Apple TV+ is a sure-fire loser to me. Why would I ever subscribe to a service by a company that has always been bad at services and has no history of storytelling? In a world already overflowing with competitors who are good at both? Nah. *Disney* is barely managing to make it work with months of drought between water-cooler releases.
Yeah, Apple+ and Disney+ are big nopes to me. My cousin and I have a streaming-app sharing understanding. I share my Netflix, Hulu, and Peacock with him, he shares his HBO Max, Disney+, and FiOS with me (so I can have access to sports through WatchESPN).
I have literally found nothing on Disney+ other than The Mandalorian and a few episodes of the Jeff Goldblum eats ice cream and tries on sneakers show worth my time. Otherwise, I haven't opened the app in months. I planned on watching Gargoyles, but never got around to it. Would love to see them in HD, but I own the DVD sets. I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point.
I have had a week. On 9/23 I found out that the movie theatre I've worked at since 2001 was shutting it's doors permanently; I was on vacation covering the Atlanta Film Festival, and the last day of operations was this past Sunday, which was the last day of the fest. I did have to go in and help clear things out of the building this week, but having my last actual shift of operations there being on the 16th, and not knowing it, has made it weird to process. There are so many memories that I have from the theatre, so many friendships and deep relationships (including my wife) that came out of it, that have left an indelible imprint on my life. It wasn't quite COVID-19-related- it was a landlord issue- but I do think the overall impact COVID has had on the industry expedited it.
The funny thing is, the way the major chains handled actually shutting down was pretty good in March, but the way they have re-opened (at least the one I work at) has been baffling. The schedule they're having theatres run now is the one we should have run at the beginning of the re-opening. I also think they will need to get their heads out of their asses when it comes to showing duel theatrical/VOD releases- not that it would have helped tremendously, but maybe if Regal and AMC weren't being as paranoid about VOD (and I understand why they are, I really do), and realizing that the circumstances require it for the studios, they would not be in as dire straights for new films, and we wouldn't be seeing quite as many releases punting from this year. (At least the mid releases.)
I'm getting ready to do a deep dive into Clive Barker's directorial work, and how he translated his stories to film in those instances, and I just finished The Hellbound Heart, and watched "Hellraiser," to start that process. I actually haven't watched much since the Atlanta Film Festival ended on Sunday, but that was such an empathetic lineup I haven't gotten a lot of it out of my mind.
As for the questions you pose, my experience in sound recording, which I majored in in college for one reason, has made programs like Cakewalk and Sound Forge- and my long experience with them- essential to what I do as a critic and podcaster, giving me knowledge to make the jump from primarily the former to also being the latter easier over the past several years. I cannot think of any negative apps or software right now.
I am a voracious PLEX user myself. Have been since the app started I think. It's wonderful, sometimes frustrating, but works better than anything I'd dreamed of. I share my library out with a few friends and the family and I love it.
Getting a chromecast completely changed the way I interact with youtube, amazon, netflix, etc. I have never enjoyed the built-in apps on my TVs or videogame systems. They're always so clunky and I absolutely haaaate typing with a remote control. Suddenly being able to just open the app on my phone and throw it onto the television was a game-changer, and I watch more from every streaming outlet I frequent because of it, especially because I can pretty seamlessly switch back to my phone if I want to leave the room for something.
That said, there are setbacks. It means you're reliant on the specific apps for each service and how well they interact with the chromecast, and not everything works well. It's been a while since I've used them but both the CW and CBS All Access apps were glitchy and frustrating, particularly with their ad-integration. Some apps won't allow you to connect to the chromecast until content is already being played, or won't let you navigate away from the now-playing screen without pausing playback (And of course this means I have a fucking zillion apps for every different service on my phone) But overall it's my favorite way to go about things because it offers me the most fluid control.
Switching topics, I don't know if it's my place to offer thoughts on your Friday FFA plan but as someone who jumped from free to paid this week, I think it would be good for you to have something small but substantial for free readers each week. You won me over in about a month, but I think part of that was having the free articles to kinda warm me up and give me a sense of what I'd be getting from the subscription. That said, I recognize that the previous free articles aren't going anywhere and they can still serve that function.
Btw: any free readers seeing this, I'm very pleased with having subscribed and encourage you to do the same. This is good, thoughtful stuff, and when you really think about it there's hardly ever a time when you can't spare 7 dollars. Food for thought.
The chromecast has by far the best ROI for any device I've ever bought. It's so cheap! No new remote and no clunky box are amazing and it supported virtually every streaming service out of the box. I love it.
Really looking forward to their new chromecase 'Google TV' or whatever they called it. Seems to really take what was already a good product and make it compete closer to a Roku or Apple TV.
Drew, thank you for your commentary on China. I'm not an overtly political person; in fact, politics greatly disgusts me, especially in the last 8 years or so. I'll retweet stuff on twitter sometimes, but at the end of the day, I don't feel connected to any of it. Except this. The evil that is happening in China isn't a political issue with "sides" as some have tried to make it. You said it, man. It's HUMAN issue. It's an issue about genocide, the most evil act human beings can commit to their fellow man. I'm generally not a "shake with rage" guy, but this is something that continues to naw away at my conscience and my soul every single day.
This is something I feel like I personally can't just let happen, but who the frak am I? Okay, so I give to charity, then what? I message the athletes and companies and actors getting rich off of China and plead with them to speak about the evil and denounce, then what? They ignore me and everyone else. I want to be engaged and I want DO SOMETHING, but I just don't know what I can do. I have people in my family who are Jewish. I've seen people who I thought of as friends speak in the most vile, anti-Semitic way, so I've seen people treat others than less than human and that is what the government of China is doing to their Uyghur Muslim population. What's happening is evil. The big gears of the Chinese government are being used to erase these people and their culture and their religion off the face of the planet, and there are American companies and people complicit, and it hits at every level of American life, every ideology... everywhere.
The NBA. Nike. LeBron James. Steve Kerr. Adam Silver. Apple. Tim Cook. Wal-Mart. The Walton Family. Amazon. Jeff Bezos. Google has reworked its algorithms to help China crack down on their population. Disney and all their subsidiaries like ESPN and ABC and frakking Marvel. Robert Downey Junior is silent. Chris Evans is silent. Mark Ruffalo is silent. They've all taken their blood money from China and now they have nothing to say when they're so willing to talk about anything and everything else. The frakking New York Times just ran a frakking editorial saying that China "had no choice" but to steal the treaty-protected freedoms from the people Hong Kong. All of these companies and people and everyone are complicit and it makes me angry, and I'm angry because I don't have a voice like they do. I don't have the reach they do. I want to do something, so many people want to do something, but the people and companies and news outlets that can actually do something are silent and are allowing actual frakking genocide to happen.
I want to help, and I know I'm not alone. I just don't know how I can in a way that can make an actual difference in the real world.
I am almost finished building a new house we are moving into and am digitising my 6000+ dvd/bluray lubrary. I have followed your plex journey closely as that is the route I am taking. I am certainly not looking forward to having to rebuild these libraries considering the time it takes but as you have written, the pros of this certainly seem to outweigh the cons.
I got The Criterion Channel app after you wrote about it awhile back and I absolutely love it. I have to say navigating it is not nearly as bad as Amazon Prime (they're the worst, if you ask me)
Wow, some really good comments here. What's taking my time content-wise? TCM has been running a Women Make film series focused on a doc series that's a little slow but emphasizing a ton of foreign and older films directed by women that I was not aware of. In addition, the great thing abt TCM's big series is they present a ton of supplemental material and this has been no different. Each Tues they'll show 4-5 movies a night that are all important or relevant to the doc's subject of the night, but there's a ton of ones that fell into the "I need to see this when I have time" category like Daughters of the Dust and Salaam Bombay that I never made time for until now. So worth it and celebrating these filmmakers feels really good right about now.
As for tech, I love my Apple TV box. The interface is just so easy and I love renting movies from the iTunes store. My bothers-in-law both have Plexes but it just seems like so much work to set up. I'll just grab a dvd or watch stuff on streaming if I don't feel like grabbing it. Sounds like it makes a lot of sense for ppl like Drew but I don't know if it's for me.
Regarding the growing backlog of expensive tentpoles -- I keep wondering when "Jurassic World: Dominion" is going to move back its release date, especially now that "F9" is moving due to the "No Time to Die" shift -- I do agree that the studios would eventually put all of their eggs in a few baskets one too many times though I sure didn't expect the pandemic would be the point where the bubble burst.
After all the downtime right now, in coming years I wonder which IPs will remain genuinely marketable, if not sure things:
Star Wars is still valuable thanks to its thriving expanded universe.
Jurassic Park/World has proven remarkably resilient given that there aren't many people who admit to liking any of the films beyond the first, and "Dominion" has a special advantage in that, as it's dealing with its own "new normal" situation, it might "speak" to people in post-COVID world in ways that stuff like "Black Widow" or "Wonder Woman 1984" won't.
The MCU is more and more of a tossup with every delay it sees. Some people got off the train after "Endgame", and by the time "Black Widow" opens it will have been at least two years since that movie. Phase 4 may have lost "Black Panther 2" with the death of Chadwick Boseman, leaving a lineup split between characters/films who are liked not loved (Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange), new, fairly obscure ones (Shang-Chi, the Eternals) and a few stragglers from early phases (Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor). Without the momentum of regular releases that the films had up through "Spider-Man: Far from Home", will there be the interest there was pre-COVID? Let's not even ask about the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters' prospects...
DC's hodgepodge approach may insulate it from the "ongoing saga" issues that the MCU has, but its overreliance on characters like Batman and Harley Quinn may trip it up.
The Potterverse is a dying concern at this point. Off-screen JK Rowling's cruelties keep piling up on top of the issues the Fantastic Beasts films have had with their actors, and on-screen there just hasn't been enough of an artistic payoff to forgive their odd plotting and character choices thus far. I would not be surprised if the third film is retooled to serve as the finale as originally(?) planned rather than the five film sequence being completed.
James Bond? Few franchises have lasted as long as this one has on screen, especially in the West, but at this point I think a lot's riding on the reception of "No Time to Die" as the closeout of the Craig era to decide what direction to take the franchise in next. "Spectre" really disappointed a lot of people, after all.
Fast and the Furious will probably last as long as people keep showing up, though I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're scaled back in terms of budgets.
Mission: Impossible will hold out as long as Tom Cruise does, but after that, it's probably best to stick a fork in it.
As for other IPs that due to return soon-ish:
I think Ghostbusters is going to go the way of Men in Black, both being lightning-in-a-bottle, at-the-right-time concepts that cannot be recaptured. Avatar could end up an extended, slow-death version of what happened with "Independence Day" -- too long a gap between original and sequel(s) for something that couldn't maintain a big fanbase in the first place. Indiana Jones lost so much goodwill with "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" that it's hard to imagine people risking being burned again with a fifth film -- it's not like it has the rich, popular EU that Star Wars has.
When XFinity allowed you to access some of your other subscriptions (Netflix, Prime, etc.) through your cable box, that was a big deal. I no longer had to switch to the Roku when I wanted to watch Fleabag or Making A Murderer! I could just use the X1 box.
But a really big thing was getting a smart Samsung TV. Just load up any app to the TV for something that I have a subscription to (including XFinity, HBOMax, Prime, Disney+, Hulu -- if I ever actually pull the trigger on Hulu -- etc.), and we're good. I can also access YouTube videos through the telly. All without having to attach an external device (I still have a blu-ray player, though, obvs). Once Samsung TVs start supporting Peacock (which I have access to since I'm still willing to pay for an XFinity subscription -- but how long will that last?), I'll be very happy.
The worst device isn't "terrible," but just ended up being not worth a damn. The Google Chromecast. Using a Roku ended up being much easier, and then once the X1 upgraded, and we got the smart TV, well...
Apple TV+ is a sure-fire loser to me. Why would I ever subscribe to a service by a company that has always been bad at services and has no history of storytelling? In a world already overflowing with competitors who are good at both? Nah. *Disney* is barely managing to make it work with months of drought between water-cooler releases.
Yeah, Apple+ and Disney+ are big nopes to me. My cousin and I have a streaming-app sharing understanding. I share my Netflix, Hulu, and Peacock with him, he shares his HBO Max, Disney+, and FiOS with me (so I can have access to sports through WatchESPN).
I have literally found nothing on Disney+ other than The Mandalorian and a few episodes of the Jeff Goldblum eats ice cream and tries on sneakers show worth my time. Otherwise, I haven't opened the app in months. I planned on watching Gargoyles, but never got around to it. Would love to see them in HD, but I own the DVD sets. I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point.
I hope everyone continues to be safe and healthy.
I have had a week. On 9/23 I found out that the movie theatre I've worked at since 2001 was shutting it's doors permanently; I was on vacation covering the Atlanta Film Festival, and the last day of operations was this past Sunday, which was the last day of the fest. I did have to go in and help clear things out of the building this week, but having my last actual shift of operations there being on the 16th, and not knowing it, has made it weird to process. There are so many memories that I have from the theatre, so many friendships and deep relationships (including my wife) that came out of it, that have left an indelible imprint on my life. It wasn't quite COVID-19-related- it was a landlord issue- but I do think the overall impact COVID has had on the industry expedited it.
The funny thing is, the way the major chains handled actually shutting down was pretty good in March, but the way they have re-opened (at least the one I work at) has been baffling. The schedule they're having theatres run now is the one we should have run at the beginning of the re-opening. I also think they will need to get their heads out of their asses when it comes to showing duel theatrical/VOD releases- not that it would have helped tremendously, but maybe if Regal and AMC weren't being as paranoid about VOD (and I understand why they are, I really do), and realizing that the circumstances require it for the studios, they would not be in as dire straights for new films, and we wouldn't be seeing quite as many releases punting from this year. (At least the mid releases.)
I'm getting ready to do a deep dive into Clive Barker's directorial work, and how he translated his stories to film in those instances, and I just finished The Hellbound Heart, and watched "Hellraiser," to start that process. I actually haven't watched much since the Atlanta Film Festival ended on Sunday, but that was such an empathetic lineup I haven't gotten a lot of it out of my mind.
As for the questions you pose, my experience in sound recording, which I majored in in college for one reason, has made programs like Cakewalk and Sound Forge- and my long experience with them- essential to what I do as a critic and podcaster, giving me knowledge to make the jump from primarily the former to also being the latter easier over the past several years. I cannot think of any negative apps or software right now.
I am a voracious PLEX user myself. Have been since the app started I think. It's wonderful, sometimes frustrating, but works better than anything I'd dreamed of. I share my library out with a few friends and the family and I love it.
Getting a chromecast completely changed the way I interact with youtube, amazon, netflix, etc. I have never enjoyed the built-in apps on my TVs or videogame systems. They're always so clunky and I absolutely haaaate typing with a remote control. Suddenly being able to just open the app on my phone and throw it onto the television was a game-changer, and I watch more from every streaming outlet I frequent because of it, especially because I can pretty seamlessly switch back to my phone if I want to leave the room for something.
That said, there are setbacks. It means you're reliant on the specific apps for each service and how well they interact with the chromecast, and not everything works well. It's been a while since I've used them but both the CW and CBS All Access apps were glitchy and frustrating, particularly with their ad-integration. Some apps won't allow you to connect to the chromecast until content is already being played, or won't let you navigate away from the now-playing screen without pausing playback (And of course this means I have a fucking zillion apps for every different service on my phone) But overall it's my favorite way to go about things because it offers me the most fluid control.
Switching topics, I don't know if it's my place to offer thoughts on your Friday FFA plan but as someone who jumped from free to paid this week, I think it would be good for you to have something small but substantial for free readers each week. You won me over in about a month, but I think part of that was having the free articles to kinda warm me up and give me a sense of what I'd be getting from the subscription. That said, I recognize that the previous free articles aren't going anywhere and they can still serve that function.
Btw: any free readers seeing this, I'm very pleased with having subscribed and encourage you to do the same. This is good, thoughtful stuff, and when you really think about it there's hardly ever a time when you can't spare 7 dollars. Food for thought.
The chromecast has by far the best ROI for any device I've ever bought. It's so cheap! No new remote and no clunky box are amazing and it supported virtually every streaming service out of the box. I love it.
Really looking forward to their new chromecase 'Google TV' or whatever they called it. Seems to really take what was already a good product and make it compete closer to a Roku or Apple TV.
I gotta agree. Chromecast has been a wonderful tool for myself and my family
Drew, thank you for your commentary on China. I'm not an overtly political person; in fact, politics greatly disgusts me, especially in the last 8 years or so. I'll retweet stuff on twitter sometimes, but at the end of the day, I don't feel connected to any of it. Except this. The evil that is happening in China isn't a political issue with "sides" as some have tried to make it. You said it, man. It's HUMAN issue. It's an issue about genocide, the most evil act human beings can commit to their fellow man. I'm generally not a "shake with rage" guy, but this is something that continues to naw away at my conscience and my soul every single day.
This is something I feel like I personally can't just let happen, but who the frak am I? Okay, so I give to charity, then what? I message the athletes and companies and actors getting rich off of China and plead with them to speak about the evil and denounce, then what? They ignore me and everyone else. I want to be engaged and I want DO SOMETHING, but I just don't know what I can do. I have people in my family who are Jewish. I've seen people who I thought of as friends speak in the most vile, anti-Semitic way, so I've seen people treat others than less than human and that is what the government of China is doing to their Uyghur Muslim population. What's happening is evil. The big gears of the Chinese government are being used to erase these people and their culture and their religion off the face of the planet, and there are American companies and people complicit, and it hits at every level of American life, every ideology... everywhere.
The NBA. Nike. LeBron James. Steve Kerr. Adam Silver. Apple. Tim Cook. Wal-Mart. The Walton Family. Amazon. Jeff Bezos. Google has reworked its algorithms to help China crack down on their population. Disney and all their subsidiaries like ESPN and ABC and frakking Marvel. Robert Downey Junior is silent. Chris Evans is silent. Mark Ruffalo is silent. They've all taken their blood money from China and now they have nothing to say when they're so willing to talk about anything and everything else. The frakking New York Times just ran a frakking editorial saying that China "had no choice" but to steal the treaty-protected freedoms from the people Hong Kong. All of these companies and people and everyone are complicit and it makes me angry, and I'm angry because I don't have a voice like they do. I don't have the reach they do. I want to do something, so many people want to do something, but the people and companies and news outlets that can actually do something are silent and are allowing actual frakking genocide to happen.
I want to help, and I know I'm not alone. I just don't know how I can in a way that can make an actual difference in the real world.
I am almost finished building a new house we are moving into and am digitising my 6000+ dvd/bluray lubrary. I have followed your plex journey closely as that is the route I am taking. I am certainly not looking forward to having to rebuild these libraries considering the time it takes but as you have written, the pros of this certainly seem to outweigh the cons.
I got The Criterion Channel app after you wrote about it awhile back and I absolutely love it. I have to say navigating it is not nearly as bad as Amazon Prime (they're the worst, if you ask me)
Wow, some really good comments here. What's taking my time content-wise? TCM has been running a Women Make film series focused on a doc series that's a little slow but emphasizing a ton of foreign and older films directed by women that I was not aware of. In addition, the great thing abt TCM's big series is they present a ton of supplemental material and this has been no different. Each Tues they'll show 4-5 movies a night that are all important or relevant to the doc's subject of the night, but there's a ton of ones that fell into the "I need to see this when I have time" category like Daughters of the Dust and Salaam Bombay that I never made time for until now. So worth it and celebrating these filmmakers feels really good right about now.
As for tech, I love my Apple TV box. The interface is just so easy and I love renting movies from the iTunes store. My bothers-in-law both have Plexes but it just seems like so much work to set up. I'll just grab a dvd or watch stuff on streaming if I don't feel like grabbing it. Sounds like it makes a lot of sense for ppl like Drew but I don't know if it's for me.
Regarding the growing backlog of expensive tentpoles -- I keep wondering when "Jurassic World: Dominion" is going to move back its release date, especially now that "F9" is moving due to the "No Time to Die" shift -- I do agree that the studios would eventually put all of their eggs in a few baskets one too many times though I sure didn't expect the pandemic would be the point where the bubble burst.
After all the downtime right now, in coming years I wonder which IPs will remain genuinely marketable, if not sure things:
Star Wars is still valuable thanks to its thriving expanded universe.
Jurassic Park/World has proven remarkably resilient given that there aren't many people who admit to liking any of the films beyond the first, and "Dominion" has a special advantage in that, as it's dealing with its own "new normal" situation, it might "speak" to people in post-COVID world in ways that stuff like "Black Widow" or "Wonder Woman 1984" won't.
The MCU is more and more of a tossup with every delay it sees. Some people got off the train after "Endgame", and by the time "Black Widow" opens it will have been at least two years since that movie. Phase 4 may have lost "Black Panther 2" with the death of Chadwick Boseman, leaving a lineup split between characters/films who are liked not loved (Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange), new, fairly obscure ones (Shang-Chi, the Eternals) and a few stragglers from early phases (Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor). Without the momentum of regular releases that the films had up through "Spider-Man: Far from Home", will there be the interest there was pre-COVID? Let's not even ask about the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters' prospects...
DC's hodgepodge approach may insulate it from the "ongoing saga" issues that the MCU has, but its overreliance on characters like Batman and Harley Quinn may trip it up.
The Potterverse is a dying concern at this point. Off-screen JK Rowling's cruelties keep piling up on top of the issues the Fantastic Beasts films have had with their actors, and on-screen there just hasn't been enough of an artistic payoff to forgive their odd plotting and character choices thus far. I would not be surprised if the third film is retooled to serve as the finale as originally(?) planned rather than the five film sequence being completed.
James Bond? Few franchises have lasted as long as this one has on screen, especially in the West, but at this point I think a lot's riding on the reception of "No Time to Die" as the closeout of the Craig era to decide what direction to take the franchise in next. "Spectre" really disappointed a lot of people, after all.
Fast and the Furious will probably last as long as people keep showing up, though I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're scaled back in terms of budgets.
Mission: Impossible will hold out as long as Tom Cruise does, but after that, it's probably best to stick a fork in it.
As for other IPs that due to return soon-ish:
I think Ghostbusters is going to go the way of Men in Black, both being lightning-in-a-bottle, at-the-right-time concepts that cannot be recaptured. Avatar could end up an extended, slow-death version of what happened with "Independence Day" -- too long a gap between original and sequel(s) for something that couldn't maintain a big fanbase in the first place. Indiana Jones lost so much goodwill with "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" that it's hard to imagine people risking being burned again with a fifth film -- it's not like it has the rich, popular EU that Star Wars has.
(Deposits 2 cents)
When XFinity allowed you to access some of your other subscriptions (Netflix, Prime, etc.) through your cable box, that was a big deal. I no longer had to switch to the Roku when I wanted to watch Fleabag or Making A Murderer! I could just use the X1 box.
But a really big thing was getting a smart Samsung TV. Just load up any app to the TV for something that I have a subscription to (including XFinity, HBOMax, Prime, Disney+, Hulu -- if I ever actually pull the trigger on Hulu -- etc.), and we're good. I can also access YouTube videos through the telly. All without having to attach an external device (I still have a blu-ray player, though, obvs). Once Samsung TVs start supporting Peacock (which I have access to since I'm still willing to pay for an XFinity subscription -- but how long will that last?), I'll be very happy.
The worst device isn't "terrible," but just ended up being not worth a damn. The Google Chromecast. Using a Roku ended up being much easier, and then once the X1 upgraded, and we got the smart TV, well...