Watch Movies Online

Watch Classic Movies Online

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Thanks to Life Hacker I discovered a new source to Watch Classic Movies Online. The site is Classic Cinema Online and it is a very nice site with many categories and choices.

I chose the Spaghetti Western section and was presented with many choices based upon their popularity. I chose Nobody Is My Name with Terrence Hill. I remembered these films fondly from my youth. I thought it would be fun to relive those memories and see how they translated forward for me. This usually goes badly, but what the hell, I thought I would take the risk.

Nobody Is My Name is actually one I did not remember at all and starred Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda. The movie was directed by Sergio Leone (uncredited) of the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western fame. Really...how bad a movie could the guy that made The Good, The Bad and The Ugly come up with? Well...let's just say that you can't hit the bulls eye every time.

Watching this classic movie online, you get the story of Jack Beauregard (Fonda), an aging gun fighter who just wants to retire and take a boat out to sea. There is just one problem, one hundred and fifty problems actually, The Wild Bunch. They are out to see that Jack retires their way and not his. Their way ends with Jack in a pine box and a final trip to Boot Hill.

To be sure, Jack has a problem.

Enter Nobody (Hill), he is a fan of Jack's and has his own plans and desires for Jack's retirement. In his mind, the only way for Jack to go out is to take out the Wild Bunch. After that Nobody will take care of taking out Jack.

It seems that Jack has a problem that has no easy solution. With Nobody bound and determined that things go his way and only his way.

When the end came, I can say that I should have seen it coming, but I did not. It may have been because the movie did not have the magic that I remembered from my youth or that I was a boring kid and have moved up the interest ladder slightly. Slightly is the key word here.

To Watch this Classic Movie Online is not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon when it's cloudy and cold outside, but there were probably better choices there. I will definitely return to the site to check out more offerings, I just may stay away from the Spaghetti Westerns for a while.

A Look at a Current Independent Film

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:15:00 +0000

There is something about current independent films that really appeals to me. More and more often the makers of these excellent pieces of cinema are doing a remarkable job of pushing the envelope in new and exciting directions. This is independent film making at its best.

On a recent Saturday night, I discovered one of these hidden gems. It was the 2008 movie "Humboldt County". I am told that a certain segment of my audience is now nodding with approval, doing their best "Cool man" phrases and letting a knowing smile play across their lips. Me? Well, I lead a sheltered life and had no idea that Humboldt County even existed. Which I am told it does, but don't tell any one.

The film revolves a young man named Peter, who hopes to be bound for medical school, but is failed in one of his necessary classes by his professor, who is also his father. Bummer, dude (for the HC crowd).

He is none to happy about this and even less so that his father delivered the final blow to a dream that he wants for his son even more than his son wants it for himself.

Peter does what many of us would do. He turns to a night a drinking. He loosens up. He meets a girl, Bogart, and spends the night with her. The HC crowd can already see where this is heading.

He awakes the next morning to find himself in Bogart's truck heading home with her to Humboldt County. This is a beautiful stretch of country hidden away in northern California. Peaceful people live and work here. It's mostly an agricultural community. For the farmers of Humboldt County make their living growing marijuana. Now you see why the HC crowd found this article.

Peter has definitely found himself smack dab in a fish out of water tale. This is about as far removed from his life as he can get and now he has found himself more or less stranded in this community of decent, family loving pot growers.

Given this pitch, this is where current movies studios would take the story for a turn for the worse. Studios are about making money. No different than independent film makers, I guess. The difference can be found in a quote from Walt Disney though. Disney said, "We do not make movies to make money. We make money so that we can make movies." The essence for the current independent movies.

It is not hard to believe that a studio would want to snatch up a story like this and ear mark it for their favorite young star of the day. Of course, it will need just some minor re-writes to make sure that is tailor made for the talent's special needs.

Then after several revisions, perhaps a change of lead actors or two (or dozens), there will be almost no sense of the story left. It will have been massaged and milked down from independent film risks to studio film reward. The only problem is that this formula almost never rewards anyone. What the studio forgot is that to the current independent filmmaker, the risk is the reward, every thing else is gravy.

The great thing about the film makers for current independent films is that they can fight against the trend of the studios. There is no 14 levels of management. This way the movie gets made because of the passion of the story tellers for their project and their art.

Anyway, back to Peter and Bogart.

Peter finds the life style of the Humboldt County residence to be reckless and foolhardy to say the least. But, as it with any one who views some one from the outside and then takes the opportunity to step into their world and look again, Peter learns that there is more happening than the growing of pot. The core struggles of the fine folks of Humboldt County are no different than any ones. Family. Work. Love. Etc.

Our gift as the viewer is that we get to go along for the ride.

So, is this a great fish out of water tale? Nope. Did this independent film flip the genre on it's ear and surprise us with a retelling that explored new territory. Sorry, it's not there.

Did I like it? Yes, I did. It's a well made film. It's well written and well acted.

If you find yourself looking for a current independent film online (or in my case, on Netflix) this might be one to check out.

Current Movie Online for a Younger Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:16:00 +0000

My most recent online movie watching was Across the Universe. A current movie with a plot line built around Beatles tunes. I have to believe that meant nothing short of a huge royalty fee right off the bat. Good thing Michael Jackson sold those worthless songs to Sony!

The last time I watched a movie that was based on the famous catalog, it was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Universe was a better movie than that. Paint drying is a better movie than that. The talent was there, but the story was too weak and never really made much sense.

Across the Universe does not suffer from the same problem. It is more in the realm of Moulin Rouge. Rouge was an excellent film and one I may to go watch online when I get this post finished.

Universe is still in the same family idea, but it is not quite eating at the adult table, yet. It tries and at times does a great job. Unfortunately, like the Sgt. Pepper's, it suffers a bit from too many convenient setups and namings. Not too much, just a bit.

Julie Taymor directs this tale of a young lad from Liverpool named Jude. Will that lead to a song? You bet it will. Who falls in love with an American lass named Lucy. Will that lead to a song? You bet it will.

They live in New York with a local talented singer named Sadie and another friend one who is named Prudence. Will that lead to a ... you get the idea, don't you?

Not much in the way of pop talent singing in this, but the cast does a good job with the soundtrack and some of the covers are very enjoyable. You can listen to those online too if you happen to have a Rhapsody account.

I don't just hang around my computer and watch older and current movies online. I like the tunes too.

The pacing of Universe is where they lost me. I enjoyed the singing and the arrangements of the songs. I could live with seeing the set up coming from about 3 miles away.

What bugged me was that the movie was about 30 minutes too long. Who knows? Maybe they got a deal when they bought the rights.

Take Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and we'll throw in For the Benefit of Mr. Kite at no additional cost. What a deal! Actual, since Kite was played by Eddie Izzard, it was a deal and quite a bit of fun.

From a visual stand point it was not as pleasing as my recent viewing of Pan's Labyrinth, but I enjoyed watching it just the same.

In the end, I may have been just too old to have thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I understand that the daughter of a family friend loved the movie so much that she went out and bought it and watched it constantly for several days.

Silly girl. It was a good movie and if I saw it again, it would be OK by me, but doesn't she know she could have watched this current movie online?

Current Movies Online

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:00:00 +0000

When you are in search of current movies online, you might be tempted to think that there is nothing out there for you unless you go down the path of questionable sources to find what you are looking for.

There are other avenues, so don't dust off your bit torrent client, just yet. I am not saying that you can find everything you want that has hit your local movie rental house, but you can find some and that is a start.

In the past I have reviewed Hulu when covering movies online and while they have many great finds to offer you, you will not see a lot of current movies to help you in your quest.

For that, you have to go to other sources, in my case I often use Netflix to help me catch up on movies that I have not seen because I missed them when they were in the movie theater and current.

Netflix gives me some more recent titles to choose. In fact, it seems that they are adding more all the time.

So, what am I considering a current movie. I would consider them to have been originally released in the last 2 or 3 years. That's current to me.

Recently, I watched a great current movie in this realm, Pan's Labyrinth. This is a foreign language film, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro and has sub-titles. Even with that distraction, and it was not that distracting, I was still struck by how visually interesting this film is.

In fact, it was the visuals that drew me to it in the first place. I can remember watching the trailer online or on TV and thinking, that looks great. I was not wrong, BTW.

I think you can honestly say that Guillermo del Toro must have a very active and wild dream life. This guy can think up some weird stuff and that's the best kind of stuff there is.

Since this movie never made it my way (my local theater is not really interested in films that have to be read to follow them) and I never traveled to make it to a theater that allowed people to enjoy what they wanted, I was left wondering about this film. Well, I am wondering no more.

Recently, I was reminded of my interest when I saw that this film was going to be on one of the premium cable channels. The small trailer they showed to announce the soon to be aired program was enough to get me interested all over again. Unfortunately, the air date was not when I wanted it to be, ie NOW! So, Netflix to the rescue and with a few minutes, I was watching a great movie.

Thanks to Netflix, I got to see this relatively current movie online and have an enjoyable couple of hours to boot.

Watch Movies Online - Lights On, Lights Off

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:00:00 +0000

There some things that you might think you would miss by watching movies online. Large screens, mountains of popcorn made by someone else and the theater feel of dimming of the lights.

Two excellent sources of movie viewing Hulu and Netflix have done their best to work this into their offering.

If you have watched a movie online in front of your PC, you know that the area outside of the picture can be a little jarring at times. Often it is much brighter than section of the screen that is showing the movie. That can make your eyes wondering during the show.

This distracting area can also hold ads when you are on an advertisement supported site like Hulu. I get it that if the movie is so boring you start reading the ads because are more interesting might mean that you need to choose better online viewing picks, but still lets try to keep that down to a minimum.

So, how do you stay focused and solve the problem? Hmmm? Do you hear me? Were you reading the ads and not my words. Got to get a better light switch for the blog.

Anyway, here are how two sites have manged to give you one step closer to a true online movie experience.

If you are Netflix (not ad supported) you just do away with it all together. Their frame around the movie you are watching is black and contrast nicely against your online viewing.

Hulu goes one better and gives you a choice. They offer you the chance to lower the lights. There is usually an ad section that stays "lit" during the movie and it matches the latest commercial that you watched, but you forget it is there soon enough.

So as you kick back with your home made popcorn and your fake bucket of soda to enjoy the latest to hit your PC, keep in mind that keeping the lights on or off is up to you.

Until next time, remember to watch movies online.

Watch Movies Online - A Review of 'Speed Racer: The Movie'

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:00:00 +0000

I sat down the other night to watch a movie online and after searching for a few minutes decided on 'Speed Racer: The Movie'. This was not the latest live action adventure, but a set of three episodes from the television show that had been put together to make a full length (well, over an hour anyway) movie experience.

I had a great time watching this online. I must admit that it had been a long time since I sat down and watched a Speed Racer. I was probably still in Gr-animal matching clothes, but this movie/mini set of episodes took me back none the less. Fun!

It consisted of a single episode, 'The Car Haters' and a cliff hanger double episode. I think it was called 'The Mammoth Car'.

Watching the movie online not a bad experience at all. There were plenty of moments that I marveled at the inventive nature of the creators of this movie. They were definitely not bound by any conventions not doing something because it would not seem real. In fact, they stayed true to the setup of the whole movie. Yes, the Mammoth Car was 200 feet long, but once you got past that, it was all kept within reality. Anyone remember Super Train?

The plot lines, without giving too much away, I don't want to spoil the movie for you are as follows.

'The Car Haters' follows a girl who loves racing and her car hating Father. He hates cars because her brother was killed in a car wreck and now he won't let the kids dance and they have to clean up the grain mill to hold their dance in the next county. WAIT! That movie is 'Footloose' (not sure if that one is available to watch online or not, I better check). This guy won't let her race and spends a good deal of time riding his horse everywhere and I do mean everywhere, in one scene you can watch him ride over the car roofs of a traffic jam.

He also spends a large amount of time cracking his whip at Speed Racer and the Mach 5 (Speed's car in case you don't know). Eventually hatred gets the better of him and turns on itself. Watch it and find out what happens.

For my watching of 'The Mammoth Car' portion of the movie I got a real online treat. As stated earlier, the movie depicts the use of a 200 foot long car. Fortunately, there is a race about to start and any type of car can run in the race. Well, that worked out, didn't it?

The mammoth car the Mach 5 and a bunch of other are ready to go when suddenly...a police inspector shows up to check all the cars. 50 million (feel free to make a Dr. Evil face when you read this) in gold has been stolen. I wonder which car it is in? Maybe the one that's mammoth and could carry 50 million in gold. but what do I know I am just a guy who likes to watch movies online.

Anyway, the race gets underway and soon it is just down to Speed and the mammoth car. Oh, and Racer X (who is secretly Speeds older brother Rex. A fact they beat you over the head with while you are watching the movie.).

The good part is that you get to see the Mach 5 go through all of its paces. Without spoiling it, let's just say that there is a reason that the mammoth car team doesn't want any scratches on the car.

So, if you enjoy a fun movie online, you could do worse than Speed Racer: The Movie. It even got me interested in watching the live action movie now. I have not seen that one online yet, though.

Until next time, keeping watching movies online.

Watch Movies Online - A Look at Hulu

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Hulu was built to Watch Movies Online. It was originally built as NBC answser to iTunes when NBC decided it could do a better job a marketing their television offerings than iTunes could. NBC also wanted the lions share of the profits, so there was some monetary sense to it too.

By adding commercials throughout the programs, Hulu allows you to watch movies or television programs online for free. The commercials are much easier to take than they are on regular broadcast television. Usually they last somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds. Much less than you would see elsewhere.

When you watch movies online through Hulu, the commercials can seem oddly placed. In fact, it often seems that Hulu has just said, "The movie is two hours long and we need to show 8 commercials, so give them one every 15 minutes no matters what is happening." It can be quite a jolt at times, but does not do to much stop your enjoyment of the movies online as you watch.

Movies are obviously not Hulu's bread and butter. They only have about 100 movie or so that you can watch online, but what they have a pretty good. In future posts, I will write some reviews of my favorites.

Online movie watching is not the only choice at Hulu. They also have a very broad list of telvision series from the current NBC and Fox stables.

Most of the these programs are available for you to watch online for several weeks and in general the episodes show up within a day of their original broadcast time slot.

I have heard that with most programs you can watch online within an hour of their original airing in the Hawaii market place. I am guessing that's the last stop on the NBC circuit for the first run.

After several weeks of being available for online watching, the shows will show up as about the be deleted. They give you several days of warning. So if you are behing on you Heros watching, you'd better get online and get caught up before they go away and you are forced to wait for the next chance to watch, which no doubt be when the season DVD's hit the movie rental stores.

Besides watching current televsion or movies online, you can also catch up on series that have been off the air for a while. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and The Incredible Hulk are available for online watching and you can relive your fondest memories from childhood or break the spell, probably a little of both.

Watching movies online even on a DSL connection is not a bad experience at all. The online interface takes its time and determines the right speed for the optimal playback of the movie you have requested to watch.

There is also a feature that allows you to sto viewing in the middle of the movie and interrupt your online viewing.

Later when you are ready to watch online again, you can simply call back up the movie you are watching and you will be taken back to point where you left off. That's nice.

So, that's it. Hulu is a great place to start when you are ready to watch movies online.

Watch Movies Online Privacy Policy

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I respect the privacy of any one who visits Watch Movies Online. If you share your email address with me, it will remain that way. I do not share personal information with any third parties.

Short, sweet and to the point. If questions come up later or I need to address a specific situation I will do so when the time or need arises.

At this point the Golden Rule of Privacy is effect. I treat your privacy exactly as I hope you would treat mine.

Watch Movies Online - A New Blog

noreply@blogger.com (PudsPapa) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:42:00 +0000

Welcome to Watch Movies Online. This site will have reviews of the sites that allow you to watch movies online. There will also be reviews of movies you can watch and the methods you can use to watch them.

Remember online is not always on the computer.

I hope you enjoy and leave a comment. Now let's all enjoy as we Watch Movies Online.