My Films, ‘Shredder’ and ‘Rehearsals’, For Free!

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Hey everybody. It’s your ol’ pal Cody Clarke, editor-in-chief and weekly critic at this here Smug Film. We’ve built a bit of a relationship, y’all and I, over the year-and-a-month that this site’s been in existence. I feel the love from you coming here and reading all our stuff, and I hope you feel the love right back from me. We’ve got a great thing between us, you shadowy blips on the views counter and myself. Sometimes I wish you’d participate more with comments and stuff, but s’all good—you read, you enjoy, and that’s what matters most of all.

Because we don’t exactly talk much—like I said, totally fine, no worries—you might not know that I’m not just a pontificator on all things film—I’m a maker of them as well. I’ve made two feature-length films to date—Shredder and Rehearsals. Ya boy Harry Brewis reviewed the former on here not too long ago, and ya girl Chloe Pelletier reviewed the latter. These films mean a lot to them, and mean a lot to a bunch of other people. But as of yet, they remain unseen by most.
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Strongman: Pitch-Perfect Cinema Vérité

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Strongman (2009)
Directed by Zachary Levy
113 min.

A day after I posted my How To Watch a Film essay, I received an email from the director of this film. He reached out because loved the essay and he’d gone through, with his own film, exactly what I described going through with my film, Rehearsals—people that were ambivalent about it when watching a screener and then blown away in a theater setting.

For a long time, he avoided releasing his film on DVD because he felt that a theater was the ideal setting to see it, and he wanted to do whatever he could to make sure as many people as possible could see it properly. However, he’s recently decided to finally take the plunge and release it on DVD and Digital, and it’s due out this month.

Zach was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the DVD in the mail, which I watched this past week, and let me tell you—this thing is plenty powerful on an average-sized flatscreen. I don’t know that I could even handle this thing in a movie theater. This is one of the most gripping vérité docs I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s no surprise at all that it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was on Roger Ebert’s Year’s Best list, and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick.
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Netflix Longies #2 (Thunder Soul, 26 Years: The Dewey Bozella Story, Rolling Thunder, Mobsters, Batman: The Movie)

If you don’t know what Netflix Longies is, go read the first paragraph of Netflix Longies #1. I don’t feel like having to write it out again or copy and paste it or whatever. Anyway, here we go:

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Thunder Soul (2010) | Dir. Mark Landsman | 83 min.

I’m big into soul and R&B and funk and whatnot. Earth Wind & Fire, Frankie Beverly, Blue Magic, The Stylistics, Tavares, The Commodores—the list goes on. That’s the kind of music I was raised on, instead of Raffi or Barney or whatever. And there’s a channel on Time Warner Cable, in the MusicChoice section, called R&B Classics (channel 608 in NYC) and pretty much every night I’m listening to that while working on my laptop. It’s just calming as all hell.
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Netflix Excludes The Blind. Why?

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When I was a little kid, I had an excessive vocabulary. I knew what the word ‘superficial’ meant, and also even bigger words, like ‘garrulous’. But even with these words and countless others in my head, there was one that wasn’t—and that word was Accessibility.

Back when I was seven, many things were accessible, and if they weren’t, my grandmother would help make them so. Not being able to see, my primary way of learning was through reading, touching objects, and listening to explanations. Of course, all my other remaining senses came into play, but hearing and touch were, and are, my primary link to the world not constructed by books.

Even though I had never heard the word Accessibility, I was an early adopter of its concept. One day, my grandmother took me to a museum that was new in town. It was different than the ones we frequented, and I was very eager to feel exotic artifacts under my fingertips, and experience paintings through verbal descriptions given to me via headset. I eagerly speedwalked with my grandmother into the museum, my stomach full with butterflies over the soon-to-be.

When the tour started, I could sense the body heat of a dozen people beside me. I waited for my grandmother to take me to the artifact so I could explore it. She didn’t. I began to tune into the many exclamations beside me describing how wonderful the artifact was. Why was it so wonderful? I wanted to know too! I wanted to feel it and see what people were talking about. I soon began to cry, and people’s feet shuffled as they turned and stared at me. With steely resolve, my grandmother picked me up and pushed her way to the front of the crowd with my white cane dangling in my grip. When she reached the front, she ducked under the rope and placed my hand on the elegant statue carved with dynamic symbols. People started complaining that a sign said ‘Don’t Touch’. Soon, a stern sounding man cleared his throat next to me.

“Miss? I’m the manager here.” I felt the air whoosh as my grandmother whipped around. With slicing syllables, she told the manager, ”If you tell my blind grandson to take his hands off this statue, I will take every ‘Don’t Touch’ sign down and burn them all. I will then tell the police what I did and sue you for lack of accessibility.”

Seventeen years have passed since then, and I have heard and witnessed countless instances in which companies and people just don’t exert any will to include the blind and the visually impaired whatsoever, unless forced by law. The Americans with Disabilities Act was a huge breakthrough for our inclusion, but it didn’t merge us with the sighted world. People didn’t want to include us, so often we had to go to special groups, events, and even jobs for the blind. We also had to fight for education as well. Entertainment was, and still is an issue accompanying all the other accessibility barriers.

It took a law in 2010 to make Audio Description available on television. Before the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, we couldn’t watch movies, TV shows, or any visual media with audio description as frequently as today. Audio Description is as important to us as closed captioning is for the Deaf. It opens up a whole new mode of entertainment that we’ve never been able to experience before.

However, there are still a lot of companies that don’t want to offer it, and are not forced to by law. Many of these companies reside in the internet realm, a place the law hasn’t even scratched yet. Audio Description is available on TV, and more DVDs, and even more movie theaters. The law applies to the top 25 TV networks now but will increase. But even with all this inclusion, no Video on Demand service, such as Netflix and Hulu, has Audio Description.

I’ve wondered why Netflix won’t provide Audio Description, or even accessible interfaces so that our adaptive software can interact with their website and web player fully. I’ve examined this through all different angles, even finding out for myself the cost of describers, and other production costs. It’s not all about cost however. The BBC has shown that cost doesn’t matter when it comes to Accessibility, offering an Audio Description On Demand service through the BBC iPlayer.

It wouldn’t be hard at all to include Audio Description on Netflix. Two methods could be done to achieve this. Closed Audio Description, where the viewers would need to select a language track, requiring less bandwidth and less server space on Netflix’s part. There would definitely be downsides to this as well, such as that Audio Description wouldn’t be able to be available on every Netflix compatible device, such as the Nintendo Wii, as the Wii even has a hard time with closed captions.

Another way is to have a separate blind version of the same movie or TV show, like iTunes has it. But this will require that the film or TV show be uploaded twice. From a technical point of view, this would be the easier thing to do, but who knows, the servers might possibly buckle.

For years, the blind community has asked and even begged Netflix to make their site and service accessible, with accessible web design and Audio Description, but Netflix have said “No” repeatedly, and eventually the blindness advocacy groups just give up.

I refuse to give up though. Which is why I started the Accessible Netflix Project.

Our aim is for Netflix to:

Provide a Screen Reader-friendly experience to all Netflix functions on the PC and mobile devices, compatible with all Screen Readers.

Provide an easily navigable interface for the mobility impaired using adaptive technology.

Provide easy access to Audio-Described content for the blind and visually impaired on streaming services as well as DVD selections.

Regardless if it’s inconvenient or costly, Netflix should provide Accessibility solutions. Many blind people pay for a service they can barely use, whether they are a novice or advanced Screen Reader user.

It has been a long eight months since I began the project. So far, they have told us “No”, directly, seven times and counting.

Determined to have the freedom to enjoy Audio Description on my only window to the film and TV world, due to limited cash availability, I decided to ask them why they said no. The first time, they said that “we don’t have control over the content that makes the Audio Description, so we’re not the people who you should be contacting.” So, I started contacting studios for the next three months, often going through back door connections to get to producers, and explaining the situation. Seth MacFarlane, the producer of Family Guy, a show that has Audio Description on TV, was one of these connections. I wanted to make it as cheap as possible for Netflix, so I asked these producers if they would simply give the Audio Descriptions to Netflix at no charge. Many, including Seth, agreed to this.

I replied to Netflix with the fantastic news, and this was their response:

Hi Robert,

Thank you for being a Netflix fan and for being so passionate about making Netflix more accessible. At this point we have no immediate plans to add Audio Descriptions to our service. We continuously evaluate this and we will let you know if there’s a change, but don’t expect it to come in the near future.

I don’t understand why they’d say no. Even after contacting 56 different people in the company, they all said the same—don’t expect it anytime soon, even with the studio support.

It deeply disappoints and frustrates me that access to a service that’s so accessible to my wallet is impossible for me to use independently, simply because I require adaptive technology. I can’t even manage the site independently, no matter how many advanced keystrokes I learn or new Screen Reader tricks. Blind and visually impaired people shouldn’t be banished to outside sources to get described content. We are millions and millions strong, and our revenue would help grow Netflix. And, small aside, they’d surely be given many awards.

The ADA was meant to include and not divide. Blind people should have reasons to spend their income. We should be able to laugh with glee with our family, enjoying an Audio-Described comedy. We should be able to proudly call ourselves a Netflix customer. I will do whatever I can to ensure everybody gets past the unnecessary velvet rope and is able touch an accessible Video on Demand service. I don’t understand why Netflix doesn’t want to give us that inclusion, and I possibly never will, but I do understand one thing for certain—it should happen.

Nights On Netflix: A Journey Through The Aisles Of Our Friendly Neighborhood Internet Video Store

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Future generations won’t know the joy of driving to a Blockbuster and picking out a rental (or rentals) for the weekend.  It was an inconvenient life, but nostalgia erases that.  Waxing romantic on it now makes me exhale in deep wistful wonder, my heart full of bliss.  Video stores fostered my burgeoning cinephilia in the late nineties, and provided some of the best memories of my life.

But Netflix has changed all that, and I say good riddance. All Netflix really does is add convenience to the already established video store mechanism. Now you don’t even have to leave the house. You can snuggle on the couch with your lover and your Roku box and browse what’s currently streaming (and I suspect, in a decade or so, everything will be).
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