Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

fun fact: in college i took an electronics class that was supposed to be so easy it was nicknamed "shocks for jocks". i got a C.

maybe it's just that the late tackling thing is a particular focus of the doc, cos yeah, all your explanations make sense.

the college thing is p interesting to me - like i guess there's always a connection between education and sport, but watching this doc it struck me as wrong that you have these talented kids who are being denied a chance to succeed at sport because they don't have the grades. i mean i guess they can still make it anyway, but it seems like your chances of making the nfl etc are much more likely at a big college? surely the quality of the nfl would be way higher if they did their own scouting and were buying up talented kids at 9 years old, like the big soccer clubs seem to do.

also wouldn't the nfl teams want to just go "fuck the grades" and hire a guy if he's awesome at football. i'm guessing that must happen but does it still go via college? are the nfl teams not allowed to just hire some kid and gazump the college before the kid's value goes through the roof after becoming a college star?

i took a geology course that was also supposed to be easy -- rocks for jocks

i dont know a lot about baseball but my understanding is that its closer to euro-style talent grooming, in that young players go into the minor leagues, maybe after university maybe not

i suppose one argument that could be made in favor of tying education to sporting development is that the vast majority of college players never ever make it to the majors, so getting a degree is some measure of insurance. vs like going to an academy, fizzling out, and then not having anything at all to fall back on.

anyway, college players should all be compensated

xp

bear in mind that there's also a pretty significant incentive on college campuses for suboptimal students to be herded as gently as possible through academics

I haven't watched that doc, but while I was in college I had a coworker at my summer job who was on the football team. I think he's still active in the sport in that he does some commentary for his local news and is an assistant coach for a large high school, but he very much was using the scholarship to get a useful degree. He'd brush off enthusiastic fans who would ask if he was going to try to play in the NFL -- as a college senior he'd already had one knee surgery and said that realistically he might be able to play in that small european league that plays american football but even if he did that, he'd probably be done within a couple years and be barely able to walk by the time he quit

so there's this situation where the players get no money but they're "compensated" with a college education, although half the team doesn't really get much out of that, and there were a fair number of people who were going to be as physically wrecked as him but with no job skills. even those going to the NFL usually only get a couple years of play before they retire.

that's the real career trajectory of most NFL players, though -- a couple years making decent money followed by a lifetime of impaired mobility, so you sure as hell better have a backup plan

yeah one of the coaches in the doc said 1.5 or 2 years. wouldn't be surprised if rugby over here went the same way, it's just not been professional for so long, relatively, but it gets more and more brutal every year as the players get bigger and faster.

It kind of already is. There's been a spate of players dying relatively young from brain diseases like MND, especially amongst those who played for the Springboks in the 90s.

agree to an extent, even the sense each year of fans talking about teams with "lots of injuries" when it seems more and more the case that you have young guys who excel for 2/3 years then get broken down a bit. there are exceptions, the odd indestructible player eg jamie heaslip or someone, but yeah that's true, and the game today could well be more dangerous than the 90s, even if some rules are changing the size and speed of the guys is certainly different.

is there a thread for amazon prime recs? it's hard to find good stuff on there, and instant watcher isn't that good bc amazon adds soooooo much shit every day. the j.t. leroy doc just got added, might watch that tonight.

i always switch between amazon prime & netflix, def good stuff on both

we should probably have an instant streaming thread (or just retitle this one)

Schitt's Creek is just delightful

I was very cynical about it in the beginning, because this small town seems to be absolutely amazing and I can't see why anyone would have a problem selling it. They have full employment, charming places to eat, a locally owned supermarket that hasn't been put out of business by a big-box store, and almost everyone is really attractive and smart and accepting of non-traditional lifestyles. It sounds idyllic.

But once you get past all that, it's really lovely and very funny and all the things that Scott said.

finally more seasons of the great british baking show up!

also lots of kens burns stuff and other PBS stuff that i'm not going to watch. PBS must be getting ready to be Netflix-only after Trump gets through with them.

also the mind of a chef is on but i don't want to get cheffed out. so many chefs. i do like the occasional chef success story because watching them does kinda inspire me to be a better business owner. for like a week.

yaaaaaay more GBBS hooray

The first episode of The OA was so annoying I was grateful, because now we can just scrap the rest. Have been super-bummed (in the wrong way) by both episodes we've seen of Black Mirror thus far, too. (The one with the pig, and the one with the people constantly rating their interactions.) So again, I guess that's a save. The weird thing is, The OA and Black Mirror are both so clearly well made, and the acting is fine. I suppose it's the material, the writing, that's the problem. like the money was spent on production design or something over rewrites.

Well you happened to pick two of the worst Black Mirror eps to watch in my opinion, but definitely your enjoyment of the shows will vary depending on how much the "DO YOU SEE?!?!?!" style of the writing you find personally grating. "The Entire History of You" is genuinely well done and I also liked the "San Junipero" episode quite a bit, but the rest ranges from sub-Twilight Zone to genuinely awful.

There's a real mean-spiritedness to those two.

Black Mirror's do-u-see steez is so annoying, it drives me crazy

I hate the social media episode so much, lazy caricatures and devoid of interesting thoughts on what is being portrayed. The only good episodes are the ones where it seems to give a shit about the characters - the dystopian biking for points ep, the internal rewind ep and 'San Junipero.'

That's like half of them.

(The one with the pig, and the one with the people constantly rating their interactions.)

much of black mirror carries a very british sardonic quality that plays beautifully in the uk and the colonies but (i'm guessing) not so much in the us (the pig one especially was all about drawing the attention of a domestic audience when it first went to air). some episodes are far less dark/preachy/bleak and more just portraits of imagined scenarios. definitely worth persevering with.

trevor noah's new standup special is gold btw.

I like Brooker. I loved Dead Set, and Touch of Cloth was funny. Brass Eye was good, though I think of that more by Chris Morris. But the Black Mirror I saw was dumb and depressing for the wrong reasons. Maybe we'll give it one more shot.

i don't want to describe the others lest i spoil them but you've certainly seen stories on the bleaker side (although there's a series 2 episode which is super bleak to watch)

i liked the pig ep but most of s1 just made me roll mh eyes all the way back in my head & yell FUUUUCK OFFFF

ironic since that's precisely how brooker reacts to everything in the universe

the pig one was so bad i didn't have it in me to watch another one. i was kinda dumbfounded by how ludicrous it was. i guess i didn't want to keep watching to find the good episodes.

i guess i'm a sicko bc i thought it was hilarious

the "do you see" bit is intentional and meant to mock imo

Watch San Junipero in the last season, Scott.

catching up my broad city my kweens

shameless plug but the My Brother My Brother & Me podcast has a 6-ep tv show on Seeso - you can get it for a free 7day trial as an addon channel on Amazon Prime

it's v v funny & very good

is chef's table any good?

I liked Season 1 well enough, but your mileage may vary depending on how much you like looking at plated food and some of the chefs in Season 2 esp. are really annoying. Also none of the Chef's in either Season I watched are as frankly interesting as Jiro Ono so definitely watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi first before you watch the show.

xxp I would totally watch an Adventure Zone tv show, but MBMBM show sounds less exciting.

i am v interested in restaurants and food and yet i can imagine the show might be boring. i've seen jiro dreams of sushi, good doc!

Then I would say give it a shot and if you immediately find yourself getting bored by it or irritated with the chef just stop and either switch to another or give up altogether cuz it probably won't get better. :)

haha - yeah will give it a spin for sure.

I will totally stan for black mirror. Hated in the Nation (I think last ep of season 3) was amazing.

Also really enjoyed Trapped (Icelandic murder mystery).

The indomitable David Yow appears as a bad guy on your netflix in the form of a movie entitled I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. There is a critical scene in the movie in which his character claims that eating cat meat turns you invisible. All of the other scenes in the movie are excellent as well.

yeah I enjoyed it. Pretty unique tone

i wanna watch the episode of chef's table with the woman from Prune cuz i love that restaurant.

season two of british baking show is just as excellent as season one!

we watched two episodes of ultimate beastmaster t.v. show last night. insane obstacle course show produced by sly stallone. sly had a kind of genius idea by the way. all the teams/players represent a country and there are commentators from every country who they show doing color commentary with subtitles. so, i'm guessing if you watch netflix in germany or korea you would get the show with the german and korean commentators as the stars. it's a netflix-only game/competition show. i thought that was pretty smart anyway.

UK Netflix has Lindsay Anderson's 'If...'! I imagine everyone has seen it,but it suddenly decided to recommend a bunch of classic films to me today that I didn't know were there.

An Ilxor literally wrote the book on If.

https://www.amazon.com/BFI-Film-Classics-Mark-Sinker/dp/1844570401

Yeah! We chatted about it on a thread here somewhere, a long time ago. One of my favourite films.

i haven't seen it since i was a teen.

That's the school kid revolt movie, right?

Aye. And the semi-sequel 'O Lucky Man' is great too, especially if you like Alan Price. The third, Britannia Hospital, is not so good.