TVSquad

There's such a thing as beating a dead horse and then there's beating a dead horse, chopping it up into tiny bits, and flinging it around like a monkey flings poo. The fact that we're still reading news items about Deadwood nearly two years after it aired its final episode just goes to show you how much it's missed. Well get this - as if we didn't already know - those two final "wrap-up the series with a neat little bow" movies are as dead as Wild Bill Hickok.

TiVo has announced plans to offer customers the option of renting Disney movies directly from their set top box. The company has already partnered with Amazon to offer Unbox video downloads. But Disney titles aren't available through Amazon Unbox, so TiVo is instead partnering with CinemaNow.

Some movies will be available in standard definition only, while some titles will be available in high definition. Rentals will be viewable for up to 24 hours.

There's no word on pricing, but CinemaNow typically charges $3.99 to rent a new release, and $1.99 for an older video. I suspect Disney movies will be offered for a similar price when the service is launched. According to the press release, the service will go live "soon," but it's not clear whether that means today, next week, or sometime before the end of the year.

Hulu is now the top network video web site, according to Nielsen data. Hulu sent out an email today letting users know that the site has server up more than 63 million video streams, and that the average Hulu user watches 2 hours of video on the site each month.

There are probably at least two keys to Hulu's success. First, the service actually offers videos that people want to watch including full length movies and TV shows. And second, Hulu doesn't just distribute videos through its own web site. You can also find them through partner sites including MSN, AOL, and Comcast's video portals.

The company is also continuing to sign new partners for its video distribution network. Starting today Hulu videos are available through TV.com. And over the next few weeks Hulu will roll out partnerships with TVGuide.com, Break.com, Zap2it, BuddyTV, Flixter, and MyYearbook.

Lycos Cinema is a pretty nifty concept. Registered users can login to the site, find a movie they want to watch, and then invite friends to watch on their own computers. The movie plays almost simultaneously on each computer, which lets users chat in real-time about the movie they're all watching. The site featurs a combination of free movies and TV shows and videos available for rental. You can pay to watch a movie yourself, or pay a bit more for a 5 or 10 person rental.

But there's one major problem. The content is absolutely horrid. There are no contemporary movies or TV shows. And the older titles are pretty much B-list material. If you like Godzilla films, Lyco Cinema might be the site for you. But if you're looking for the latest summer blockbusters, you might want to try Netflix.

While the window between a movie's theatrical release and DVD release has continued to shrink over the years, it's taken a while for the major studios to creep into the 21st century and offer digital downlaod options at all. Now that you can get most major releases from iTunes, Amazon Unbox, and other online stores, it looks like Apple has turned its atention toward the next digital divide: The length ot fime betwen a DVD release and iTunes releases. Today the company announced partnerhips with a whole slew of movie studios to release videos to iTunes customers the same day as the DVD release.

Participating studios include Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, Image, and First Look. Apple says this week you'll be able to pick up American Gangster, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as well as existing titless. The press release doesn't make it clear whether the simultaneous release applies to $2.99 movie rentals or just $14.99 movie purchases.

If history has taught us anything, it's that while Apple may be the first company to announce the news, we suspect the studios will be working with other online video distributors to enable simultaneous release dates soon.

[via TUAW]

Steve Jobs, for a lot of us, is kind of like Chuck Norris, except all the things that Chuck can supposedly do... well, Steve can actually do them. This is a man who once beat Magnus ver Magnusson in an arm-wrestling match with his left hand while designing a new iPod Nano with his right. The man's got game.

That being said, even he admitted yesterday during his Macworld keynote speech that the original Apple TV was kind of a flop. It was pricey and clumsy and not very popular at all. Yesterday's announcement of Apple TV (take two) acknowledged the flaws of the first machine and promised to make things right for consumers.

Looking for something good to watch while the WGA strike drags on? Amazon is offering up about 20 classic movies as free downloads or rentals.

TiVo Director of Service Operations Stephen Mack posted the news in the TiVo Community forums. TiVo customers can download Amazon Unbox movies to their TiVo boxes for viewing. But if you don't have a TiVo, you can still get the free videos from Amazon's website.

A few of the titles include Charade, House on Haunted Hill, His Girl Friday, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Some of the movies are available as free "purchases," meaning you can download the flick now and watch it whenever you like. The rest are free rentals. That means you can download it today and watch anytime within the next 30 days. But once you hit play, you have just 48 hours to finish watching your movie.

The free movies are available through Nov 18th.

Well, this is a rather cool feature for a TV fan: IMDb pages for TV and movie characters.

Now, it's one thing to have a page for a character that has only been seen on one TV show. But what about characters that have appeared on several TV shows? I decided to test IMDb and see how thorough it is. I typed in "Mike Bauer," a character that used to be on Guiding Light. The character has not only been played by a bunch of characters over the decades, he also appeared on another soap, Another World (on another network!), and damn, the IMDb caught that too.

(S01E01) It's finally arrived: the reality series absolutely no one was asking for.

I'm not interested in snarking at the likes of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. They each had success a lot of folks only dream about, and Feldman was involved in some of my favorite movies growing up, most notably Stand By Me and The Goonies. The movies in which they appeared together, such as Lost Boys and License to Drive, were "just okay" by my standards (and, being about twelve years old at the time, my standards didn't mean much).

Ebert & Roeper co-host Richard Roeper has a new gig, host of the new monthly Starz series Starz Inside.

Or maybe we should say Roeper has another gig, as he'll be staying with the longrunning syndicated movie review show too. Starz Inside will be a series of specials that take a behind the scenes look at the movie industry. Episodes will include "Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco," which will feature George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, and Chris Columbus and "Hollywood Goes Gaming," which will have the history of video games and their effect on the movie industry. They'll even have an episode on "Bloodsucking Cinema," which will showcase the world of vampires on the big screen.

The show premieres on September 24 at 9pm.

Albert Brooks turns 60 today.

Brooks is mostly known for his films (Defending Your Life, Modern Romance), but he was also a favorite guest of folks like Carson and Letterman back in the '80s. He never quite gained the notoriety of some of his contemporaries, but his reputation as a "comedian's comedian" and a little something called "actual talent" has kept him out of obscurity -- and deservedly so, because he's one of the smartest and funniest people working today, even if he is a few steps outside the limelight.

Younger folks know him best for his various guest roles on The Simpsons, one of which I've posted below along with an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman (in two parts).

Netflix customers know that the company is rolling out a service that lets impatient subscribers watch videos on their computer. But not every movie in your queue has the "watch now" button next to it. So trying to find a movie for instant gratification can actually take quite a long time.

Someone's decided to step in and make the process a bit easier, compiling a list of over 2300 Netlix movies available for online viewing. Most titles include a link to the movie's page on Netflix. You'll need a subscription in order to watch these movies. But now that you know how easy it is to find titles like Gothic Vampires from Hell, why wouldn't you want to sign up?

[via Brent Evans]

Nickelodeon is a place where things are happening. This post is a place where I will tell you what those things are. Yes.

Last Day of Summer, in which a boy lives his final day of summer over and over again. It premieres on Nick on July 20. The movie stars Jansen Panettiere, who voiced a character in not one, but TWO Holly Hobbie videos. How many of us can say that? How many people besides myself know what the hell Holly Hobbie is?

As a teenager, your opinion is irrelevant to most of society, but the Teen Choice Awards is your chance to let your voice be heard, and to nominate Paris Hilton for some reason.

Hilton is just one of the folks who have been nominated for Teen Choice 2007, which airs live starting at 8:00 p.m. on August 26 on FOX. She's been nominated in the "Choice TV: Female Reality/Variety Star" category for her "role" on The Simple Life. She's also nominated for the "OMG! Moment" for her jail sentence. Yes, you can win an award for that now, so star commiting some felonies right now, kids.

MTV has development deals in place for a few flicks which would air first on the network before hitting DVD and then, based on public response, the cinema. These projects, one of which is being developed by Jay Kogen, a writer for The Simpsons and Fraiser, have not been officially greenlit by the studio.

This is not an entirely new idea for MTV. Recently, MTV announced a DVD movie based on its popular My Super Sweet 16 series.