What's good on Amazon Prime Video

just finished undone...the metaphysical stuff was hit or miss for me, but as a family dramedy, it really worked. rosa salazar is excellent and the rest of the cast was really charming and believable.

Modern Love is kind of cute if you like rom coms and relationship shit, but the music on it is fucking godawful, and episode with John Slattery and Tina Fey is horrible.

I was just reading an AVClub feature Jimmi Simpson couldn't stop talking about The Patriot (which he's on?).

9. Who is the most underrated person in your industry right now?

JS: Underrated is a little too specific. I would say underexposed is Steven Conrad. He’s a writer-director-creator. He’s been writing for years and years very successfully—Pursuit Of Happyness was him—a bunch of cool movies. He did Walter Mitty. But he started creating television recently, and he created a show for Amazon called Patriot, which I’d literally never heard of until I read the script for Perpetual Grace, which is his show that I’m on now. So I read the script for Perpetual Grace—was floored. One of the best scripts I’ve ever read. And I couldn’t wait to meet the man, the men: Bruce Terris and Steve Conrad both wrote Perpetual Grace. They said to watch Patriot first. I’m like, “The Mel Gibson movie?” And then I find out, no, it’s a series on Amazon.

And I watch it, and I’m just floored. It’s visionary. Not just the writing, the execution. It’s like your favorite directors of all time, like Kubrick, and Paul Thomas Anderson, and Michel Gondry, who have these innate abilities to communicate their style so completely, but somehow it feels effortless. You don’t feel like you’re being pushed to just absorb something. It feels like you’re watching a piece of art. And it connects to each person differently.

And so you can’t ask a critic about him who’s not over the moon about Steve Conrad, calling him the next phase in television creators. But, in general, most folks—the public—don’t know about him as much as they should. Luckily, I’ve become very close friends with him, and creative partners to a degree, and so I’m going to keep doing whatever I can to keep showing people how amazing Steven Conrad is. He’s more amazing than I’ll ever be, so just being next to a genius like that is good for me. And I feel lucky. And I think other people should feel as lucky as I do, just by getting to see his stuff.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 12, 2019 10:42 PM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Perpetual Grace LTD is the most outright fun I've had watching a tv show in forever. Brilliant, twisted stuff. I'm halfway and it's such a joy to watch.

yeesh this is an add'l subscription it looks like? To something called Epix?

can't keep up w/ all these services

i got a free month sub to prime video and wow this interface is a mess. why do they think i want to watch addams family 1991 and alf?

I honestly don't think Netflix's is any better. There's so much stuff on both I'll never discover because they keep recommending the same old shit over and over.

I suppose it improves over time? With Netflix it's been a while since I got The Office pushed on me.

I wonder if interfaces are different, because netflix is so much better to me. Search works, and I can see a list of all films available to browse. Amazon is just weird, and if I try to find something specific they'll have a shitty documentary on the same subject instead.

The best system I've found for Amazon (which I think I've shared before) is to use the store to navigate and put things you want to see on your (video) wishlist which is easy to find. Also the 'you might also like' algorithms work much better that way.

otm about amazon prime video being a huge mess in design. I don't miss it at all.

I find that's the same with Netflix. It's much easier to navigate & find things on a web browser than it is on your actual tv xp

yeesh this is an add'l subscription it looks like? To something called Epix?

can't keep up w/ all these services

― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Sunday, November 17, 2019 3:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry, had no idea. The series currently being broadcast on public Belgian tv, didn't know they were hiding behind a monstrous construct.

How could you know, how can anybody keep track?

they offer a free trial but it's just a week long, I'm pretty good at watching tv but not that good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8W7dkkE9o

I don't know when it happened, but Banshee seasons 3 and 4 are now free on Prime. I watched seasons 1 and 2 a long time ago and was unwilling to pay to see the rest, but now I know what I'll be watching the rest of this month.

Best show

i've ben talking a little about Goliath on the 10 best tv shows thread but man is it great.

Whit Stillman's pilot for The Cosmopolitans has disappeared from Prime. It was never issued on physical media, meaning it no longer exists anywhere except on the hard drives of those who managed to rip it. This makes me sad.

this is the case for 98% of all tv ever made tbf

hes redoing it or something - https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/whit-stillman-the-cosmopolitans.html

got the months free deal when i ordered xmas crap last week.
i have fucking loved the OTT insanity of "American Gods" season 1 this week.
so, yeah, anything else i should dive into while i have the option ?

fleabag?

man in the high castle
expanse
marvellous mrs maisel
red oaks

Fleabag is made by and on the BBC, forks!

Don’t know how much it applies in the UK mark, but the film library in the US is pretty remarkable - recent indie & arthouse, classics, 80s, b-movies & grindhouse.

(be warned that S2 of American Gods is made by different ppl and nobody likes it)

didn't know Mark e was britisher; in US as I'm sure you know, fleabag is amazon only

New season of The Expanse next Friday

Undone
Too Old To Die Young
Halt & Catch Fire
Lodge 49

Undone is good, though be warned that it's about processing grief and trauma from the loss of a family member; but if you like the ostentatious style of American Gods, Undone's use of rotoscoping (animating over the filmed actors) enables it to depict the lead's emotional state in visually dazzling, emotionally-affecting magic realism-ish ways

maybe fun to watch with the boys: Amazon made two series of the superhero comedy / not-quite-parody The Tick, of which you don't need to know anything about previous TV or comics iterations to watch from scratch. (The showrunner is the cartoonist who wrote and drew the original run of comics, though, if you do happen to know of it.)

The Tick is great!

yes cosine H&CF and Lodge 49. If you haven't seen The Americans it's there. The Bureau is ridiculous but fun. Mr Robot?

yeah the Tick is gr8

Mr Robot has a pretty great first few episodes then tanks incredibly quickly

it had so much potential

The Expanse is phenomenally good (trying to get through S3 before S4 drops) and Too Old To Die Young is really quite something, I admire it a lot.

I am on board with Mr Robot until the very end (easy to say at this point I guess, I think there are three episodes left) but yeah nobody else I know irl made it through Season 2.

I did cause I heard s3 was better; it was, but not by a big enough margin for me to not continue to be furious with it

The first 3 episode of Goliath S3 are as good as the show's ever been imo

ta for all suggestions folks.
i watched fleabag (uk = iplayer), and agree, it was bloody brilliant.
re prime - spotted Tick in the list, and thought it looked good fun, so that's next on the list.

I don't know when it happened, but Banshee seasons 3 and 4 are now free on Prime. I watched seasons 1 and 2 a long time ago and was unwilling to pay to see the rest, but now I know what I'll be watching the rest of this month.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Thursday, December 5, 2019 8:38 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just watched the first half of the pilot and this is...terrible? Like, unwatchably bad.

it is a great show KEEP WATCHING goddamn you

how many episodes until it's not dumb?

I was just settling into this display name, too

It’s in the so over the top it’s good category for me. Similar to Spartacus

wait what

I just watched the first half of the pilot and this is...terrible? Like, unwatchably bad.

Nah. Give it two or three full episodes and you'll be hooked, I think. For those who aren't familiar, Banshee is a fucking blast. It’s about a criminal fugitive posing as the sheriff of the town of Banshee, PA (the “real” new sheriff was killed on his way into town, before anyone got a look at him), battling the local gangsters (some of whom are Native American, while others are outcast Amish) and pulling jobs of his own. Every episode features at least two sex scenes and two fight scenes, and you’re never quite sure if a dialogue scene is gonna suddenly turn into one or the other. People bleed a lot on this show. It’s pornographic, and I say that in the best possible way.

the fight scenes have a great Billy Jack kinda 70’s vibe, it all feels like they’re really beating each other up

it’s v enjoyable

wait what

I never went back to it but yeah the appeal is its ottness surely, it’s like road house or something

I've seen the pilot and one later-season fight scene that was so OTT that Vox did a piece just about it. It was pretty silly but I see the appeal.

Yeah, here's the Vox article, and here's the fight they call out, which I just watched the other day and which left me literally breathless by the end. (Note that it begins with one character picking a severed ear from the previous episode's big fight scene out of the trash.) If this isn't your kind of thing, Banshee isn't for you. Period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUjE0NlS7vI

spartacus the movie?

or that dumb series? if it’s the dumb series then i agree

I've never seen Spartacus the TV show. Is it any good? It's on Netflix...