The Netflix Stream: Week of February 26th, 2012

Brace yourselves; this is a bad one. It’s bad enough that we lost Starz this month, which killed off some of my very favorite movies. The clearly error-filled Netflix RSS feed tricked me into thinking that several really high-quality titles had been added to compensate. As it turns out, we don’t have much to show for our loss.

Losing Starz Play is frustrating, because it was the source of some very good movies and more recent titles. Netflix has some TV shows in the works, and other deals are getting signed all the time, but this is still a solid blow. Once someone finally launches a service worth viewing as a legitimate competitor to Netflix, things are going to get very interesting indeed. I’m one of the biggest Netflix evangelists I know, but the loss of this many titles is just downright frustrating.

Leaving the Stream
  1. ‘Toy Story 3’ (3/1): Did you get a chance to watch ‘Toy Story 3‘ at least once before it left? I sure hope so. It’s one of the finest films Pixar has made. Whether you have or not, you won’t get the chance to do it now. ‘Toy Story’ is gone.
  2. ‘Spartacus’ (3/1): What are the chances of Starz pulling all of its movies from the stream but leaving the incredibly popular ‘Spartacus‘? If you guessed 0%, you’re correct. The beloved show is no longer available streaming.
  3. ‘Young Frankenstein’ (3/1): I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Mel Brooks was once a comic genius. He might still be, but he’s not shown it for quite some time. ‘The Producers’ got him an Academy Award, but I think ‘Young Frankenstein‘ is in the argument for Brooks’ best movie. Hopefully you got to it before we lost Starz.
Entering the Stream
  1. ‘Archer – Season 2’: In the list of 150 or so titles that Netflix said had been added to the service, this is the only one I could find that was actually a new addition. Most were DVD only. Perhaps the others are yet to be added but are incoming? Whatever the case, it’s all very underwhelming. For what it’s worth, ‘Archer‘ is one of the few shows that I make a point of watching on a regular basis. The second season is fantastic and includes the episode ‘Placebo Effect’, which currently stands as my favorite.

7 comments

  1. JoeRo

    While losing Starz is certainly a big loss there were still some great additions today. Chasing Ghosts and Grizzly Man are two fantastic documentaries, and as different from one another as is possible, that were both added today. I was also happy to see Ran join the stream, but I was disappointed to see the number of CNBC specials added … Yikes.

    I’m definitely feeling the loss of Starz, but as always there is plenty of good new content to watch – we just have to dig for it.

  2. Once someone finally launches a service worth viewing as a legitimate competitor to Netflix

    Is Amazon not a legitimate competitor? Its a better value, you get another service added in with your price as well, and they are constantly adding slews of stuff. They also have HD and 5.1. And if its not available for free streaming, you can usually pay $2 and get the show or movie anyways (Netflix doesn’t offer that). Sounds like a legitimate competitor to me

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