Do the owners of Movieline know something Nick Denton doesn't?

Apparently they think they do, because they've hired the three full-time editors of Defamer -- Seth Abramovitch, S.T. VanAirsdale and Kyle Buchanan -- to relaunch the defunct Movieline magazine brand on the Web. 

Denton, owner of Defamer parent company Gawker Media, recently shut down Defamer as an independent site and rolled it into the Gawker blog. The move came as he's been selling off and downsizing assets due to the developing downturn in online advertising (or at least online advertising growth).

But the new owners of Movieline apparently think there's money to be made from the Defamer formula. So much so that they're willing to not only buy the talent behind it, but expand their resources.

“Defamer combined the wit of The Onion, the breaking industry news of Variety and the watercooler chatter of Page Six,” Jay Penske, CEO of Mail.com Media Corporation, which now owns Movieline, in a press release. “It changed the way Hollywood works and Movieline.com will take that one step further.”

It's expected to launch sometime in the spring.

Oh, and as a side note, how weird is it that after Movieline shut down the brand got bought by the company behind mail.com? A Web firm that makes its money off (duh) online e-mail? Still, it's got some money to make this happen. According to CNET News, the company raised a healthy $35 million in October.

Somehow I doubt NBC has been able to copyright a phrase as universal as "That's what she said." Which means they won't be able to make any money now that Michael Scott's catchphrase on "The Office" is its very own iPhone app.

That's right -- when somebody sets you up with an inappropriate phrase like "I think we may have to approach from behind," you no longer have to say "That's what she said!" to generate a few easy laughs. Now you can take out your iPhone or iPod Touch, unlock it, and play a recording of somebody else saying, really emphatically, "That's what she said!" Hilarity (or is it confusion?) ensues.

Neither the website nor the iTunes page specifically mention "The Office." But really, while NBC and the writers of that show have no legal recourse for a pretty common phrase, they do have a right to be annoyed that somebody's building a little business off the catchphrase they popularized (though they're not making money yet -- the app is free) by turning it into an incredibly dumb little application.

As Gizmodo aptly put it, "You're an unfunny person if you say 'That's what she said!' all the time. You're an aggressively, offensively unfunny person if you pull out your iPhone and push a button to say it."

Just how mainstream is Netflix? One of the oldest school of old-school directors is using it to promote his newest movie.

Francis Ford Coppola is now online with his first viral short promoting "Tetro," his upcoming film starring Vincent Gallo. It's no sophisticated filmmaking from a great director or an ironic take on the quality of most videos on YouTube. It's just Francis Ford Coppola, holding a camcorder in one hand, walking alone through his office in the Napa Valley showing us his home office where he works, which basically consists of several laptops and some blueprints (no idea why).

FFC's agenda seems quite simple. He's just saying "hi" and telling us a little bit about his upcoming movie.

The video is apparently meant to serve as an introduction to the new website for "Tetro," which just launched here. As of this writing, only 519 people have watched Francis Ford Coppola's first directorial effort since 2007's "Youth Without Youth." Here's hoping the Internets can show a little more respect:

(via LA Times tech blog)

As evidenced by the number of devices announced that connect directly with it at the Consumer Electronics Show, Netflix streaming is pretty much the hottest thing going in the still nascent world of Internet movie watching. Not only can you get the movies on your PC, natch, but you can stream Netflix through a number of devices that connect to your TV, like the Roku box and Xbox 360. And later this year we'll be seeing televisions that connect directly to Netflix -- no annoying and expensive box needed.

Although the Internet is in many ways troublesome for the Hollywood studios, this is one development they have to like. After all, if I'm paying Netflix the same amount of money but start watching some of my movies via my Xbox 360 (as I am indeed starting to do), those are fewer DVDs the studios need to manufacture and ship. They just deliver a digital copy to Netflix and, boom, the margins get fatter.

Which is why it will be very interesting to see how Netflix's intention to start offering streaming-only plans to consumers impact the economics of Hollywood. Speaking at the Jefferies Internet and Media conference, CFO Barry McCarthy said, "We're likely to do that in the foreseeable future" when asked if customers will be able to sign up to stream only and not get any DVDs.

So the question is... how much less will it cost? To make such a plan appealing, Netflix would likely have to charge less for the same number of movies per month. And/or emhasize that consumers can get more movies faster with no need to wait for the USPS. That could mean studios will have to accept a little bit less per movie, even if the margins stay somewhat bigger. Unless Netflix plans to eat the entire difference in cost, thinking it can make up for with the money it saves paying for bandwidth instead of postage.

If anything is going to make online movie streaming really take off in the near term, it's a plan like this from Netflix. And as that happens, Hollywood is likely going have to accept that the economics won't be as simple as just pretending digital is the same as DVDs.