But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

I've watched most of this, fairly entertaining but weird. I did indeed enjoy Billie Eilish, she makes quite a good cult leader. Seeing that the last episode takes place in Atlanta, any chance that there's a crossover with the other series?

Sadly, no 2nd season coming for "Three Pines" on Prime. Happily, have read all the Louise Penny mysteries now and loved them.

I want there to be an Atlanta Cinematic Universe

The show certainly feels like it is in that cinematic universe

First couple of episodes of the new season of Dave (on Hulu) were pretty strong (& funny)

Watched the Navalny doc in HBO today—worth watching for the middle section when they figure out who attempted his assassination and how they did it. Really a mind blowing scene.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Sunday, February 12, 2023 7:59 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

cosign. going in I had only cursory knowledge about Navalny as an opposition leader and that there was an assassination attempt. the doc is more of a crime drama and than a political drama.

Started watching The Night Agent. This scene in the house in the first episode is so dark, I might as well be listening to an audio book.

i watched the first ep of that & felt sufficiently ambivalent about watching more. it just felt like a boring stew of all the usual tropes? and that lead guy kinda reminded me of Jamie from Bake-Off
https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/j1-8a9d.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=540%2C316

The first scene on the train had me thinking about the vastly superior The Bodyguard from a couple years back. But that’s probably an unfair comparison.

anybody seen BEEF (2023)?

^ Plan on watching it soon

The Navalny doc starts off a bit telling-not-showing for my tastes but yeah, the middle section of the movie to the end makes it worth watching. Just insane

First episode was decent xp

It's got really good reviews and Wong and Yeun are excellent so looking forward to seeing more

Ok i tore through three episodes of Night Agent yesterday and was enjoying it. It’s not the peak of the genre by any stretch but it’s paced well.

Today I started up on episode 4. I don’t know if being away from it for a day broke the spell, or it was like this all along, but suddenly all I can see are its flaws.

Of course I will still watch it to the end.

HBO Max is changing its name to...Max

seemingly combined with Discovery Plus which some kind of reality show service?

It's all very dumb.

assuming this is an attempt to get us to pay more per month for cooking shows and Dateline knockoffs

Seems kind of circular because Cinemax began its life as a premium pay-per-view offshoot of the subscription-based HBO service.

As HBO grew as a prestige brand, Cinemax (plus its Max-branded offshoot channels) became a relative backwater - the place you went for dumb explosion movies and soft-core erotic thrillers. For a while it was the go-to channel for seeing partial nudity.

Now the HBOverse wants to reappropriate the Max brand? Okay. Nudity is no longer as scarce and thrilling as it once was, in the dens and family rooms of my childhood. (Not to say that we even HAD those channels when I was growing up.)

xp At least for now, it's the same price as HBO Max. I'm sure there will eventually be a pricing increase (but then that would probably happen anyway)

Seems like they're going to keep edging away from prestige-y original shows, most of their big ones are winding up (Succession, Barry, Curb, etc) or canceled, will probably drop it soon enough.

Time Warner is renaming its streaming service HBO Max to Max.

It’s a good move. The “HBO” brand is associated with some of the worst content ever: Sopranos, The Wire, Band of Brothers, Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, Deadwood and Silicon Valley.

Good riddance. pic.twitter.com/p7ZD93rkAS

— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) April 12, 2023

They should bring back Max Headroom as a spokesman

Point made elsewhere: "Settling on the name Max not only feels lazy, but has created something that will be nearly impossible to Google."

I still have the Cinemax association in my head--so when I see "Max Original" on something it communicates "low quality."

So glad they're finally embracing the often-overlooked artistic legacy of The Girl's Guide to Depravity

In my headcanon this is a New Coke move, where they rebrand just to un-rebrand to make the audience feel like it has control, therefore inspiring greater brand loyalty than before.*

* = Yes I know that's an urban legend about New Coke, but it feels like it could have been true, because these days nothing matters lol

HBO Max is changing its name to...Max

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Wednesday, April 12, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

We'll get a funeral off the rack. We can do Quibi's with tweaks.

Yeah I'm sure it will change back in relatively short order, strong IHOP > IHOB vibes.

Their new logo reads as MOAX to me.

somebody in their marketing dept A: went on a bender and B: is prob gonna get fired

assuming this is an attempt to get us to pay more per month for cooking shows and Dateline knockoffs

Or maybe they feel guilty sullying the HBO brand with cooking shows and Dateline knockoffs. I mean, I would

Prepare to say farewell to HBO Max pic.twitter.com/NL6gb4YZmI

— Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) April 12, 2023

This is good news for my plan to establish a cable channel that is entirely about riding the rails, cooking soup directly in its can, carrying one's possessions in a handkerchief tied on a stick, mournfully playing old folk songs on a harmonica, and having an adorably scruffy canine companion.

HoboMax

Econonmy/limited subscription option = littlest HoboMax.

Countdown to some stupid "see, we got you all talking!" response.

Anyway. There's been a lot I don't like about the current season of "Ted Lasso," but as I was watching the latest episode I kind of realized just how good the acting is across the board, which has really helped me deal with whatever ups and downs.

anybody seen BEEF (2023)?

Just watched some last night. Reluctantly at first - the promo art with the middle fingers is offputting to me. The first ep I was a bit unsure, thought it'd just be a ho hum knives out style escalation of malice, but it did NOT go where I expected it to!

Watching it and enjoying it but also feeling weird about discussing it in this thread.

Oh right bcs its actually a netflix show isnt it? lol. I dont even notice anymore - we pirate 80% of what we watch.

Anyone else here want to join in on a watch of Three-Body: a 30-episode adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem? I was completely pulled in by episode 2 - the first 20 minutes of which spin through existential physicists, pool balls that leave the solar system, someone shooting at two-dimensional life, and turkey scientists. Much of this is in the book, but I think I might like this more.

Non-committal NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/arts/television/three-body-review.html

So I watched all of it. It's a 23 hour combo police procedural, historical epic, action movie, and game cutscenes. It's incredibly flawed: a few roles seemed to have been played by folks who were walking by, 10 minutes were obviously censored out of episode 11, characters accelerate from skeptic academic to raving madness without warning, that "historical epic" I mentioned is a multi-episode trudge through the Cultural Revolution that hinges on the credibility of Wang Zi Wen's dead-eye stare (she's great). The current state of the English subtitles means that in addition to the repeated "physics is broken" quotes, you'll have to contend with lines such as "You found the weapon to harm socialism!", "You need to fill yourself with emptiness" and a secret society of alien supporters shouting "GLOBAL UPRISING!" during a factional purge.

It's also the most unique alien invasion story out there. The top billed cast are all very good. The low budget is maximized as best as possible (25% of the budget was spent on one super-complex cgi shot at the end) and the set design is OTT just enough to keep you muttering "WTF" at least once per episode. The long game cutscenes (there's a VR game in the show) are silly/entertaining enough that I didn't mind just how much the show relies on them. Compelling enough to eventually binge two a night towards the end and read up on events like the Four Pests campaign. Fucking state science...

I can't recommend it blindly and as a straight-up adaptation of the Liu Cixin novel, his off-page political positions are as fair game as is the obvious: it's a big Chinese TV show that has to conform to what is officially allowed.

Tencent put the whole thing on YouTube. I hope someone else watches it so at least it won't be just me in the dedicated thread I'm about to create. Netflix has their version on the way this year which insures easy cancellation odds.

I might be tempted, I quite liked the books

See, I liked the first book somewhat but found the second and third to be a fucking slog, so I'm highly reluctant to check out either adaptation.

I loved the books, really enjoyed how they kept turning into different types of books along the way, especially in the last two. Had no idea there was a different version than the Netfix one coming. Either way I'm highly skeptical about any successful adaptation of the novels.

well the Netflix one is Benioff and Weiss, so you can discount that

So a couple amazing seasons descending into complete shit at the end then?

If they go beyond the books i guess

Going beyond the books was a part of it, but far from the only reason the last season was so bad.

Ok i tore through three episodes of Night Agent yesterday and was enjoying it. It’s not the peak of the genre by any stretch but it’s paced well.

Today I started up on episode 4. I don’t know if being away from it for a day broke the spell, or it was like this all along, but suddenly all I can see are its flaws.

Of course I will still watch it to the end.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Sunday, April 9, 2023 9:38 AM (five days ago)

I got to the last few episodes and it totally did the thing of "supporting character talks about what they are looking forward when this mess is over and then shortly after gets killed." I was less interested in the main white dude than in ... most of the other characters tbh ... he had that anodyne Matt Damon quality where he is likeable, but not particularly interesting ... the sociopathic hired assassin couple was more compelling.

does HBO still exist as a cable channel and will Max get it's content or what

Yes and yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wVHEfH0fVM

As bad as the new logo is (and don't know why they're losing the purple), I think there's an element of "can't win" in the reaction to the rebranding... when HBO Max launched, there was criticism along the lines of - "Why are they diluting the HBO brand?" Now it's opposite - "Why are they no longer leveraging the famous HBO brand?" Seems like it makes more sense to confine the brand to the HBO section of the new app, where it can retain its sheen of quality.