Maysan Province

Yesterday I watched WALL-E — as slick and astonishing an animation as they come! How will PIXAR top this one off, from a technical point of view, I don’t know. (Are we still going to need any movie actors 100 years from today?)

But when I looked at it as a screenwriter, boy, there’s really nothing new under the sun. It’s all repackaging, re-purposing of old ideas and rearranging the furniture — which is not to say that any such combination of old ideas will automatically be interesting. But if you’re a writer suffocating with “writer’s block” you might want to do what the creators of WALL-E did.

Find a metaphor. For WALL-E it’s “The Little Engine That Could.” Even the trash piles in this dystopian story look like the mountains that the Little Engine had to climb every day. And, yes, WALL-E literally is an “engine”.

Then comes the best “repackaging” idea of the whole movie — its core concept of making sure a tiny little green sapling survives against all odds to allow vegetation to re-grow on earth is taken straight out of a very funny movie named “Idiocracy (2006). “I highly recommend it if you’d enjoy a very whacky, creative but scary look into the future.

And what shall we do with those scenes between the Captain of the spaceship AXIOM and the red-eyed central computer? Can you say “HAL…” and have you seen “2001: A Space Odyssey”?

So when the greatest in Hollywood are lifting off liberally from each other to come up with blockbusters why shouldn’t you do the same for some fresh story inspiration?

Quickest way to do that is to mash up film titles and see what you come up with.

How about… JAWS meets ALIENS? Swimmers are attacked by slimy aliens from outer space?

[Any SPACE TRAVEL movie you know] meets [replace with any THROW MOMA FROM THE TRAIN comedy]? A big-bad-loud-mouth-mom follows son-the-astronaut to outer space? It’s kind a STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT (1992) in outer space?

There’s no end to cross-fertilizing ideas and concepts. The creators of WALL-E did it. Why shouldn’t you?

Dream but keep moving the furniture around.

Movie rentals from the bricks and mortar type stores are coming to an end. Online movie rentals are also improving rapidly since the advent of Netflix. One of the pioneers of online rentals.

Today, online movie rentals eliminate all the hassles and costs associated with the traditional rental methods. Costs like expensive fees and late fees are no longer a problem.

In addition to Netflix, there are two other companies that have entered the online movie rental arena: Blockbuster and LoveFilm. So, out of all three companies, which company should you rent movies from? Lets compare each one and examine what they offer.

Netflix company was the originator and innovator of the concept to rent movies online. They only started small and expanded into a multi billion dollar success story.

Netflix offers a huge range of DVDs for rent (around 85,000), from classics to new releases as well as popular TV series. They do charge a little extra to rent Blu Ray DVDs.

They do have a good range of DVDs by mail and to watch instantly on your PC, TV or gaming device. They don’t offer game rentals.

Blockbuster entered into the business to rent movies online somewhat reluctantly. It had been a “bricks and mortar” business for years. But declining sales led to it being forced into offering their consumers online movie rentals.

You can exchange movies through blockbuster stores as well as online. And, if you are a gamer, they also offer game rentals. They don’t charge extra to rent on Blu Ray. And there are 95,000 titles to choose from. The option to watch movies instantly is also available.

LoveFilm is a UK based company, it is a shame the service isn’t available in the US as it is a great company.

There are 65,000 titles to choose from. They also offer Blu Ray and game rentals at an extra charge. They also offer the option to watch movies instantly.

What do they cost? They all offer similar plans to rent 1, 2 or 3 movies per month. Netflix charge $8.99, $13.99 and $16.99. To rent on Blu Ray at Netflix, will cost you $2, $3 or $4 extra per month.

Blockbuster charge $8.99, $13.99 and $16.99. You can also get plans that offer 5 in store exchanges. These plans cost $11.99, $16.99 and $19.99.

Lovefilm charge

Gone are the days of watching just previews and snapshots of movies on the internet. Modern internet technologies are giving internet users the power to watch movies online, along with facilities for downloads. Earlier MP3s, trailers and music videos had dominated the download arena in entertainment. The commercial possibilities for movies on the internet was initially identified and utilized by movie rental service providers. But with higher bandwidths being made available by internet service providers (ISPs), and with the increased popularity of file sharing networks, more and more online companies have started providing movies for download.

It is only recently that these download services have been made available absolutely free of cost to users. Even today most commercial websites have their download services which require users to download movies by pay per download scheme and some others require their users to pay an initial amount for downloading unlimited movies. But the situation is now changing with more and more websites offering absolutely free movie downloads.

Websites offering absolutely free movie downloads often use a combination of various technologies to provide easy downloads. One such technology adopted is using codecs for reducing the size of movies, as original packaging of movies in DVDs has file sizes of 4GB or more. In the original DVD format, it will take an enormous amount of time for users to download a full movie.

With codecs such as DivX and XviD, the quality of movies remain the same even after being compressed from their original DVD formats. Before downloading, it will be better to make sure that the movies you are downloading are either in Xvid or DivX format as these offer better quality video and audio with less file sizes in the range of 600-700MB. All you are required to do is to install in your computer the corresponding codec used for video compression. These codecs are available for free download from their respective websites.

While there are many methods for absolutely free movie downloads online, the easiest of all methods is using a file sharing network such as BitTorrent or Kazaa. Although movie downloads have increased, it can be seen that it has not yet completely affected the DVD market, although sales have fallen. The main factor which works in favor of absolutely free movie downloads is the widespread availability of broadband internet even in remote corners of the world. Other reasons which are promoting these free downloads are the savings in terms of time and money, which is otherwise required by movie lovers in physically searching and buying movies from rental shops.