Tag: Amazon Prime

Binge Prospectus – Q1 2020

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So I’m going to purposely eschew writing a gigantic intro here because I think the blog itself is going to be long enough already. But a few notes:

  • Any titles in Bold I’m giving a must watch label.
  • Just listing movies with no description because this is more about shows and docs.
  • I’m putting all documentaries at the bottom so if you are into non-fiction go there.
  • The timeline might not always add up here. As in, it’s Q1 2020 and I might go all the way back to some times 2019 if I don’t think the show/movie has been addressed on the blog before. Or if a reminder might be warranted.
  • On that note ” ** ” denotes that this is not the first season of a show or that I feel the need to address it possibly out of left field.
  • You’re about to read about a lot of British shit. I know, I’m kind of an anglophile when it comes to T.V. But that doesn’t change the fact that Netflix, Hulu, and the Premiums have dumped a ton of money into UK #content that is often very good.
  • Not all of these are “full” reviews. By this I mean not all of the shows, in particular, that I am going to discuss have been finished by myself or another member of the staff. We however, out of the goodness of our hearts, at least started them in order to offer our take. Your welcome.

Let’s do it.

Streaming
Netflix

“The Witcher” (Series, US)
Red and one of our other buddies have watched this and recommended it. I started and was a bit lost but I’ve been told that could totally be an issue if you haven’t played the game or read the book(s) to some extent. Either way, I think it a good option for anyone who is on the “willing to ‘s’ a ‘d'” end of the spectrum in terms of GOT/fantasy show withdrawals.

“Messiah” (Series, US)
Think “Homeland” meets well, the second coming of Christ. In this kind of bizarre show a CIA agent (Michelle Monaghan) tracks a man from the Middle East who might have some serious terrorism connections but also might be God. It gets almost campy at times but is a good overall watch

“The Society” (Series, US)
An interesting application of Lord of the Flies or possibly more accurate, the Stanford Prison Experiment, theory. A group of High Schoolers get brought home from a field trip before they ever get there to find their town abandoned. They basically have to form their own new “society” (nudge) complete with their own system of government that absolutely has no teenage dramage involved whatsoever. Guilty Pleasure score of 1000000.

“The End of the F***** World” (Series, UK) **Season 2
Season 2 catches us up with James (maybe?) and Alyssa. It is a just as enjoyable, albeit not as fresh, serving of this dry, bleak, British dark comedy about two depressed teenagers.

“The Stranger” (Limited Series, UK)
I think I’ve talked about Harlan Coben’s partnering with Netflix before but I’ll provide some context anyway. Or skip to paragraph two now. Basically, Harlan Coben is an award winning novelist of what is described as “domestic thrillers”. What this means is that unlike a lot of thriller novels, his characters are not, necessarily, cops or private eyes or political figures, etc., trying to catch a bad guy. They could be, for instance, doctors or businessman whose wives/daughters have disappeared, etc.

This is the third time out for Coben and Netflix and again they’ve nailed it. While I would say it is the third best behind the “The Five” and “Safe”, that also just isn’t fair considering how good the first two were. In this offering, A family man is approached by a mysterious “stranger” (nudge) with a cryptic message regarding his wife. Then everything kind of goes to hell.

“Sex Education” (Series, UK) **Season 2
To be perfectly honest I don’t totally remember what happened at the end of S1 except that the whole thing was a really good, very funny at times story about a teenager that takes a page out of his shrink mother’s book and starts making cash giving his classmates sex advice. S2 deals with a lot of the same things as S1 did.

“The OA” (Series, US)**Season 2
The second, and sadly now last, season of this head-fuck of a show takes you on another journey of questioning the meaning of life, death, consciousness, and memory. Absolutely sucks they cancelled it.

Movies

  • “Shotcaller”
  • “The Captive”
  • “Blue Valentine”
  • “In the Shadow of the Moon”

Hulu

“Killing Eve” (Series, UK)**Season 2
Another killer season of the drama based around a American working an admin job for British intelligence (Sandra Oh) who becomes obsessed with catching a psychotic but bemused assassin (Jodie Comer) who develops an affinity for her as well.

“Letterkenny” (Series, Canada)**Lots of seasons
The best way I’ve been able to describe “Letterkenny” is a cross between “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Trailer Park Boys” with a touch of “Rain Man”. Take that for what it’s worth but prepare to laugh your ass off while watching this one about a smarter-than-they-look group of farming friends and the small, cliquey, Canadian town they inhabit

“Top of the Lake”** (Series, Australia/UK)
This is a “late to the party” suggestion as this UK/Australian venture had two seasons released in 2013 and 2017 but is still catching on here in the States. The show follows a police detective (Elisabeth Moss, who won an Emmy for her performance) as she solves a twist-heavy mystery per-season all while keeping her past compartmentalized.

“High Fidelity” (Series, US)
The John Cusack-starring-movie-based-on-the-book-of-the-same-name is adapted now into a show. This time our lead is Zoe Kravitz as Robyn “Rob” Brooks, a record store owner decimated by her last break up and hoping to find out where things went wrong in a semi-“How I Met Your Mother”/”Lovesick” style. The quirky humor and character’s penchant for breaking the fourth wall make this as intoxicating as the whiskey (neat) they drink.

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” (Limited Series, UK)
I’ve never seen the movie this is adapted from but this one-season-only tale of a group of late-20 somethings has just enough of post-college “what the fuck am I doing?”-ness to make it another must watch. Sure it’s mostly a romcom but it’s a cheesy good watch.

“The Accident” (Limited Series, UK)
I’ll admit I’m only one “part” into this four part series from Britain’s Channel 4 (from what I understand they have the BBC and Channel 4 and that’s it?). With that said. It’s insanely gripping. On one hand you have a local tragedy. On another you have a corporate/industrial fuck up of epic proportions that has some degree of cover up forthcoming. And in the middle you have all the emotions pooling together.

Movies

  • “The Party’s Just Beginning”
  • “Drinking Buddies”

PS – PSSSSSSSSSSSSSTT “The O.C” is on Hulu

Amazon
Blogger’s Note: I collected a couple recs for Amazon but don’t have it so this is going to be brief.

“Jack Ryan” (Series, US)**Season 2
If you don’t know who Jack Ryan is he basically is the American answer to James Bond but from humbler beginnings. This show I’m told kicks ass.

“The Boys” (Series, US)
This show is getting a ton of pop right now. It’s a superhero show where the good guys fight back against the bad guys and both sides are superheroes? I’m not too sure from there but I have friends who aren’t even into that shit and love it.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Series, US)** Season 4?
This one was a hit from the jump. In the wake of her marriage crumbling a woman tries stand up and fucking crushes.

The Premiums

“His Dark Materials” (Series, HBO)
If there were two words in the English language I would grade as impossible to define without a 45 minute thesis defense, it would be 1.) irony and 2.) steam punk. But I’m pretty sure HDM is kind of steam punk, or sort of 19th/18th centurish with insertions of modern to futuristic technology? Right? Fuck man idk but there’s some magic in there too and James McAvoy is dreamy.

“The Dublin Murders” (Limited Series, Starz)
This UK offering was alllllllmost what I needed it to be which was a crime/mystery in the vain of the Coben series’ and “The Missing”. Instead it is sort of like “The Night Of” where instead of fully investing itself in being a whodunit, it examines exactly what the people involved in a whodunit truly go through. While TNO looked at this from the suspects’ POV, TBM looks at it from the victims’ and their families’.

“Chernobyl” (Limited Series, HBO)
A look at what really (possibly?) went on behind the scenes of the infamous nuclear disaster.

Documentaries

“McMillions” (Series, HBO)
The saga of how a group of people were able to basically/kind of defraud McDonald’s of millions based off of the fucking monopoly game. I mean, wow. Seriously interesting though.

“The Devil Next Door” (Series, Netflix)
It is discovered that retired,, blue collar Polish immigrant living in Michigan was a sadistic Nazi death camp guard…..or was he?

“Operation Odessa” (Movie, Showtime)
The story of how a crooked Miami business, honcho for the Cali Cartel, and a Ukranian gangster almost acquired A MOTHAFUCKIN SUBMARINE for the cartel to use to transport product. Insanity.

The 300s Top 30 TV Shows of the Decade

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With so many options to watch TV like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, Apple TV+, ESPN+ and more coming, its no surprise that a huge chunk of the shows below are not on cable. As they say, the Streaming Wars have begun.

This list is comprised of picks from the staff where we ranked our Top 15 shows with No. 1 getting 15 points all the way down to No. 15 getting one point. Rankings are based on each show’s aggregate score, which seemed like the fairest way to do it. Apologies to all the shows forever in my queue, but I haven’t seen some of the more acclaimed shows like The Wire, The Leftovers or Atlanta so that hurt their overall scores. So sue me, theres a billion shows to watch and I spend approximately half my time scrolling through just trying to decide what to watch.

Also it was a Sophie’s choice of TV to pick from so I made the difficult decision of ruling that any show on this list had to have premiered in 2010 or later to truly make it a show of this decade. So no Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Lost.

Now lets get to the Top 30 shows of the decade!

No. 30 – The Missing/Rick and Morty/Making a Murderer/Trial and Error
No. 29 – Crashing
No. 28 – Narcos

“If Game of Thrones put him on the map this is the show that launched Pedro Pascal into the next stratosphere. Just an excellent Netflix original about two DEA agents taking down Medellin drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.” – Red

No. 27 – House of Cards

“It’s easy to forget about this show at this point, considering how far it went off the rails and Kevin Spacey’s cancellation, but this show was a game changer. When a two-time Academy Award winner got involved with an online streaming show, that was a sign that streaming television offerings would be worthy of our attention.” – Big Z

No. 26 – Big Mouth

“One of the funniest shows on Netflix, Big Mouth is unapologetically filthy and does a great job capturing a very specific time in all of our lives.” – Big Z

No. 25 – Homeland

“This show emerges from the ashes of the height of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts and follows CIA agent Carrie Mathieson as she tries to stop various terror threats before it’s too late, all while keeping a fairly substantial personal secret.” – Joey B

No. 24 – Master of None
No. 23 – Westworld
No. 22 – BoJack Horseman
No. 21 – Billions

“Think “Heat” but with a stock market genius that toes the line or complete disregards it and a US Attorney starving to nail him for it. All sorts of hijinx and side characters add quite the spice to this Showtime great.” – Joey B

No. 20 – The Leftovers
No. 19 – Vice Principles

No. 18 – Lovesick

“One review said Lovesick was “what How I Met Your Mother could have been” and I think that is deadly accurate. Basically a guy finds out he has the clap and needs to inform all previously partners. While he works through that list he simultaneously tries to decipher why love has evaded him so far.” – Joey B

No. 17 – Parks and Rec
No. 16 – Stranger Things
No. 15 – Shameless

“It has waxed and waned post-season 4 or 5ish but still delivers. The saga of the poverty-stricken but street smart Gallagher clan on the south side of Chicago will make you laugh and cry in the same episode.” – Joey B

No. 14 – Daredevil

“Hands down the best depiction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever put on TV. Now its worth noting a lot of those live action shows were hot garbage (couldn’t make it through the pilot of Iron Fist) and they all ultimately got cancelled, but I think that had more to do with the Streaming Wars than the quality of the shows. Daredevil is so good it will make you forget how much you hated that character after the disastrous Ben Affleck movie. Charlie Cox is the catholic with a conscience fighting crime facing off against Vincent D’Onofrio as the completely unhinged Wilson Fisk. Plus this show gave us the criminally underrated Jon Bernthal Punisher.” – Red 

No. 13 – Peaky Blinders

“I consider this the best show currently on TV. Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow in “Batman Begins”) is a WWI vet who has returned home to Birmingham, England fairly recently and now runs his family crime syndicate using both brute force and his intimidating intellect.” – Joey B

No. 12 – Jack Ryan

“This Amazon Prime show only started in August of 2018 and already skyrocketed up to No. 12 on this list because its that good. Granted 13 Hours and The Quiet Place helped people forget about John Krasinki as Jim from The Office surprisingly quick, but Jack Ryan turned him into a bonafide action star.” – Red

No. 11 – Banshee

“The best kept secret (who the fuck watches Cinemax but not for softcore porn?) of the decade. Basically a Gomorrah of blood, gore, and nudity based around a master thief who gets out of prison and assumes the identity of a bordering-amish country small town sheriff.” – Joey B

No. 10 – Boardwalk Empire

“This is a show that for whatever reason never got the same hype as a lot of other titles on this list, but it had some of the best writing on TV with The Soprano’s Terence Winter leading the ship. It stars a perfectly cast Steve Buscemi as a corrupt politician/bootlegger turned full blown gangster. Not to mention A+ performances from Michael Shannon and Michael Kenneth Williams as flawed, morally ambiguous characters on both sides of the law.” – Red

No. 9 – Black Sails

“I wrote a whole blog about Black Sails and how I believe it got no love because people assumed it was trying to ride GOT’s coat tails with the English accents and old timey-ness (it started the same year). Either way this television precursor to Treasure Island involving pirates and colonialism was an honest to God achievement.” – Joey B

No. 8 – The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story

“Even in the age of DVR this miniseries was appointment viewing. What could have easily been an extended SNL sketch featured some superb storytelling and acting. Sterling K. Brown’s performance was a highlight for me, but is was also probably John Travolta’s best work in a long, long time.” – Big Z

No. 7 – Broad City

“Broad City was basically Girls without all the preachy millennial commentary. Where Girls oftentimes embarrassed you to be a millennial, Broad City reminded you how fun it could be to be broke in the city with your best friend just getting into weird shit.” – Red

No. 6 – Watchmen

“This HBO original hasn’t even finished its first season yet and thanks to Papa Giorgio and I, its already made it to No. 6 on our top shows of the decade. Its that good. I never read the comic book, but if the 2009 Zack Snyder movie even vaguely interested you, this show is 100x better and worth the 9 hours. The show is helmed by Damon Lindelof, who I have absolutely FLAYED over the years for how badly Lost went off the rails at the end, but he has come back strong with The Leftovers and now has hit a grandslam with Watchmen. Lindelof learned from all the mistakes he made along the way to create another complex, political, downright weird world while still leaving all the breadcrumbs to tell a completely engrossing story. The penultimate episode even accomplished the rare feat of nailing time travel as Lindelof tells a story across multiple timelines in a completely coherent way.” – Red

No. 5 – Nathan for You

“Nathan For You is my comedy of the decade. It’s premise is pretty simple: Nathan Fielder presents terrible ideas to businesses with a straight face to boost sales/revenue. Fielder tricks real people into following along with his schemes and hijinx ensue. Whether it be convincing a realtor to rebrand as a “ghost realtor,” hiring a Michael Richards lookalike to leave a large tip at a restaurant to get the restaurant publicity, or conning a Best Buy employee into divulging company secrets in order to help a mom and pop electronics store sell TVs, Nathan For You is the perfect reality show we never knew we needed.” – Papa Giorgio

No. 4 – Better Call Saul

“Possibly the greatest spin off in TV history. Bob Odenkirk is outstanding in this fascinating look at Jimmy McGill’s transformation into Saul Goodman. This show moves a little slower than Breaking Bad, which means it would be great to binge if you haven’t been on board since Day 1. A benefit of that slower pace is a more thorough look at much of what was going on in the background on Breaking Bad. So while it’s not a thrill ride every week, it is a very satisfying character study.” – Big Z  

No. 3 – Veep

“In a long history of comedy excellence at HBO, Veep might be its finest offering. Julia Louis-Dreyfus leads an outstanding cast and took home SIX straight Emmys for her portrayal of Selina Meyer. The show won three straight Emmys for best comedy and will be heavily featured when CNN gets around to the TV episode for it’s inevitable 2010’s miniseries in a few years. Veep also boasted some of the best insults in TV history.” – Big Z 

No. 2 – True Detective: Season 1

“If there is one show that defined appointment TV before streaming completely took over the world it is True Detective. The first season was incredibly acted, directed, and told a story across timelines seamlessly. This was a show that Papa Giorgio and I started watching on a borrowed HBO Go account, which meant we had to wait an hour after it originally aired. But we became so enthralled with the show we couldn’t risk Twitter ruining who the Yellow King was for us. So we legitimately bought HBO the day of the finale so we could watch it live. And because it was a self contained anthology series you knew it was all going to come to an end after one season leading to the most fun I’ve had watching TV this decade.

Not to mention, if you’ve so much as tried to film an IG Story you can appreciate the creativity and skill it takes to pull off a SIX minute tracking shot. Meaning they used one camera for this entire action packed scene in one, continuous shot, going in and out of rooms and even over a wall in the middle of a massive shootout.” – Red

No. 1 – Game of Thrones

“This was never in doubt and if you’ve even glanced at The 300s over the last few years you shouldn’t be surprised as I’ve written tens of thousands of words about this show. Game of Thrones literally changed TV and it was the last water cooler show we’ll probably ever get. It was the last TV show that completely dominated pop culture and was something you had to watch in real time or risk Twitter spoiling it because we all were watching it at the same time.

It had its ups and downs including the poorly paced final season and the bizarre finale, but GOT changed the preconceived limits of what a TV show could accomplish. At its core though GOT was a show about politics and getting what you wanted either through smarts and wit or by brute force, but it never got away from the pursuit of power and what everyone was willing to do for that power. It created an absolute murderer’s row of iconic characters from the headliners to secondary characters like Petyr Baelish, and Ramsay Bolton, and even short lived ones like Oberyn Martell all lit up the screen with some of the best acting ever seen on TV. Along the way it won a ridiculous 59 Emmys including FOUR by Peter Dinklage for his tour de force acting. A show about medieval knights, long monologues, dragons, and snow zombies sounds like something that should have been cancelled after a month, but Game of Thrones became bigger than pop culture to truly earn its ranking as the best show of the decade.” – Red 

Amazon to Offer Fans More Options on Thursday Night Football Stream

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Most viewers who tune into tonight’s Thursday Night Football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the LA Rams will hear the familiar broadcast combo of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on FOX. Amazon Prime, which has streaming rights for TNF this season, will also offer the broadcast combo of Buck and Aikman. However, Amazon Prime will also offer three additional audio options for fans. Those options will include the Andrea Kremer and Hannah Storm broadcast, a Spanish-language broadcast and a United Kingdom broadcast.

This is a great move by Amazon. In addition to hiring the first all-female NFL broadcast duo, Amazon is offering fans more content and more options. It’s also part of a recent trend in sports broadcasting that deemphasizes the role of a typical play-by-play broadcaster.

In an interview with The New York Times, Storm said “if you had to, you would say that I was doing play-by-play and Andrea is doing analysis, but I don’t think that you should be thinking of this in typical terms of the way that a broadcast is done.” This concept should be familiar to Patriots fans, as the Patriots have gone a similar route for their preseason games recently. On television in 2017 and radio in 2018 Dan Roche was technically the play-by-play person, but the focus was more on the conversation about the team rather than the typical play-by-play. The concept has also been used by TNT for some of its NBA coverage on Players Only broadcasts which featured only former players and no traditional play-by-play person.

This style may not be for everyone, but it is fair to at least ask the question, “Why do we still broadcast games the way Vin Scully did them 70 years ago?” Scully may be the best of all time, but with the box score in my hand on my iPhone why do I need a traffic cop on the broadcast to tell me the score every 90 seconds?

I don’t know if Amazon’s announcement will result in a spike of Amazon Prime subscriptions before tonight’s game but, as someone who already subscribes to Amazon Prime, I will definitely check out the Kremer/Storm broadcast tonight. I will also be checking out the United Kingdom broadcast. I can’t wait to see how the Brits describe some bone-crushing hits.

 

Amazon Alexa is Scaring the Hell Out of People by Laughing Randomly

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Amazon – Amazon said they are working to fix Alexa devices’ laughter problem, after social media exploded Wednesday with users freaking out over what they described as random electronic laughter. “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,'” Amazon told ABC News in a statement. “We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.'”

NOPE! If my Alexa or Google Home just randomly started fucking LAUGHING in the middle of the night I would rip it out of the wall and throw it in a fire so fast it would make your head spin.

I’m generally of the opinion that the government is watching all of us all the time anyways. So if they want to watch me watch The Office for the 7th episode in a row? Go ahead. They know my pornhub habits? I’ll survive. If I can trade a little bit of privacy for a whole lot of convenience then I will make that trade every day. BUT, I draw the line at robots becoming self aware. This laughing Alexa can go straight to hell along with the entire factory of Boston Dynamics, who will be responsible for Skynet. Guaranteed.

And how about Amazon’s explanation for why this might be happening?

“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,'” Amazon told ABC News in a statement. “We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.’

Get the FUCK out of here. That thing is laughing because it can’t believe how stupid we are for having willingly allowed them into our homes. Its like inviting a vampire into your house. We’re all screwed and Alexa knows it.

Amazon is Now Taking On the Bane of My Existence: Grocery Stores

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Forbes – On Monday, in the midst of what will likely be its largest holiday season in history, Amazon.com AMZN +2.43% unveiled a video for Amazon Go, a supposedly new store that will allow customers to walk in, pick up items and leave without having to pay in a traditional check-out line.

Amazon, did we just become best friends? Yup. With apps for ordering food from my couch, calling a taxi from the barstool and streaming full on movies from my phone, Amazon was falling behind a bit. That is until they decided to take on the goddamn bane of my existence: the grocery store. The grocery store is where men go to die.

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Sure, free 2 days shipping is cool, I guess. But uhh, thats not really gonna get the juices flowing. A grocery store free of useless employees and horrifically long lines just so I can CHECK MYSELF OUT? Sign me the fuck up.

Legit nothing worse than the Sophie’s Choice of do I A.) Wait in line for 10 minutes so the teenager can ring me up and slowly pack up half my stuff or B.) Go do the grocery store employees’ job for them in self checkout? I almost always choose option A because as Will Hunting once said, because fuck him thats why.

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I’m gonna get my money’s worth. Any discussions of the misery that is a grocery store has to include the Bill Burr bit that is A+ material. “Here I was, I thought I was a comedian. Apparently I also work at a grocery store.”

Come on Amazon don’t screw this up. I need this. You need this. But more importantly the world needs this.