Yes to No (from Curzon on Demand)
Film fans, happiness is coming (this to be sung to a jaunty tune with optional hand-clapping). If you’ve seen Pablo Larraín’s remarkable film No, about the rival media campaigns in the 1988 referendum in Chile, you might perhaps pick up the reference (go here for the film’s website from Sony Classics). If you haven’t, then for just the next week you can catch it online for only £4 at Curzon on Demand. This is a comparatively new pay-per-view arthouse service that I have quickly learned to love. Other ppv film offerings are available, as they say, including iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Lovefilm and Mubi.com, but none at present appear have anything close to the Curzon’s range of arthouse cinema of the moment (much of it from the Artificial Eye list). This weekend, for example, you can watch Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills and Michael H. Profession: Director, Yves Montmayer’s profile of Michael Haneke, both of which are released in cinemas this week (and as a consequence cost £10 each). From Monday, Haneke’s Amour will be available, and if – like me – you are impressed by No, two earlier linked films by Larraín are also on offer, Post Mortem (2010) and Tony Manero (2008). All three can be watched this week for a tenner.
For interest, here’s the trailer for Michael H. Profession Director:
Sign-up for and selection at Curzon on Demand is simplicity itself. You can make some modest savings on the list prices if you decide to become a Curzon member. The site offers a good range of contextual information – although I am puzzled that in many cases (such as the Larraín trilogy) it seems not to include the year of production. Once you have paid your money you have multiple accesses to the film for seven days, which even in these days of fragmented viewing is more than enough. There is also an exemplary weekly newsletter with details of new releases and special offers.
The image quality is excellent and on my wi-fi/BT Infinity set-up at home I found there was only very occasional stuttering as the stream struggled to catch up. I was watching on my laptop but you can stream to iPads and iPhones and to some Samsung Smart TVs. My only gripe is that I would like the system to remember where I stopped viewing and bring me back to that point when I log in again. BBC iPlayer does that and it makes a real difference, and here I would be able to avoid entirely the mildly irritating animation about the service that precedes each movie. As it is, when I stop I have to remember the timecode and find this point when I next want to watch.
The technical stuff is important but the key strengths of the service are the release online of titles that are being written and talked about now together with the ability to buy single films. The current Mubi.com model of thirty films available each month for a single low fee is attractive but the catalogue, while extensive, is not sufficiently strong in new films. And almost all of the other services are dominated by mainstream cinema, with arthouse titles feeling very much like an afterthought.
Next up for me is Girls auteur Lena Dunham’s much-liked and little-seen feature Tiny Furniture (currently £4, and for the curious the year of production was 2010) and Sally Potter’s latest Ginger and Rosa (2012). The latter film is one of those titles that seemed intriguing from the reviews but which was not nearly compelling enough to take me to the cinema. £4 for the chance to sample it at home and maybe watch it all seems like a very good deal. Film fans, happiness is here.
Leave a Reply