Post-Thanksgiving Linkage: Blockbuster Kiosks, Streaming Video Piracy, Speed Racer, Vudu

- Blockbuster is gonna try putting automated movie rental kiosks into Papa John's pizza joints and Family Dollar stores. DVDs will rent for just a buck, cheaper than at Blockbuster's traditional outlets, and they can be returned to any kiosk -- not just the one they came from.

- Slate has a great piece on a new kind of online movie piracy. Dan Morrell writes:

As the MPAA has focused on BitTorrent downloading, however, a newer, more popular kind of piracy method has come along. BitTorrent is out. Streaming video is in.

Before it was shuttered by European authorities in October, the British-based TVLinks—which offered links to hundreds of pirated movies and television shows—had become perhaps the Web's leading destination for illicit streaming video. If you've never heard of it, you're not alone: A LexisNexis search found only four mentions of TVLinks in major news sources over the past year. The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular torrent Web sites, was cited more than 300 times. The lack of hype didn't stop the site's spread. According to Web traffic analyzer Alexa, TVLinks passed both the Pirate Bay and TorrentSpy in global traffic rank this August. At the height of its popularity, TVLinks ranked 160th in global traffic, near the level of the New York Times.

- Looks like the Wachowski Brothers are taking the green screen approach with 'Speed Racer.'

- To help market its $399 set-top box, Vudu is throwing in high-def copies of two of Universal's 'Bourne' movies. (Here's more on Vudu.)

- My mother-in-law asked me on Thanksgiving for my advice on whether she should buy "a Blu-ray." When I mentioned the format war, she didn't seem aware of it, and she didn't seem to have much recognition that HD DVD existed. She and my father-in-law are big Netflix users, and Netflix offers movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD, so I told her the only possible problem could be if HD DVD wins, they'd need to buy a new DVD player in a couple years. Just a data point...

Susan Sarandon Explains Digital Cinematography to You ... 'Manufacturing Dissent' Debuts on AOL ... CNET Q&A with MPAA Piracy Exec

- So apparently the Wachowski brothers are doing something innovative with the digital cinematography on their next project, which a live action version of the cartoon 'Speed Racer'. Will you understand exactly what they're up to by reading this interview with actress Susan Sarandon? Probably not.

- AOL is making 40 minutes of the doc 'Manufacturing Dissent' available online for free. It's a somewhat critical profile of Michael Moore that played at South by Southwest; it felt toothless and overly-long to me when I saw it there... but maybe a 40-minute cut is an improvement.

What's the business model? Ads will be shown throughout the online version, and the distributor (Liberation Entertainment) hopes that when the DVD is released on November 6th, the online marketing will help. (November is a long way from August, guys...) Video can be found here.

- CNET interviews Dean Garfield, an attorney (no surprise there) who is the MPAA's chief strategy officer. (I interviewed Garfield in LA a year or so ago, and his responses to my questions were so milque-toasty I never did anything with it. A shame Jack Valenti is no longer around to give him some media training.) Here's a sample exchange:

CNET: What kind of technologies are you guys using to help prevent piracy?

Garfield: We're at the point where technology provides real opportunity, and it's not just down the road, but today. We're conducting requests for proposals in conjunction with MovieLabs around content recognition technologies. (MovieLabs is a company started by the six major studios to develop technologies that can help distribution of film.)

That testing is still ongoing, but the reports are that the technology really works. It is really effective. You can distinguish one piece of content versus another. That's real potential for monetizing and filtering out copyright content. Technology gives us real opportunities to give consumers what they want while also protecting the investment.