But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

yeah there was a literal space war on the moon with people shooting people and shit on both sides lol.

Well ok not *quite*, but still.

I tried the This Is Pop on the Brill Building and it felt like a total mess: the "in four songs" billing only very vaguely lived up to (they don't even explain what the Archies were), so much time spent on silly reconstructions. The focus on not exactly top shelf talents like Neil Sedaka and Andy Kim, which I guess you could spin as giving less critically lauded writers their due tho cynically I'd also say they probably couldn't get Carole King or Neil Diamond; at any rate if you're gonna go that way I'd have prefered full eps on them, this way it's just a weird mishmash that assumes you know a lot already. Linda Perry being a rockist bore. Are the other episodes like this too?

oops I guess that's netflix sorry

I’ve been meaning to check that out, too bad to hear it’s a mess…

I've seen 4:

Boyz II Men was a topic I knew nothing about and didn't feel like I knew much more afterwards.

Autotune I really enjoyed, but would probably have preferred a doc with the guy who invented it more than T-Pain's wife's view on his career.

Swedish Pop was fine but probably in the same vein as you say the Brill Building one was.

Pop Country shies away from all the big topics and should have been probing why Taylor Swift abandoned country or Carrie Underwood went back to it. The nub of a good idea around "authenticity" not pursued enough.

We just watched the Britpop episode—it was somewhat superficial (with some questionable framing), but enjoyable/entertaining. Lots of good interviews.

i liked the swedish one but tbf i only watched it because it had jay mccarrol of nirvanna the band the show as the lead and honestly if you haven't, all of you should just find a way to watch nirvanna the band the show (given the context i feel like i should say it has nothing to do with curt kobain btw)

The Brill ep has some interesting stuff, but it’s also kind of a mess.

I had the panicky 'don't know what to watch' thing on Sunday (with a hangover) and stuck Black Summer on. I made it through 4 episodes and jesus, it was awful. Zero budget (driving around an endless suburb, looking for a stadium that appears to be like Kafka's castle), rubbish grumpy zombies that can't smash windows, dreadful script and acting.

I quite like me some low-budget zombie/horror action too. Is there anything better than this on streaming at the moment?

Black Summer is so much better than overwrought nonsense like The Walking Dead. That said, I've watched more of the new season and I think they went too high on the level of nonlinearity and narrative challenge. There are moments where I enjoy it as an exercise in vibe and others where I'm like "this is a TV show and I would like it if I knew who the people on the screen were and what they're trying to do," which in S1 I always did.

Agreed that the Walking Dead is overwrought but it does deliver - set pieces, some proper jaw-dropping horror in places. Black Summer just seemed to not be doing anything particularly well but you've made it sound like I should persevere. I'll give it a couple more episodes, cheers.

Any good horror(-y) series to recommend to my mom? Big fan of the X-Files, Stephen King in general, she liked the House on Haunted Hill series up to the very end.

Channel Zero looks like an option but I'd have to subscribe to Shudder for her.

Fringe! Started out as an X-Files clone, but turns into its own, beautiful, weird thing by the end of the first season.

hannibal

the outsider
the strain
evil
american horror story maybe?
new creepshow reboot is pretty good too

The new Steven Soderbergh movie on HBO Max is...not good. The script is a convoluted mess, and it looks like he shot a 1950s mystery on an iPhone. Some of the performances are very good, though. Don Cheadle, Bill Duke, and (surprise!) Matt Damon are all solid.

we have spoiler tags now btw

the iphone does not have super-wide anamorphic lenses btw. the first time there was a long pan with the edge of field distorting, I wondered if it was a covid-specific choice designed to make the actors look closer together - and the limited set dressing in subsequent scenes sharpened this suspicion: reducing the amount of jobs requiring ppl in the same space - but the more it became clear how little each of the primary characters knew what was going on, I figured it was instead, or also, a deliberate disorienting tactic.

a convoluted mess

by the last 20-30 minutes, the twists and every-reveal-creates-another-mystery had me giving up on trying to invest in hoping any particular character made it out at the end, but that just enhanced the way that each character pretty much does have their involvement in the plot resolved. and the reveal of the macguffin paid off super-hard for me.

You can buy anamorphic lenses for the iPhone.
https://moondoglabs.com/

yeah Sean Baker used a clip-on for Tangerine iirc. but that and the two Soderbergh iPhone movies also don't look like they were shot on a real camera, which this does.

Some of the Channel Zeros were completely excellent. Esp the one with John Carroll Lynch. Was thinking about it recently because the new king thing on Apple, Liseys Story, is like a really bad version of Channel Zero but with really famous actors.

Questlove’s doc “Summer Of Soul” is up on Hulu - about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, unseen footage til now

it’s SO great, every performance is a knockout

Watched a few more of those pop docs (Sweden, festivals, Auto-Tune)… they’re all done by the same producers, but have entirely different styles and approaches for some reason. The Auto-Tune one is genuinely good, I recommend it.

nobody told me Mr In-Between was back on, that show is fuckin great

It is! I always wonder how americans deal with it, it is so dryly australian.

The latest ep with the road trip was strange and very subtle. But I can see it leading up to something ugly like the socks ep in last season.

Questlove’s doc “Summer Of Soul” is up on Hulu - about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, unseen footage til now

it’s SO great, every performance is a knockout

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, July 2, 2021 1:24 AM

A hard second on this. Lost track of the number of times my jaw dropped or I said "wow" aloud while watching. Powerful shit.

xp, yeah i wouldn't want to be in the drug mule's seat. any civilian who gets near ray gets capsized by the wake.

OK, I loved the Magician movie and had no idea they’d spun a TV series out of it. Getting hold of Mr In-Between immediately.

HBO cancelled Lovecraft Country? WTF

Thanks for reminding me that Mr InBetween was based on a film, finally went back and watched it. It's recommended for fans of the show for sure though don't expect too much more than the first draft of what the expanded program is (there are direct script and scenario lifts) and a chuckle from baby Ray's babyface. Still great though!

I had a go at the BBC's "All That Glitters" which is a jewelry maker competition in the mold of (and maybe from the same producers as?) Great Pottery Throwdown. The work is good, the contestants are interesting but the host, Katherine Ryan, is probably the worst reality show host I've ever seen: no particular interest or connection with jewelry, horrible vocal fry, no sense of humor, terrible timing and delivery that makes QVC announcers sound like orson welles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4paWOf1t5Q

I like what they're doing but I honestly don't know if I can handle watching a second episode because of this very terrible host.

Just started watching Mr. InBetween and I'm into it.

I'm glad Lovecraft Country got spiked; that was one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me (loved the book, but they fumbled a lot of the stuff they adapted directly, and everything they came up with themselves — Korean fox-girl — suuuuucked).

I do remember the giant rocket launching from the ocean at the end, though.

Based on a real proposal that was never built:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/sea-dragon-is-the-biggest-rocket-we-ever-dreamed-of

I liked the new soderbergh fine, it’s a decent heist film with some good performances — cheadle is really good — and costumes/sets, though it does feel a little empty and rushed

Questlove’s doc “Summer Of Soul” is up on Hulu - about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, unseen footage til now

it’s SO great, every performance is a knockout

I have just been getting into Questlove's podcast (Questlove Supreme) in the past couple weeks. Listening to him interview everybody from Jimmy Jam to Weird Al Yankovic has been really educational. And so, not knowing about the movie (which I guess he has promoted on social media, but not on the cast), I had heard enough of these that I was like "let's go to Netflix and Hulu and find some Black music documentaries." And when I opened up Hulu on my phone, just staring me in the face was Summer of Soul by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson.

So amazing and moving. The one thing I keep thinking after that is, we get one or two blockbuster performances from each of the artists - can you imagine how much amazing material from this festival they didn't include?

I have to imagine there will more comprehensive releases of these concerts. It's kind of mindblowing that the footage and audio is so immaculate.

Sly is so awesome in this…
I teared up a bunch of times, such emotional stuff

I reviewed the movie for Stereogum. It really is great.

HBO cancelled Lovecraft Country? WTF

I haven't even watched this yet, does it resolve well enough? I read that this was a mutual decision on the part of the showrunners and hbo.

It’s hard to see where it would have gone next tbh

Here, apparently:

A taste of the Season 2 Bible. Wish we could have brought you #LovecraftCountry: Supremacy. Thank you to everyone who watched and engaged. 🖤✊🏾 #noconfederate pic.twitter.com/BONbSfbjWg

— Misha Green (@MishaGreen) July 3, 2021

*whispers* Just to clarify…🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️ #LovecraftCountry pic.twitter.com/rYxrYT1y18

— Misha Green (@MishaGreen) July 3, 2021

I am watching the hell out of For All Mankind, first show since maybe the first couple seasons of GLOW that have been so eminently bingeworthy.

My favorite stuff for the past year or so are all the little jazz music lessons online at Youtube. I can't pretend to get it all and can't play 7th chords on a guitar for crap, but I do think some things that were always voodoo make a bit more sense to me. Some of them like the funny one on Steely Dan's use of the 'mu' chord would I think even be entertaining for just a fan of the band. Barry Harris is one cool mf'er.

I just started watching Mythic Quest, not having realised that we somehow had a subscription to Apple+. First four episodes are fine, in a sub-Silicon Valley sense. Then the fifth episode is actually brilliant, tonally very different and, as far as I can tell, a total curveball.

The 1971 documentaries on Apple+ are brilliant. Well-known stories retold well, with great use of little-seen archive material.

I dunno if AMC+ counts as one of these platforms, and especially for Kevin Can F*** Himself, because it airs on regular AMC a week later anyway, but that show is so great.

If that ever shows up on Hulu (which gets some AMC shows) I'm gonna check it out for sure. The concept is great.

My favorite stuff for the past year or so are all the little jazz music lessons online at Youtube. I can't pretend to get it all and can't play 7th chords on a guitar for crap, but I do think some things that were always voodoo make a bit more sense to me. Some of them like the funny one on Steely Dan's use of the 'mu' chord would I think even be entertaining for just a fan of the band. Barry Harris is one cool mf'er.

I have not seen those or at least remember watching any, but I have watched more than a few of Barry Harris sitting around a piano with a smoke in his mouth.

The one that helped me a bunch and I have been trying to find it for well over six months was this Italian guitarist that stated to quit moving your hand and look at the intervals you have within your fingers reach. For some reason that one really clicked with me and did help a bunch.

This was the Steely Dan Mu chord one I thought was entertaining enough non-musicians but fans of the band might enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmREPDEU5Q

Wait, which Italian guitarist?

I am watching the hell out of For All Mankind, first show since maybe the first couple seasons of GLOW that have been so eminently bingeworthy.

The last few episodes of S2 are hands down the best TV I've watched this year, absolutely gripping. We should probably make a dedicated thread for the show