Netflix

[JohnC]

Netflix is 25 years old today

 

 

[Floshenbarnical]

On 28/08/2022 at 17:09, Stigweard said:

Anyway, if to get this thread on track, I tired to watch Carter last night.

 

It's the first film I'vre turned off since 6 Underground. I very rarly turn things off but I couldn't stomach this film any longer. The concept sounds fun and it's full of off the wall action and violence but the director decided to film in in "one take" (its not its just edited that way) and he's done it with drones, handhelds and cgi cuts. I do no recommend.

 

 

 

Yes, it was fucking shit. Completely unwatchable. Much like 99% of what's on Netflix. In fact, most of the Netflix catalog is so bad I don't think it's worth keeping a subscription outside of the two days it will take me to destroy Witcher S3.

[Stig]

They do greenlight a lot of utter shite but I have found stuff on there I've really enoyed that they produced or bought the rights to.

[Chewylegs]

99% of it is completely unwatchable! 🤣

 

I just finished watching Lost Ollie with my son.  That was a lovely little series.

[NecroMorrius]

“I Came By” is a weird one. It plays like a script churned out by an AI but it has some promise for a while with a good cast and decent setup. Then

 

Spoiler

the unlikeable protagonist gets unceremoniously murdered offscreen and it switches to his likeable Mum as secondary protagonist. 

Then

 

Spoiler

the secondary antagonist likeable Mum gets unceremoniously killed offscreen and it switches to the unengaging black best friend trope character as tertiary protagonist 

Then

 

Spoiler

The unengaging black best friend trope tertiary protagonist rescues a complete stranger from the killers basement, the actual rescue happens offscreen

Then it plays a Tears For Fears song. 

There’s also

 

Spoiler

An entire subplot about the girlfriend of tertiary protagonist becoming pregnant and trying to get her dissertation read by the murderer guy, which ends with her dissertation being thrown in a bin (onscreen) then she’s not it in any more. 

 

Fucking bizarre. How half this shit gets made I have no idea. 

[Broker]

Trainwreck was fascinating. I was 13 in 99 so was well into nu metal, but there’s a really disgusting, sexist undercurrent to the whole media culture there that I think it’s easy to forget. Repulsive as the ethos of some of the artists was, and the whole sexist culture, I really don’t think it would have gone that way if they’d just kept them hydrated and let them go to the toilet and have some shade. The worst elements of the crowd and lineup were repulsive, but nowhere near as repulsive as the organisers, who seem like genuinely disgusting people with no regard for safety.
 

The olds whining about kids these days not understanding peace and love while they book them violent, aggressive bands and then boil and dehydrate the kids they’re keeping in a pile of trash made me genuinely angry. In general I find it really annoying when people my parents age complain about entitled millennials like they didn’t raise them, spoil them, instil them with neoliberal values where only the individual matters and sell their futures out from under them. It’s a shit load easier to be peaceful and loving when you’re in a beautiful natural setting being given free food than when you’re on boiling tarmac being charged $12 for a bottle of water. Obviously the individual actors who hurt or endangered others are responsible for their own actions, but I felt like it was a fascinating microcosm of the way boomers have trashed the entire world and now want to blame their own kids for the pile of shit they’ve inherited.

 

Interesting that there was no mention of Rage or Metallica, who played on Saturday between Limp Bizkit and Fatboy Slim. I assume their lawyers just told the people making the documentary to fuck off (though Rage were mentioned and Kirk Hammett popped up in one of the MTV clips), but I did wonder if their sets just weren’t as eventful and it damaged the narrative the documentary was building about the whole weekend being a slow build up. 

[ZOK]

Basically the organisers ripped off the kids and got found out.

[James Lyon]

I was reading this article about how all Netflix-made show sort of all look the same. Can't say I've seen enough to say for certain but I think I get the idea. Anybody able to tell from the likes of Prime or Disney?

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake3j5/why-does-everything-on-netflix-look-like-that?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

 

Quote

You know what I’m talking about—the so-called “Netflix Look.” Netflix’s in-house produced television shows and movies tend to all have the same look and feel, to the point that it’s sometimes really distracting. Although it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes all Netflix shows look the same, a few things stand out: The image in general is dark, and the colors are extremely saturated; Especially in scenes at night, there tends to be a lot of colored lighting, making everything look like it’s washed in neon even if the characters are inside; Actors look like the makeup is caked on their faces, and details in their costumes like puckering seams are unusually visible; Most annoying to me, everything is also shot in an extremely conventional way, using the most conventional set ups to indicate mystery or intrigue as possible—to indicate that something weird is going on the framing always has a dutch angle, for example—or more often just having everyone shot in a medium close up. 

 

[Festoon]

6 hours ago, James Lyon said:

I was reading this article about how all Netflix-made show sort of all look the same. Can't say I've seen enough to say for certain but I think I get the idea. Anybody able to tell from the likes of Prime or Disney?

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake3j5/why-does-everything-on-netflix-look-like-that?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

 

 

 

Hmm. That's an incredibly vague description. I would've just said that a lot of Netflix-produced content just looks video-y, flat, oversaturated, non-cinematic and cheap as chips.

[CarloOos]

That article is basically just loosely describing modern digital cinematography. There’s a few things which most Netflix shows have in common (almost all are Dolby Vision, often graded in a colourspace called ACES, and shot on one of three very particular cameras) but that’s true of all Apple, Disney and most Amazon shows too. 
 

Certain looks go through trends and whatever show is hot right now quite often gets used as the reference for newer projects going into production.
 

Also for what it’s worth I thought The Sandman looked cheap as fuck for such an expensive show, but it wasn’t as visually tacky as the risible Good Omens at least.

[ZOK]

There’s a great documentary about former wino/chess champion/author John Healy on Netflix at the moment called Barbaric Genius…just over an hour, it’s a terrific portrait of a man who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

[Dr Nookie]

Filmed in Supermarionation is a good doc on Thunderbirds, Stingray and all that Gerry Anderson shizz. 

[Chewylegs]

I'll continue to promote the Untold documentary series........ America's Cup is a decent watch.  

It doesn't matter what these documentaries are about, they have a way of keeping you intrigued.

[Fierce Poodle]

Interested in Ryan Murphy’s new Jeffrey Dahmer series. Probably will be trashy as hell but Murphy is usually entertaining. 

[cassidy]

4 hours ago, Fierce Poodle said:

Interested in Ryan Murphy’s new Jeffrey Dahmer series. Probably will be trashy as hell but Murphy is usually entertaining. 

Just watched the first episode. It's up there with his better stuff.  But it's unpleasant viewing tbh and just feels dirty and grimy. Getting a strong Henry vibe from episode 1. 

 

It's good in other words. 

[Silent Runner]

Watched a new film tonight, Do Revenge. It's about a popular high school girl who loses her status at the top of the food-chain after a sex tape leaks. So she teams up with a new girl in school to get revenge on everyone responsible - a teenage version of Stranger on a Train. It's a swing at the Mean Girls/Heaters high school revenge genre, and I had a really fun time with it.

 

Camila Mendes is the lead and she's great - proper funny and able to do serious when it's needed. It's nice to see her get a proper gig after Riverdale. The rest of the cast are fine and there's some fun cameos - unfortunately you can see that sometimes the actors aren't in the same room as each other so it comes over a bit cheap. I don't know if that's a Netflix thing but I can't remember seeing it in films on other services. 

 

It's has a great DayGlo aesthetic with the contrast turned right up and the outfits are fab. There's a very good soundtrack, except for the denouement they use a Fatboy Slim song that really doesn't work.  It probably overstays its welcome but I dug it.

 

3.75/5

[multi]

Just finished watching Athena.

 

It was fucking great. Looks stunning, feels almost operatic. Best movie I've seen on Netflix in a very long time.

 

 

 

Getting pretty good reviews too.

[jon_cybernet]

4 hours ago, multi said:

Just finished watching Athena.

 

It was fucking great. Looks stunning, feels almost operatic. Best movie I've seen on Netflix in a very long time.

 

 

 

Getting pretty good reviews too.

Wow, the opening 10 minutes of this was stunning. 
 

Really wish I’d seen this on the big screen, but still thought it was really powerful. 

[Minion]

On 21/09/2022 at 21:23, cassidy said:

Just watched the first episode. It's up there with his better stuff.  But it's unpleasant viewing tbh and just feels dirty and grimy. Getting a strong Henry vibe from episode 1. 

 

It's good in other words. 

 

Yep 4 episodes in and it is very good imo.

[sammy]

Thanks for the Athena recommendation, that was a cracking movie.  The ending didn’t quite work for me, but what a ride!  Strong Children of Men vibes from some of the long takes.  

[Art Vandelay]

That Trainwreck doc was absolute toss, I thought. It was just a badly run event and nothing more than that. I think Americans would be shocked at basically any UK festival from the last 20 years. It certainly didn't seem worse than any Reading you care to mention, which in essence is what would happen if you were curious to see what turning society over to some teenagers for a weekend would look like. It's standard Netflix fodder at this stage – happen across something that's quite good and popular (Fyre) then scrabble around in the dark trying to replicate that formula with a far inferior story, but keep the hyperbole to a maximum at all points. 

 

The talking heads were all deeply annoying too, apart from those two space cadet dinguses who in some sense never left that camp ground. They were great.

[schmojo]

Three deaths and a raft of sexual assaults, before descending into Lord of the Flies where the festival runners holes themselves up in an erstwhile office-fort?

 

Depriving people of access to water in a heated tarmac hell before jacking the prices up to $12 a bottle?

 

Nah, this isn't 'just a badly run event'. Not even close. 

 

And the talking heads weren't 'annoying', they were at time callous and delusional. This was worse than Fyre.

[Art Vandelay]

The thing is though as callous and awful as that main promoter guy was, he did sort of have a point that it broadly worked. The thing the documentary leaves out is that literally hundreds of acts played without incident over the course of that weekend and lots of people had a good time. As shit and chaotic as it looked that’s actually an event compared to Fyre, which was just a scam. 
 

It looked absolutely terrible don’t get me wrong, the problems were mostly greed mixed with naivety or inexperience. You have to remember it’s taken decades to make these type of things actually sort of slick and workable, and even now people die every single summer. I’ve been to two small, nicely run ones where this has happened in fact. The narrative that they were pushing that at least people now know it’s wrong to treat women like that was a bold one too as 40% still report getting sexually harassed at music events. The price gouging happens everywhere too. I think I paid €12 for a water at Amnesia and that was over twenty years ago. Everyone just accepts that now for whatever reason.

 

I’m not defending the festival, but my criticism is that this documentary was made for a US audience where their festivals are totally lame and this would be considered shocking. 

[Sidewaysbob]

I do think if it hadn't traded on the Woodstock name, no one would have batted an eyelid when it all kicked off. It's the "summer of love festival 2" tag line,  that gives it the gravitas. 

And that for once, Americans didn't like seeing what the "American dream" actually meant in terms of the price of a bottle of water.

[klargon]

I really enjoyed it, but predominantly because of how it reminded me of my festival days. It’s a stretch to say it’s the norm, and comparing it to Reading is fairly ludicrous, but there are definitely parts of it that reminded me of Leeds. I think things were markedly worse at Woodstock, but it’s not as far from some standard festival behaviour as you might think. I remember toilet blocks being burned down at Leeds, and lots of gas canisters being thrown into fires before they got banned. Whilst they played it down, I didn’t really think the organisers were way off the mark with some of their messaging. The attempt to somehow hold the bands to account for the crowd behaviour was crazy, though.

[NexivRed]

The Most Dangerous Animal of All - man thinks dad he never knew was Zodiac killer. 

 

This was fucking brilliant. Not for the reason you’d think. That last episode. I might have to watch it again. BEYOND satisfying. 
 

Actually, along with that, it’s a depressing realisation of trauma. Horrendous. 

[NexivRed]

Fucks sake, I’m not even watching Netflix! It’s on bloody Disney+ Star. 
 

This is what watching back to back crime documentaries at 4am does. 

[Gommy]

7 hours ago, klargon said:

I really enjoyed it, but predominantly because of how it reminded me of my festival days. It’s a stretch to say it’s the norm, and comparing it to Reading is fairly ludicrous, but there are definitely parts of it that reminded me of Leeds. I think things were markedly worse at Woodstock, but it’s not as far from some standard festival behaviour as you might think. I remember toilet blocks being burned down at Leeds, and lots of gas canisters being thrown into fires before they got banned. Whilst they played it down, I didn’t really think the organisers were way off the mark with some of their messaging. The attempt to somehow hold the bands to account for the crowd behaviour was crazy, though.

 

Yeah around 2000-2002 Leeds had riot police onsite on the Sunday night with a shield wall.  There were lots of sporadic outbursts and fires and lighting pulled down.

 

I enjoyed the doc as it largely had skipped me by.  I'm not sure it told the story very well - or maybe it did and it needed to do it the way it did to keep it interesting.

 

It was presented somewhat chronologically with the heavy talking heads foreboding stuff about what was to come to keep you involved.  But it by and large was confusing, no mention of what was going on between the highlight acts.  

 

At one point on the Saturday(?) night they seem to call to abandon the main stage middle tower and to mount a LOTR rescue of the occupants.  But this is either overly exaggerated or they miss the story after that - i find it odd to believe if they had to abandon it they would just go back the next day?

 

The festival had 250k people and from what I could tell 2 main stages and a late night dance hangar.  That's crazy small for that amount of people.

 

The organisation was atrocious, I cannot really see how someone steals a car and then drives it into a building without it being known about first.  It could happen for sure, but any events would have people all over thar sort of thing (even if they were only calling it in) - it was definitely presented as if it happened without any general awareness.

 

The lorries blowing up on the Sunday, i really am amazed there weren't more injuries.  

[Loik V credern]

I'm not sure about Athena really, I watched it last night. 

 

Spoiler

We can't just get a film about police brutality, can we? No, it has to be about far right extremists disguising themselves as police. Always a fresh faced, naive young cop presented as his first day on the job/first riot attack as though he hasn't gone through training or thought 'yeah, being a cop with all that power sounds like a thing I'd want', no none of that happened with him, he just fell into it. He's just a human like all of us. Yeah, all police are, but that's beside the point. The police in this are completely faceless except this young frightened guy, that's not an accident. 

 

I hope there is clear proof and evidence of far right extremists disguising themselves as because otherwise the film is dangerous, frankly. I can't find anything from searching but I guess the genesis of the idea has come from somewhere. I don’t know, the technical seamlessness and attempted realness of the direction is at odds with the occassional music, at odds with the comical presentation of the people at the end (just the red light like it's satanic I dunno, it didn't feel real). I know there is more political tension in France than most European countries, the far right is more a thing, but the film offered no insight into that.  

 

When we do get films about police brutality, it's individual pyschopathic officers so we can separate them from the institution and who they protect.

 

I think using the real pain of those whose loved ones have and continue to die at the hands of the police as a platform for a thrilling roller coaster without any exploration or depth doesn't hold much integrity for me. 

 

Of course, we are all pretending in our caring of political strife, ignoring the root causes again and again. 

 

I'm just in a real fuck the police mode at the moment, throughout the whole film they were telling the truth! Of course they were. A truly radical film, the cops were like 'yeah we didn't do it mate' and it was true. Society is really a battle between different types of working class people rather than the pillars of the establishment who have all the power. 

 

Fuck this film, I think, I dunno, good performances and direction though. 

 

Marilyn Monroe fictional boipic Blonde is out today. Supposed to be really grim. 

[Sidewaysbob]

When Kermode called it a horror movie, I gave it a pass