Netflix Inc. is adding to the group of movies that its subscribers can watch online or over Internet-connected devices at the same time as they would have appeared on premium pay TV channels such as HBO or Showtime.

The deal announced Tuesday with film financier Relativity Media LLC adds to a batch of newer movies from The Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. that can be watched online through Netflix’ 2-year-old deal with Starz Entertainment LLC on a service called Starz Play.

Among the first films in the deal are “The Fighter,” starring Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams, and “Season of the Witch,” starring Nicolas Cage. The films are set to hit theaters later this year.
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According to several news sources, the Federal Communications Commissions has granted movie studios as limited waiver that makes it easier for them to offer first-run films for home viewing in early release windows.

The Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter both report that the move would allow studios to show the films shortly after — or even during — their release in theaters, before they came out on Blu-Ray or DVD.

The key to the ruling is a set-top box which prevents home-recording of the films, which had been a hurdle to delivering first-run films directly to home viewers.

Currently, movies are made available for home viewing on pay-per-view, usually six months after first appearing in theaters and three months after coming out on DVD.

Alice and the Mad Hatter have made a very important date on home video.

Walt Disney Home Entertainment has announced that director Tim Burton’s blockbuster fantasy Alice in Wonderland will debut on June 1 on DVD and Blu-ray.

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The disc: Bad Girls of Film Noir

The details: Sony has issued an arresting collection of B movies under the umbrella title of Bad Girls of Film Noir. There are two volumes, four films per volume. By all odds the best movie overall is on Volume 2: The Glass Wall, with Vittoria Gassman and the devastating Gloria Grahame — the original suicide blonde.

It’s the story of a displaced person who jumps ship in New York harbor and goes on a hunt through the Times Square area to find a musician he helped during the war and who can protect him from deportation. Read the full story

A RICKY GEVAIS SATIRE

The details: In this subversively amusing religious satire, Ricky Gervais plays Mark Bellison, who lives in a town where no one has ever lied. On a first date with Anna (Jennifer Garner), she tells Mark he’s not handsome enough to date, and a waiter blurts out he’s “embarrassed to work here.” The people who inhabit the film simply say whatever is on their minds, and they have no reason not to believe one another. But when Mark discovers the ability to lie, the town comes alive and a struggle ensues between Mark’s competing angels. A clue to which one triumphs comes in a scene shortly after Mark begins to lie, when he encounters a suicidal neighbor (Jonah Hill) and discovers the redemptive power of random acts of deceit.

VIDEO GAME … OR REAL LIFE?

The details: Gerard Butler plays a convict trapped in a “real life” video game in which the players shoot their way through levels until they’re killed. Or they make it through 30 “missions” and are freed. Butler puts his game face on, playing a man unjustly convicted of murder, determined to escape his doom in this weekly worldwide telecast of the game Slayers. His nemesis is a soul-deadened teen gamer (Logan Lerman) with a knack for pulling the game trigger faster than his competitors. When you set your sights on mimicking and commenting on a first-person-shooter game where the body-count and the score are all you’re really interested in, you’ve set your sights too low.

The discs: Midsomer Murders: Barnaby’s Casebook.

The details: There’s nothing like a good murder mystery to start the new year, particularly if you’ve got some cash left over from Christmas for this somewhat pricey ($159.99) set: Midsomer Murders: Barnaby’s Casebook.

The 19-disc collection includes 17 stand-alone mysteries and two bonus discs. Read the full story

The discs: Sherlock Holmes films.

The details: About 12 years ago, Hugh Hefner wrote a large check to the UCLA Film Archive to preserve the 14 Sherlock Holmes features made by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. They were what is known as “orphan films,” sold decades earlier by their makers to King World, who flogged them in television syndication for decades and didn’t take care of the negatives. Hefner’s largesse — he has done more for film preservation than anybody but Ted Turner — ensured that the films would be around to delight audiences for decades to come.

The films have been reissued two to a disc to coast on the momentum hopefully supplied by the new Robert Downey film. MPI Home Video has cagily bracketed weaker films with stronger ones, which can be irritating, but the films are bargain-priced so you can’t really lose. Read the full story

The disc: The Samuel Fuller Collection
The details: In the first few minutes of Sam Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono, a stripper finishes her act, walks into her dressing room and narrowly misses being killed. Running half-naked through the Los Angeles streets, she is finally shot by her unseen assailant, writhes and dies as the traffic screeches to a halt around her body.

It may be lurid, but I dare you to look away. The Crimson Kimono is part of The Samuel Fuller Collection, a seven-film set issued by the Film Foundation and Sony Pictures. As it turns out, the identity of the murderer is the least interesting thing about The Crimson Kimono, which is actually about the uneasy union between a Japanese-American homicide cop and his American partner. Uneasy because they fall in love with the same woman. Read the full story

The disc: Every Little Step

The details: If Michael Bennett had thought of it, he might have made a documentary about the making of A Chorus Line. But as it happened, he was too busy mounting his show. It was left to the producers of the 2007 revival to make a documentary, and Every Little Step (Sony) is never less than compelling, despite its plot of examining the lives of dancers competing for parts in a show that examines the lives of dancers. Read the full story

The disc: The William Castle Film Collection
The details: The William Castle Film Collection piles up eight, count ’em eight, of Castle’s gleefully absurd horror films from the early 1960s in one bountiful package. Castle was a low-rent Hitchcock, as much of a carny huckster as a director, despite the fact that he directed some very creditable B movies in the 1940s and served as associate producer to Orson Welles on Lady From Shanghai. He was loud and proud, shooting his movies in a couple of weeks for up to $200,000, then spending six to eight times that on promotion.
The Tingler was promoted with “Percepto,” which was more or less a buzzer attached to selected theater seats that would be cued by Vincent Price onscreen telling the audience members to scream for their lives. Cued by the buzzer under their butts, they did so. Homicidal came with a “Fright Break,” a 45-second timer on the screen that gave scaredy-cats time to get out of the auditorium and into the “Coward’s Corner” before the murders started.
Castle was an archetypal master of exploitation filmmaking, and, as was typical, the films themselves, divorced from the magnificent ballyhoo, are often a little disappointing. The Tingler and Strait-Jacket — Joan Crawford as an ax murderess — are great fun, but Mr. Sardonicus (a witch’s brew of Phantom of the Opera and The Man Who Laughs), Zotz and The Old Dark House are slow going. Homicidal, 13 Frightened Girls and 13 Ghosts are considerably better, or at least giddier.
The set comes with a full array of trailers and examples of Castle’s showmanship, and the main extra is an excellent feature-length documentary: Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, which showcases such Castle fans as John Waters and Joe Dante, whose film Matinee was a loving homage to Castle.