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Post by Logoboros on May 25, 2017 13:08:46 GMT -5
Have you heard? We've entered the era of "peak media," which means every good story that's ever been told and every good idea that's every been thunk has been told and thunk before at least three times already. Which leaves our media overlords scrambling to provide new and thrilling content to fill each long and lonely day. This thread is for sharing absurdities and other notables from the deep depths of your favorite streaming service's catalog. You do not have to have watched the content in question -- it's enough to be tickled by a title. Here's a pair of starting contributions, both from skimming over what's been added over past couple of days to Amazon Prime streaming, courtesy of instantwatcher: This one just grab my eye because I'm always on the look-out for new horror films, and the synopsis raised some questions. Mainly, it reminded me that Amazon in particular (Netflix, too, but to a much lesser degree, probably because they're actually somewhat selective about what the take into their catalog) has suffered this massive influx of evangelical programming, and while most wear their faith-basedness on their sleeve, quite a few try to disguise themselves as genre films, like a "Hell House" pretending to be just regular old Halloween haunted house fun. I actually expect this movie is on the up-and-up, since I'm familiar with the distributor (Midnight Pulp), but it is a pretty batty synopsis and it raised some definite red flags. I mean, hurray freedom of speech and everything, and I suppose this is of academic (or at least morbid) interest, but still. It doesn't make for a great ad: "Amazon Prime! Your source for the latest in North Korean state propaganda!" And the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject goes to... Vegetable Meditation Video! No, wait. I got the wrong envelope. The award really goes to: Please tell me there is another definition of "brown noise." Barring that, please tell me that the brown noise is not the utter urban legend I've heard it is and that instead it really exists, so that this video becomes one of the greatest pranks ever played on unsuspecting meditators and insomniacs everywhere. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on May 25, 2017 14:14:06 GMT -5
Brown noise is another name for Brownian noise, also known as red noise. It is named after its discoverer, Robert Brown. Some people find it soothing, I guess? To my ear it is less harsh-sounding than white noise. "Brown sound" refers to the particular combination of pickups, pedals, amplification, and equalization that makes up the classic guitar tone of Eddie Van Halen. Why it is called "brown sound" I have no idea. The mythical sonic frequency rumored to induce involuntary defecation is the "brown note," which remains unknown to science. Yea, we have a brown noise app we use when we travel and our kids have to sleep in strange places. |
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Post by Logoboros on May 26, 2017 12:18:22 GMT -5
More from Amazon Prime today:
So, this is kind of a gimme, since on just slightly closer examination of the actors' names it becomes obvious that this is almost certainly softcore or at least softcore adjacent (but at 30 minutes? is that normal?), and so the hilarious name of the director and the studio become much more explicable. But that's still a great synopsis, especially the characterization, "a working woman, who lives life to the fullest, fantasizes about a new life." Also, lest there were any doubt that maybe this were an earnest student film with Bradbury-allusion title, the tagline (barely legible on the tiny cover art) is: "An Experience Beyond Your Wildest Dreams" (italics in original).
Hmm, 2.5 out of 5 stars. Tell me, Brits, is Hollie Steel an incandescent enough talent to support 54 minutes of imperiled children on her shoulders?
Okay, so maybe there is an explanation for this one. The language is listed as Afrikaans and it says "Season 2" elsewhere on the Amazon page. So I guess it's a South African TV series, and "Pegasus and a Balconyy" is not a synopsis but an episode title (albeit, the only episode of Season 2 as yet posted to Amazon). I'm guessing the Pegasus team just didn't do a great job with filling in the metadata for their submission to Amazon -- but it's probably hard to type when, despite having two kinds of limbs, four them end in hooves and the other two just have feathers. (Also, the cover art provides virtually no clues as to what this is.)
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LazBro
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Posts: 10,281 
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Post by LazBro on May 26, 2017 12:23:35 GMT -5
More from Amazon Prime today:Hmm, 2.5 out of 5 stars. Tell me, Brits, is Hollie Steel an incandescent enough talent to support 54 minutes of imperiled children on her shoulders? I think the greatest crime of all is the mere use of the phrase "musical docudrama." |
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Post by Logoboros on May 26, 2017 12:56:28 GMT -5
I think the greatest crime of all is the mere use of the phrase "musical docudrama." What about "erotic musical docudrama"? Or maybe "erotic millennial indie musical black docudramedy pastiche"? |
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on May 26, 2017 13:09:36 GMT -5
I think the greatest crime of all is the mere use of the phrase "musical docudrama." Or maybe "erotic millennial indie musical black docudramedy pastiche"? Netflix proudly presents My Morning Jacket in Motley Crüe's The Dirt. |
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Post by Logoboros on May 31, 2017 16:02:01 GMT -5
It is kind of a shame that the Uncle Remus stories are so burdened with the pseudo-antebellum apologistics of Disney's Song of the South, not to mention the issue of cultural appropriation and Joel Chandler Harris himself. But shame though it may be that the stories get stuck with the stigma of their presenters, the stigma's still there. Maybe there's room for a cultural revival of the Remus tales, but I'm baffled that anyone in 1992 thought that an animated Christmas Carol version with all white lead voice actors in it would be a good idea.
But move over, Uncle Remus: there's a new game in town!
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Post by ganews on May 31, 2017 20:37:51 GMT -5
It is kind of a shame that the Uncle Remus stories are so burdened with the pseudo-antebellum apologistics of Disney's Song of the South, not to mention the issue of cultural appropriation and Joel Chandler Harris himself. But shame though it may be that the stories get stuck with the stigma of their presenters, the stigma's still there. I have read quite a bit of Harris' writing (he is from my hometown), and to the degree that Disney made an apologistic, it's really pretty toned down from what was first written. But while there is a certain amount of "happy in servitude" material, there is also a real window into what southern life was like for black people after the Civil War. It's not just trickster animal stories; at least a third is stuff like "Uncle Remus goes into town and talks to a guy from Charleston". As to whether it is appropriation, well, it's not like he removed the characters from context to represent them as his own. Harris was a journalist and interviewed many people to get his material. I guess you could say that makes the Uncle Remus framing device better or worse. I've always been amazed at the enduring popularity of the stories. People like talking animals, but many people also have trouble reading Jim's dialog in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and Harris' work is 90% dialect. I lived 75% of my life in the south and I still often have to read it aloud to follow. |
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Post by Logoboros on May 31, 2017 21:00:49 GMT -5
I've always been amazed at the enduring popularity of the stories. People like talking animals, but many people also have trouble reading Jim's dialog in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and Harris' work is 90% dialect. I lived 75% of my life in the south and I still often have to read it aloud to follow. Yeah, by all (well, most) accounts, Harris was a pretty good and responsible folklorist (perhaps not up to academic standards, but not bad) and was well-intentioned in his work. And certainly one could make a good case for the value of his work as preservation rather than appropriation. But I think it's the writing in dialect that (justly or unjustly) keeps the stories enmeshed in critiques of appropriation or paternalism or what have you. Regardless of linguistic accuracy (and I have no idea how Harris actually rates on that front -- but even G.B. Shaw is raked over the coals for this in some circles, and he had linguistic chops), I just don't see 21st-century arbiters of -- well, I don't know of what other term to use than political correctness, though I'm not deploying that dismissively -- I don't see the cultural discourse being able to warm to Harris's Uncle Remus, unless Uncle Remus were to be actively reappropriated by black artists. And even then, I rather wonder if such an artist wouldn't think "Br'er Rabbit is forever tainted; better to just go straight to the underlying Yoruba "Hare the Trickster" stories instead." |
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Post by Logoboros on Jun 2, 2017 13:37:19 GMT -5
I guess I should have just titled this thread, "Things I Saw on Amazon Prime Streaming Today," since that's the only one that seems to be delivering. Even in the big June 1st content dump on Netflix, Netflix is just to respectable and conventional to post the right kind of weirdness.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the beach that you'd then stand on before going back into the water! ...I might actually watch this one. And a 3.8/10 actually sounds like a better rating than I'd expect for this grade of horror.
You know, I might watch this one too... Plus, it has a perfect 5-star rating. Based on one review. This review:
And one to go out on:
Not sure it's a good sign when your product description begins to sound like a Facebook status update...
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Post by Logoboros on Jun 7, 2017 18:26:42 GMT -5
I recall correctly, this is a movie discussed on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour and featured in an episode of How Did This Get Made. Both commentaries made it sound like a very watchable bad movie. I might have an indoor "Drive-In Movie" night and do it.
Well, I was going to say that someone saw that episode of Bob's Burgers (or that episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and thought they'd make a whole movie out of it. But then I looked up the date on IMDB (since Amazon isn't showing it for some reason), and see that this movie predates both those shows. So some screenwriter is probably stewing away in his L.A. apartment.
And this sounds like that episode of King of the Hill with Jeff Goldblum playing a con artist selling genius certificates to (apparent) dummies (apparent because Peggy's no dummy, but her intelligence does get undermined by vanity).
Well, if anyone wants to see where Ben Carson gets his "poverty is a state of mind" ideology, I'm guessing this sort of thing is a good starting point. And it features the actual Breitbart. I'm actually slightly curious to see what Bryant says about Black Lives Matter, since 2012 (assuming Amazon's dating of the doc is right) is mighty early to be formulating commentary on that movement -- Wikipedia doesn't even date the founding of BLM until 2013, though a BLM website itself does claim the movement started in 2012 immediately after the killing of Trayvon Martin. Of course, even then, it didn't really achieve national media recognition until the Ferguson and NY protests in 2014. Anyway, I'm a bit curious to see if the doc even uses the phrase "Black Lives Matter" or if it just takes on black social activists and some publicist later on has kind of retconned BLM into the summary of the thesis. That said, I don't think I'm curious enough to take any chance of channeling money (even if mere pennies) to the creators.
There's also a doc dropping today that I'm not even going to link to called Trump: My New President, which looks mighty propagandistic. It's a profile of five people, four of them Trump voters, over the first 100 days -- so maybe it's actually a candid look at these people and their beliefs and experience... or maybe it's a big ole pro-Trump wankfest. I'm not interested enough in either instance to watch it. But I like how the title sounds like I should be a toy tie-in movie or an unboxing video. Emily: My New American Girl Doll, or WindDancer: My New Pony, or HTC Vive: My New VR System.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Jun 8, 2017 12:23:29 GMT -5
Well, I was going to say that someone saw that episode of Bob's Burgers (or that episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and thought they'd make a whole movie out of it. But then I looked up the date on IMDB (since Amazon isn't showing it for some reason), and see that this movie predates both those shows. So some screenwriter is probably stewing away in his L.A. apartment Typical professional hazard. |
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Post by Logoboros on Jun 12, 2017 1:22:12 GMT -5
Hey, look! Gilad James (of "How to become extremely smart") is back already with another educational video series: Why even both getting extremely smart when you could jump straight to God-consciousness? Gilad James needs to learn to stagger his curriculum releases a bit, or he'll never maximize he sales/clicks/views/whatever. Oh boy! More North Korean state propaganda! But my queue is so full already!  |
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Post by ganews on Jun 12, 2017 9:19:23 GMT -5
Now is ze time on Shprocket Flicks ven ve starve!  |
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Post by kitchin on Jun 24, 2017 17:01:46 GMT -5
I've always been amazed at the enduring popularity of the stories. People like talking animals, but many people also have trouble reading Jim's dialog in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and Harris' work is 90% dialect. I lived 75% of my life in the south and I still often have to read it aloud to follow. The common dialects have changed considerably over the decades. Forget where I heard this described recently on the radio or a podcast. Something about a transition from "is" to "be" as an all-purpose verb auxiliary. |
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Post by Logoboros on Jun 28, 2017 13:13:22 GMT -5
Today we actually have a few real movies, produced by actual professional filmmakers.
Vincent Price AND Zsa Zsa Gabor in a Benji knockoff? Where can I get in line... Oh wait, this movie predates Benji by three years. Wow. Who knew Benji was a Mooch knockoff?
It says it's a comedy, but what if it's really a dire prophecy for the coming apocalypse?
Sprocket Flicks is killing it this summer.
And to break our run of real movies, here's...
I understand the useful function this extraordinary variety of ambient noise videos serve (I relisten to audiobooks or occasionally a police scanner to go to sleep -- I need voices), but the titles and descriptions just crack me up.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 4, 2017 12:34:25 GMT -5
The only thing I’ve watched recently on Amazon is Twin Peaks: The Return.
Amazon is recommending that I watch Star Trek V: The Final Frontier next.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Jul 14, 2017 14:23:27 GMT -5
Now available on Hulu:
I want to watch it but I'm afraid of what the Hulu recommendation algorithm will think if I do. Can they add and "Ironic Play" button?
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Post by Logoboros on Jul 15, 2017 19:08:17 GMT -5
I want to watch it but I'm afraid of what the Hulu [add to that Google/Amazon/Netflix/YouTube/Spotify] recommendation algorithm will think if I do. It is shocking how often I experience this precise dilemma. It's approaching a daily basis. Incognito web-browsing kind of works as a stopgap measure (and only for non-login services), and I guess some services let you remove items from your history (though I don't think I'd trust that it wouldn't leave some hidden impression on the algorithm). I was going to say that people with particularly shameful (in their own perception) pornography viewing habits have been dealing with this same thing for years, but it's not really the same. Presumably in that case, you're trying to keep something about yourself secret from friends/family/coworkers/etc. which would be embarrassing or even socially damaging to reveal. In this case, it's less about social shame (though there's an element of that still, though I watch enough trash horror movies on any service that I can never get high and mighty about the quality of what shows up in my recommendations that people see when they come over) and more about being misperceived (and thus ill-served) by an entity whose sole function is to construct an representation of your tastes and interests. I think the shame is secondary to the inconvenience of encumbering yourself with a skewed algorithm that is as locked to you as your credit history. |
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Post by Celebith on Jul 17, 2017 2:15:42 GMT -5
Castlevania, on Netflix, was pretty good. I've only played a few of the DS Castlevanias, but I didn't feel lost.
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Post by Nudeviking on Jul 17, 2017 2:27:53 GMT -5
Castlevania, on Netflix, was pretty good. I've only played a few of the DS Castlevanias, but I didn't feel lost. There's not really that much to Castlevania as a franchise though is there? A dude hates Draculas and has to kill 'em with a whip. The end. |
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Post by Celebith on Jul 17, 2017 2:42:24 GMT -5
Castlevania, on Netflix, was pretty good. I've only played a few of the DS Castlevanias, but I didn't feel lost. There's not really that much to Castlevania as a franchise though is there? A dude hates Draculas and has to kill 'em with a whip. The end. When a candle wall monster comes along... But according to all these n facts you didn't know about foo Castlevania game you tube videos, there's a lot of backstory. |
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Post by Logoboros on Jul 20, 2017 0:45:37 GMT -5
Amazon Prime Streaming: The Gift That Keeps on Giving. It's true: there's nothing more attractive to women than running a mobile Dadaist art gallery / performance art venue. In the 80s. I guess I shouldn't judge, since if you swapped out "Popular YouTube creator Smashbits" with "Popular podcaster (and YouTube creator) Griffin McElroy" I'd be eating this up, as I did with 20 episodes of Griffin's Nuzlocke run (which I watched with great pleasure even though I have never played a Pokemon game in my life). Trying to be generous... trying... nope. This still sounds insufferable, and I'm not going to watch to see if I'm wrong. Well, okay. This one is going on my watchlist. (Also: reporting back on a recent take on a drive-in movie 2015's The Sand -- uh, I actually kind of recommend it, if you want a low budget quasi-creature feature that's basically a feature-length variation on the premise of the classic "The Raft" segment from Creepshow II. I'm not a woman, but I would like to unwind steam up my sex life sensual vitality, please! |
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Jul 20, 2017 10:44:29 GMT -5
You know, I might watch this one too... Plus, it has a perfect 5-star rating. Based on one review. This review: It's kind of sweet that Stacy's mom goes to these lengths to support her daughters' acting aspirations. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Jul 20, 2017 12:07:13 GMT -5
It is kind of a shame that the Uncle Remus stories are so burdened with the pseudo-antebellum apologistics of Disney's Song of the South, not to mention the issue of cultural appropriation and Joel Chandler Harris himself. But shame though it may be that the stories get stuck with the stigma of their presenters, the stigma's still there. Maybe there's room for a cultural revival of the Remus tales, but I'm baffled that anyone in 1992 thought that an animated Christmas Carol version with all white lead voice actors in it would be a good idea. Oh good. Another possible entry for this year's Christmas special reviews. |
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Post by Logoboros on Jul 20, 2017 12:16:08 GMT -5
It's kind of sweet that Stacy's mom goes to these lengths to support her daughters' acting aspirations. Stacy's mom has got it going on. |
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Post by Logoboros on Oct 11, 2017 10:24:08 GMT -5
Whatever gets you off, I guess...
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Post by Logoboros on Apr 17, 2018 11:18:02 GMT -5
It's been awhile since we last checked in on Amazon Prime's additions to its quality streaming library. Here's just a bit of what's been added in April!
Hey, it's got 4.5 stars (from 2 reviews). And the 4-star review goes:
And now, for Prime members, you don't even have to pay $3.99 for it!
This seems fine, but I'm mentioning it for the inclusion of an industry term/buzzword I didn't know: mid-form series. Googling this doesn't really help. It shows up a lot in press releases with no one defining it (in classic buzzword fashion). But as near as I can tell, it means videos of medium-length format (in contrast to short-form and long-form series). The episodes of Eat Seeker are all about 5 minutes long. So, does short-form mean 90 seconds or shorter (also, how many business cycles away are we from that being reduced to just "sho-fo")? Is long-form (lo-fo) anything from 10 minutes to Wagner's complete Ring Cycle?
Ah, another in the fine tradition of moral panic/technophobic horror flicks. But will it rise to the heights of Unfriended, or sink to the lows of Friend Request?
At least it's honest about being basically a 65-minute montage of PG-rated fetish clips (actually TV-14, according to Amazon). Another proud tradition -- in this case a parallel category to "nudist lifestyle documentaries" -- continues.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Sept 6, 2018 14:47:51 GMT -5
Reviving this zombie thread just to say the Amazon Prime has the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - Extended Cut that, according to the listed runtimes, is one minute shorter than the theatrical release. I'm pretty sure I don't have the free time to watch both and track the differences, but than again...
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Post by Prole Hole on Sept 10, 2018 5:53:04 GMT -5
Reviving this zombie thread just to say the Amazon Prime has the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - Extended Cut that, according to the listed runtimes, is one minute shorter than the theatrical release. I'm pretty sure I don't have the free time to watch both and track the differences, but than again... Anything that makes this terrible, terrible film shorter is only a good thing. Alan Rickman is practically incandescent but even that most Rickman-y of Rickman performances doesn't make this worth watching. Costner is rarely worse (maybe Waterworld, which is also shit, but that's about it), Morgan Freeman is in perfect Magic Negro stereotype, and perhaps unsurprisingly Mike "Whose Line Is It Anyway" McShane is better at improv than acting (a generous description). I could (and will) go on. Who on Earth thought Christian Slater, of all people, should be Will Scarlett? It's an odd choice, but there's many odd choices here. Sure, casting The Most Famous Scottish Actor Of All Time(tm) as The Most English King Of All Time is amusing as a four-second long gag, but it's not worth sitting through this dreck for. Even BRIAN BLESSED barely registers, which is some achievement. The direction is flat, uninspired and dreary. The whole thing is miserable. It's an origin story (it's fucking Robin Hood! Of all the characters in literature, myth and legend you do not need an origin story for surely it's Robin Hood!). If Robin Hood is the prince of thieves, who's the king? Men In Tights is a wobbly movie, but the one thing it unquestionably lands is, "I have one advantage over all the other Robin Hoods. I'm actually English!" (paraphrasing). And that song. That fucking song. For years my musical nemesis, it is utterly without a redeeming feature, a reason to exist or a single moment when it is anything other than execrable. Like the movie is appears in. In short, I am not a fan of this movie. This has been your weekly unprompted Prole Hole rant. Normal service may now resume. |
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