This is part of a recurring
series on ways to make the most of streaming availability, produced with the
conviction that all-streaming is superior to a cable subscription, not just in
cost but in range of choice and ease of use as well.
I’m not sure of the many ways
you might be accessing Netflix and all the rest, but I can say from my
experience with Roku that one of the most evident advantages is an intuitive
remote control with exactly seven buttons and one four-way toggle. (One thing it lacks, or I have not yet
discovered, is volume control, so you will still need your tv remote handy.) Certain channels pay to have one of four
additional buttons that go direct to the specific channel, but they are easy to
ignore if not your thing.
The onscreen user interface
is also intuitive (though it takes some getting used to the different means of
navigation on each channel), with a pretty comprehensive search engine across
all available channels, where you can select to watch immediately, or “follow”
a movie and be told on “My Feed” when it becomes available on a subscription or
pay channel.
There are several Internet
sites that offer even fuller search options to pursue streaming
availability. I have found Reelgood
to be useful in a variety of ways, and generally reliable.
I have to include one caveat. Streaming obviously depends on the quality of
your WiFi connection, and certain channels may have more problems and slower
response than others. For a long time I
had difficulty with buffering on Amazon Prime (now corrected), and recently HBO
Max has been wonky and at times unwatchable, just after I was pitching its
offerings. So I haven’t yet gotten
around to watching the rest of In Treatment, but I have some better
programs to report.
Besides learning to manage
your cross-platform queue or watchlist (or whatever it’s called on each channel),
one thing to be alert for is that many channels offer premium “hubs” or subchannels,
which allow multiple free trials or special deals. So it was that on Prime Day, Amazon offered
Starz, Showtime, and others for less than a buck for a month, which was
certainly worth it to see the second season of Couples Therapy, after I
opined that show was superior to the latest season of In Treatment.
Which decidedly it is. In fact, I give Couples Therapy 2.0
(MC-tbd, Show) my highest recommendation, urge it on you as a hidden gem (not
enough reviews for a Metacritic rating, though the one listed is a perfect 100). Though this documentary series had two
strikes against it in my view –could be construed as “reality tv,” which I
never watch; and as a Showtime production, of which I’ve sampled many over
time, but only one have I ever watched through its entire run, Nurse Jackie
(all hail Edie Falco!) – it comes back to hit a home run in its second season
(of nine half-hour episodes), a great favorite I feel a bit evangelical about,
want to spread the good news. Dr. Orna
Guralnick returns with a new roster of couples, her office a studio with
multiple hidden cameras, so the audience is an unseen fly on the wall, with a
compound eye that takes in action and reaction unobtrusively. Following the diverse bent of the first
season, the second features couples who are gay, mixed race, or Orthodox
Jews. We follow key points from session
to session for each couple, with brief excursions into their home lives, and
“pillow shots” of other couples interacting in public scenes (aside from NYC’s
period in Covid lockdown). We also see
Orna in consultation with her supervising therapist. It all has an aura of truth, and genuine
grappling with real issues. Funny and
touching as well. Ah, the wonders of
honest, thoughtful communication.
(If you do take my advice for
a month’s trial of Showtime, to make it even more worthwhile, I refer you to
two recent posts of mine, “Show-me-time” and “On with the show.”)
A couple posts back, I was
badmouthing Netflix as a streaming dinosaur, but the empire has struck back
with two more programs that I heartily endorse.
In Bo Burnham: Inside (MC-98,
NFX), the teenaged YouTube star turned stand-up comedian turned film director (Eighth
Grade), not to mention actor and singer-songwriter, graduates to a whole
other level of one-man comedy special.
Alone in one room, with an array of recording and editing equipment,
Burnham survives an unnamed pandemic lockdown with a Robinson-Crusoe-with-video-camera
vibe, hair and beard growing progressively longer and shaggier, as he passes
his 30th birthday and goes deeper and deeper into mediated,
alienated isolation. Hilarious,
insightful, and virtuosic, he sings brilliantly witty songs with inspired
minimalist visual effects. The man meets
his moment, and breaks it all down in absolutely compelling fashion. Though I am totally unfamiliar with
Instagram, TikTok, and all the rest, I dare say Burnham’s parodies of social
media are spot on, and funny as hell. As
is his commentary on living inside one’s own house and one’s own head, while
trying to connect through the Internet.
Not to be missed.
While a new season of Master
of None did not sustain my interest, a second of Feel Good (MC-84,
NFX) compounded its interest.
Creator and star Mae Martin is certainly a one of a kind comedian, of
indeterminate age or gender, but compulsively watchable, and bold in mining her
own life and character. She remains
on-again, off-again with her girlfriend George, goes into and out of rehab, and
comes to uneasy terms with a history of sexual abuse. (These days it seems every female comedian
has a #MeToo story to tell.) This short
six-episode series does not overstay its welcome, and I’ll be eager to see
more.
Since I'm on a run of strong enthusiasms, let me offer one more: Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (MC-78) is now available free on Kanopy, but is worth the pay-per-view on other channels. And also would have been worth showing at the
Clark , if I were still doing that. As it is, I highly recommend you see it whichever
way you can, truly one of the best art documentaries I have ever seen, and I’ve
seen quite a few. Hilma af Klint was a
turn-of-the-20th-century Swedish artist who was painting abstracts
before Kandinsky, and working in large scale on the floor long before
Pollock. Nationality and gender, as well
as her Theosophical spirituality, kept her marginalized in her lifetime. She bequeathed her life’s work to a nephew,
who just stored the works in a basement, so they did not really come to light
until a touring retrospective a few years ago, which became the occasion for
this film. There’s an excellent
aggregate of talking heads making the case for her significance, asserting that
her rediscovery necessitates a rewriting of art history. But the work itself holds center stage – and
dazzles. Since she worked so often in
series, as one painting dissolves into another they become an exhilarating
animated film. Really, see this one if
you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment