MY MOVIE WEEKwith Mike Shaw

Movie rentals aren’t something I normally talk about, but the landscape is changing in a big way, and hopefully we’ll all be better off. American rental giant Netflix has now launched in the UK, and has made a huge splash by offering movie streaming on pretty much any internet-connected device you can think of.

For just £5.99, you can stream unlimited movies to your smart TV, tablet, mobile, computer, Blu-ray player and even your console (yep, including the often overlooked Nintendo Wii).

The service is in direct competition with the already-established likes of LoveFilm and iTunes.

Don’t go rushing to subscribe just yet, though. At the moment the selection is pretty poor and the offering consists primarily of straight-to-DVD films no one has ever heard of. However, at the time of writing, the service hasn’t even been live for 24 hours, so I’ll reserve judgement.

One thing is for sure though, it’s going to force rivals iTunes and LoveFilm to up their game. While LoveFilm also sells a service that offers unlimited streaming for £4.99, the service is patchy on some devices and the selection is poor (the offering for the Xbox is particularly bad). Also factor in LoveFilm’s failure to carry any post-2009 films from Universal due to a years-old dispute, and there are a lot of customers keeping an eye on what Netflix is going to do next.

In America, Netflix is adored and is one of the main reasons that Blockbuster died, so I expect its online library to explode in the coming weeks.

Although dead and buried in the US, Blockbuster UK is very much alive, and it won’t be long until it launches a rival service, too.

In a market where the major player has become stagnant and complacent, this burst of competition is great news.

» It doesn’t take much to make me laugh, but it takes something great to make me really laugh. And the hardest I have ever laughed in a cinema was during Bruce Almighty – the 2003 film where God (Morgan Freeman) gives Bruce (Jim Carrey) his powers.

If you must know, it was the scene where Steve Carell’s character Evan loses control of his voice while reading the news and blurts out gibberish live on air. I’m not proud of myself, but I think we know each other well enough now for me to be able to tell you the truth.

Anyway, while the film wasn’t amazing, it was a great platform for Carrey and as long as you’re not a fundamentalist Christian, it was pretty funny and it made more than $450 million worldwide. Which is a lot of money.

And now Universal has finally decided to make a sequel. Yes, I know we had Evan Almighty in 2007, but that was more of a spin-off than a sequel, and it was also less entertaining than a plastic bag filled with congealed tramp puke, so we’re going to pretend it never happened.

I’m actually quite into the idea of a (proper) second Bruce Almighty, and would like to see Carrey stepping away from the kiddy rubbish and back to what he does best. Only this time, without Jennifer Aniston.

» One of the few things that scared me when I was a kid was Pinocchio. The whole film has a kinda creepy vibe to it, but it goes into a whole new level of terror when Lampwick turns into a donkey.

Now let’s think about Tim Burton. While he isn’t exactly scary, he has a deserved reputation for making somewhat dark, twisted and macabre films. Can you see where I’m going with this?

Burton is in talks to direct a live-action version of the classic story Pinocchio and wants Robert Downey Jr to play Geppetto, the woodcarver who creates Pinocchio. The script made it on to last year’s Black List, the list of the year’s best unproduced scripts in Hollywood, and according to various Hollywood sources, Downey is seriously interested in the project (and in working with Burton).

There’s no mention of Johnny Depp yet, but come on, it’s a Tim Burton film, it won’t be long until his name crops up.

I wouldn’t put it past Burton to shave Depp, paint him with Ronseal, shrink him down with CGI and have him play the little wooden boy. Sleep tight.