15 Comments

Fleabag at number one AS IT SHOULD BE. That second season is my favorite love story. I cry every time. (And so does my husband. We have watched it at least thrice.)

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Feb 16Liked by Luiza B. Campos

Great list! Going to check some of these out, even if I now have to watch with commercials. Enshittification abounds.

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Really? Thank god it still not the case here. 😌

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Feb 16Liked by Luiza B. Campos

Yes, they added commercials if you’re a Prime member and now you have to pay more on top of that for ad-free content. 😕

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God, that’s terrible. I would never pay for it in this terms.

Europe has this great advantage of not really allowing crazy neoliberal shenanigans like this. At least, not at first. For instance, I haven’t been kicked out of my parents’ Netflix and my sister in Brazil has. It’s crazy.

Anyway, big corporations being big corporations…

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I'm going to use that phrase all the time now--"crazy neoliberal shenanigans." Perfect.

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In some ways this gives more consumer choice. If they had just raised the subscription price by, say, 15% to reflect a couple years of inflation, then the consumer's choices would have been to pay the higher price or cancel. Now the choices are pay it the same price with ads, pay a little more (maybe about 15%?), or cancel.

Yeah, I don't like it either (don't like to have to make a choice), but it's not really nefarious.

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I guess that's one way to think about it.

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Whoever buys shows for Amazon isn't as good as the person doing the job at Netflix. I have both and Amazon is not doing well in my books. Yes, it has a gem every once in a while. Mr & Mrs Smith is fun, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart was so not an Amazon choice I kept going to Netflix to continue watching it. Saltburn was another excellent one. I watched Mrs Maisel a while ago but found it went on too long. Thank you for your run-down.

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Feb 16Liked by Luiza B. Campos

Yes, Amazon Prime Video is annoying for the reasons you list, plus how so much of what they have there now we have to pay extra for, the huge number of ad-supported shows, etc. Yet what I still like about it is the presence of oddball shows and movies, although I suspect some are there only because they were cheap to acquire.

A 20-year-old show currently on Prime that I recommend is Dead Like Me. This is a dark comedy about Georgia, an 18-year-old girl killed by a chunk of falling space debris; she then becomes a reaper, a harvester of souls, alongside other reapers led by Rube (the great Mandy Patinkin).

This is also a mixed genre show. For some reason reapers still have to support themselves, so George gets a crappy job as an office temp, making this an office comedy too. Several years after this show was (prematurely) cancelled, they made a film to tie up loose ends, etc. That’s on Prime too.

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I haven’t watched Dead Like Me, but I have certainly heard about it. Thanks for the tip!!

And yes, Amazon has a good catalog of older stuff. It’s especially good for movies, although far from perfect.

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Feb 17Liked by Luiza B. Campos

Two movies I recently rewatched were After Hours (1985), with Griffin Dunne, who you mention above. This might be my favorite Scorsese movie (or just behind his great music documentaries), and certainly his funniest and whackiest. It’s free on Tubi.

Frank (no relation) has Fassbender and a great cast as an eccentric musical group. Fassbender has had some interesting roles and this is definitely one of those; he sings too. On Prime.

Prime also has most of the Classic Albums series, short documentaries from 20+ years ago about the making of, well, classic albums. These docs were made long enough ago that most of the musicians and engineers were still alive — they go back into the studio and show and talk about how each track was made. The ones on Steely Dan’s Aja and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, for example, are terrific.

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Feb 16Liked by Luiza B. Campos

I also liked The Peripheral and Upload, but unfortunately the former has only one season.

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Feb 16Liked by Luiza B. Campos

I would add Deadloch as well if you haven’t seen it!

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I haven’t. Thanks!

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