While you’re watching, don’t forget to check out our new embed feature, which allows you to watch each video in full screen. To do so, simply click on the “expand” box that appears to the right of the search bar when the embedded video is playing.

From all of us at Hulu, happy holidays!

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

The tone is set when Kate, dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, says “There’s no place like home,” and Ellen mutters — under her breath behind mom’s back, of course — “Thank god.”

What follows is the story of a young woman discovering that her homemaker mother was stronger than anyone thought, and that her father — long idolized by Ellen — is not the man she thought he was.

Hope you enjoy the movie,

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro bring Guillermo Arriaga’s (Amores Perros) screenplay to life, with Watts playing a grieving mother who’s slipping into old habits. Meanwhile Penn and Del Toro play very two different men — a critically ill mathematician and a born-again ex-con — who are brought together by Watts’ character.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (also from Amores Perros) spins 21 Grams into an intricate web, mixing the past and present of each character to tell their stories. But the result isn’t as confusing as it sounds. Once you stop trying to make sense of the pieces, you find that everything comes together.

Another feature film comes tomorrow, this one a Meryl Streep tear-jerker. We’ll reveal the title at hulu.com/holidays tomorrow.

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

From Peyton Wilson, Director, Speed and Angels

I’m a filmmaker. I’m also a pretty liberal woman and I was living in San Francisco when Paco [Chierici, the film's producer] called me up and said, “Let’s make a kick-ass film about Navy fighter pilots.” “Hmmm … what? Who? Do I care about jets? Are fighter pilots really that interesting? Not my world.” But Paco pestered me until I grew curious. Entering a Navy base is an alien experience; hanging out in a squadron full of fighter pilots is more than surreal. My fear melted in about two minutes. The guys were great, deep, intelligent, funny, relaxed; they were real.

Before I knew it, I began to document their world. While I still wasn’t that into jets, I was fascinated by their passion. Over the next few months I went to the Officer’s Club and learned what a “butterfly” start to a dogfight is. I had never been with a group of people who so fiercely loved what they did and who’d all fought against some steep odds to achieve their dream. That was the story I knew I had to tell.

I went where they went: aircraft carriers, their homes, flight simulators, classrooms, etc. And I was always on the ramp waiting for their return from a flight. It was extremely personal. Even the aerial footage had to be personal. My mantra: put the audience in the cockpit. Eventually, two stories rose to the surface: Meagan and Jay. Two pilots who — had they listened to adults when they were teenagers — absolutely shouldn’t be in the cockpit: a woman who decided she was going to be a fighter pilot at a time when women weren’t allowed to, and a young man who is lucky to be alive, much less flying. For two years I attached myself to Meagan and Jay. Their journeys are heartbreaking, scary, breathtaking and deeply moving. By understanding their world in such a personal way, I finally began to share their fascination with jets. And their continual fight to go after their dream changed something in me forever.

From Paco Chierici, Fighter Pilot/Producer, Speed and Angels

I first saw Top Gun in the fall of ‘86 as a twenty-year-old and I was blown away. I had flown in the back seat of an F-14 Tomcat just three months prior and was still spinning. I fell in love that summer — with a big hunk of aluminum. I loved everything about that big beast: the smell of the jet exhaust, the sinewy shoulders, the impossibly thin fuselage, the massive engines sprouting rudders and elevators the size of the wings on most planes, and, of course, the ridiculous thrust.

The movie and that plane are forever linked in my mind. The aerial and carrier scenes are iconic. When I was in flight school, we used to play the first five minutes to get pumped up before a big flight. The quotes are ingrained in the American lexicon: “Feel the need … the need for speed,” “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you,” and the overused but always fun “Goose, take me to bed or lose me forever!”

The problem I had with Top Gun can be summed up thusly: in fighter squadrons only the biggest moron is now given the call sign “Maverick.” I felt the need … to make a movie that blew away the flying and carrier scenes and showed the real people, the real drama, the real call signs — the real Top Gun. Lucky for me, I’m friends with Peyton Wilson.

– - –

Thanks, Paco and Peyton for sharing your inspiration with us. Hulu for the Holidays has a Sean Penn feature in store tomorrow.

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

For grocery store cashiers Ronna and Simon, it will be a night unlike any other. From attempted drug busts and car wrecks to strip clubs and shootings, the kids featured in Go attract a lot trouble. Ronna (Sarah Polley) just wants some rent money, so when two guys (Party of Five’s Scott Wolf and Action’s Jay Mohr) approach her looking to score some ecstasy, she’s willing to oblige — and even use her best friend, Claire (Katie Holmes), as collateral to make the score. And from there, it’s all downhill. There’s the undercover cop (Prison Break’s William Fitchner) who’s out to make a bust, an angry drug dealer, and a little problem with a Miata at a Christmas Eve rave. Meanwhile, Simon (Desmond Askew) is having a boys-gone-wild weekend in Las Vegas, where he runs into trouble in the back room of a strip club. And while the film seems to take more than a few cues from Pulp Fiction, director Doug Liman (Swingers) ensures that it strikes a chord with a Gen X point of view.

Today’s second feature, Wimbledon, is a lighthearted look at love on and off the grassy courts. Kirsten Dunst stars as a bad-girl tennis superstar; Paul Bettany is a has-been tennis pro taking one last swing at Wimbledon. Can their romance survive the competition? Watch and see.

Hulu for the Holidays is back on Monday with a classic animation block. We’ll take you from a junkyard to Eternia and on to Frostbite Falls for some classic cartoons from our youth.

Rebecca (rebeccaharper@hulu.com),
Editor

I missed In the Name of the Father when it was first released, but there’s no mistaking that this Jim Sheridan-directed film is powerful. The soundtrack — featuring Bono, Jimi Hendrix, the Kinks, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan and Sinéad O’Connor — creates the backdrop for the true-life story of the Guildford Four, the four people who were wrongly convicted for the 1974 terrorist bombing of the Guildford pub. The movie went on to receive seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actor (Pete Postlethwaite), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Thompson), Best Director (Jim Sheriden) and Best Picture. It was a big year for movies, though — 1993 also saw the release of Schindler’s List, The Fugitive, The Piano and Philadelphia, all of which beat out In the Name of the Father for Oscars.

While Daniel Day-Lewis fights a justice system in In the Name of the Father, Joe Mondragon takes on real estate developers in The Milagro Beanfield War. Directed by Robert Redford, it’s the story of this New Mexican handyman who illegally irrigates a parched beanfield using water that was meant for a major development. You’ll recognize a few faces throughout the movie: Melanie Griffith, Daniel Stern, Freddy Fender and, best of all, Christopher “Can I Get a Little More Cowbell?” Walken.

We hope you enjoy today’s double feature. We’ll be back with another pair of films tomorrow. Check back to see what’s in store!

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

This thriller casts Pitt as Frankie McGuire, an IRA terrorist — you decide whether Pitt’s Irish accent is convincing — who’s dead-set on revenge, and Ford as Tom O’Meara, a New York City cop who allows the Irish émigré to stay in his home, totally unaware of his criminal background. As O’Meara begins to suspect that his houseguest has a deadly past, he finds himself torn between sympathy for McGuire’s cause and his fear of getting into trouble with the FBI and British police.

While the film glosses over the Irish conflict, choosing to focus on O’Meara’s moral dilemma instead, Pitt and Ford themselves deliver strong performances. For a more detailed look at the Protestant-Catholic conflict, check back tomorrow as the IRA takes center stage once again. Hulu for the Holidays is set to continue with a film that was based on real events, although it raised some controversy for not sticking to the facts. Even so, it received seven Oscar nominations — but Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List swept the awards that year.

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

The first feature — a buffer progress bar — is something you’ll notice only if you pause a video during playback. When a video is paused, Hulu loads a small portion of the video into your computer’s memory. The new buffer progress bar allows you to see how much of a video has been stored, and when the bars reach “full,” about five minutes of the video have been loaded. (Due to legal reasons, Hulu currently does not buffer more than a small portion of a video at a given time.) For users who are experiencing choppy playback due to network congestion, this progress bar lets you know when the video has reached its buffering limit so you can hit “play” and enjoy the show.

The second feature we’ve introduced today allows you to watch any Hulu video embedded on any site in full-screen mode. To use this feature from a blog or website with an embedded Hulu video (such as this blog; I’ve embedded the first video blog from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Conan’s future replacement, in today’s post), just start playing the video. When the video begins, move your mouse over the Hulu player and a small button to go full screen will appear in the upper right corner, next to the search bar. Hulu’s keyboard shortcuts — “f” to go full screen, “space” to pause, “escape” to return to normal view — also work in this mode. (Our full-screen feature only works when using a single monitor; the Flash software we use to stream videos doesn’t support full-screen mode with dual monitors.)

Tomorrow, Hulu for the Holidays brings another movie to our lineup. If you’ve been following the Holidays calendar, you’ll recognize the two leads in this selection: they each appeared in films introduced at the end of November. This one’s about a deadly Irish assassin. We’ve got more movies to finish off the work week; check back every day to see the latest. While you’re at it, check out the latest posts from Jimmy Fallon and see what you think of the new kid in late night.

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

If Da Vinci’s Inquest has been under your radar, don’t be surprised. It was originally broadcast in Canada, a seven-season run that started in 1998. But with the popularity we’ve seen with another Canadian series, ReGenesis, it only made sense to add another to Hulu’s collection of TV. And so Da Vinci’s Inquest is the story of Dominic Da Vinci (Nicholas Campbell), an ex-cop turned coroner for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, who struggles with his own personal vices as he pursues truth and justice.

In the series opener, embedded here, Da Vinci works on a case that involves a young prostitute found in Vancouver Harbor. After another doctor in the morgue notes similarities between this case and several others, Da Vinci begins re-opening the old cases. This, of course, gets under the skin of the original doctor who performed the autopsies (who just happens to be his ex-wife) as well as his boss. An alliance with a new cop in Homicide is his only hope in putting these victims to rest.

The show is partly based on the real-life experiences of Larry Campbell, the former chief coroner for Vancouver. He went on to become elected mayor of the city in 2002, and our TV coroner follows suit in a spinoff series, Da Vinci’s City Hall. We’ll continue to work toward acquiring additional seasons of Da Vinci’s Inquest, but in the meantime, check back tomorrow for some new site features. Our holiday gift to you for the rest of the week? Big stars — think Brad Pitt, Katie Holmes and Daniel Day-Lewis — each of the remaining days.

Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor

As the lead in Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a Manhattan lawyer who seemingly has it all: a great wife, a beautiful daughter and a successful career. But one thing leads to another one night while his family is out of town, and he ends up having a dangerous liaison with an associate, Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). When Dan starts avoiding Alex’s calls, this short-lived fling takes a dangerous turn as Alex goes into stalker mode, turning up at Dan’s office and even his home. “Well, what am I supposed to do?” she demands. “You won’t answer my calls, you change your number, I’m not going to be ignored, Dan!” Alex’s obsession only grows stronger over time, and that’s when things get a little bit scary.

A combination of sex and suspense — not to mention fear — made Fatal Attraction the second-highest grossing film of 1987. (Behind Three Men and a Baby!) And those same thrills are what make its storyline so memorable today.

As for next Monday’s TV pick, we’re leaving behind the obsessed lovers and planning an imported, award-winning serial drama instead. Called a “Canadian masterpiece” by TV Guide, it focuses on a coroner who’s deemed charismatic and controversial. Check back next week to see what it is!

Rebecca (rebecca.harper@hulu.com),
Editor