Netflix originals thread

[alpha]

Icarus won the Oscar for best documentary.

[DLG]

^what was the loose end? tbh i wasn't paying close attention near the end

his quest to locate the black warrior chick's stack I suppose.

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

^what was the loose end? tbh i wasn't paying close attention near the end

his quest to locate the black warrior chick's stack I suppose.

oh werd. i thought it doesn't exist/he let go/she lives in his head (rent free)

[drizzle]

^what was the loose end? tbh i wasn't paying close attention near the end

his quest to locate the black warrior chick's stack I suppose.

yea, this is not even close to anything that happens in the book and it looks like they wrote it in specifically as a hook for the next season

[DLG]

[CraigWill]

Wait, this is going to be a series? I always assumed it was going to be a feature film. That's awesome. Going to give this a shot for sure.

[DLG]

can we confirm after two seasons that Jessica Jones is easily the best Marvel show on Netflix?

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

^are you a fucking faggot? the best marvel show is the flash season 1 episode 3 (wherein my buddy played a gangster).

otr tho i had to shut off jessica jones 8 seconds into ep 1 cause she was already annoying me.

[Employee]

can we confirm after two seasons that Jessica Jones is easily the best Marvel show on Netflix?

You really do have one nut. Show is terrible and ruined by SJW'ing the script. At least there was a reason for her being a drunk asshole in season one; now she's just a drunk, SJW'ing asshole.

Not entertaining, but certainly puke-inducing.

[DLG]

never seen flash because the actor playing him looks really gay.

what the fuck do you say for the other shows if JJ has too much SJWing lol

[Employee]

what the fuck do you say for the other shows if JJ has too much SJWing lol

It's becoming increasingly difficult to find entertainment that is not blatantly, utterly, entirely motivated by politics. SJW's run everything in Hollywood and it's become a disease. In the past it was rather easy to ignore the political persuasions of actors because there were very few intent on fucking people in the mouth over them; especially if it meant losing money. Now, no one gives a fuck and everyday we're treated to new screeds of virtue signaling daily across every available media platform.

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

sure, when you're confined to a wheelchair so you watch 18 hours to TV a day.

what shows are even SJW? (keep in mind i ignore anything with a female lead)

[DLG]

none of the Marvel shows are high art, but JJ has enough good characters and interesting intertwining stories to keep it interesting. Unlike Punisher where it's just one narrative that could have been told in 5 episodes.

[alpha]

Game Over, man. Action comedy from the workaholic guys. Some cringe worthy spots but some parts are peak workaholics level tight butthole

[tehgiftofgab]

Movie was so hilarious

[Spartan]

That Roxanne Shanté biopic went pretty dark from what was mostly typical, daytime tv movie style melodrama.

Also, the casting for M.C. Shan and Biz Markie were hilarious. Liked the young Nas cameos, even though i found them honestly corny.

[Blockhead]

Wild wild Country is pretty great. Almost done with it. Shit get's real out in the hills of oregon.

[blastmaster]

Wild wild Country is pretty great. Almost done with it. Shit get's real out in the hills of oregon.

The footage they found is crazy. Super well-made doc. I have one episode left.

[Employee]

Cannes banned Netflix from competiting for the Palme d'Or.

[drizzle]

Cannes is a turgid bastion of snobbery elitism and starfucking but I generally agree with the idea that bypassing theater releases in favor of direct to streaming is detrimental to film culture at large. Especially since NF rarely promotes their features anywhere near as much as their shows, and sometimes just straight up buries them.

[Gregg Popabitch]

i just finished the first season of dark. it's really pretentious but i really enjoyed it.

[DLG]

there's more than one season?

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

Cannes is a turgid bastion of snobbery elitism and starfucking but I generally agree with the idea that bypassing theater releases in favor of direct to streaming is detrimental to film culture at large. Especially since NF rarely promotes their features anywhere near as much as their shows, and sometimes just straight up buries them.

netflix movies suck. me gyal picked out "sisters" last weekend and i picked "game over man" yday. both weak af, even with proven casts.

[Employee]

I don't think this will end well.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/featu ... al-1099145" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

TV's First $300M Man: The Wild and Weepy Backstory of Ryan Murphy’s Blockbuster Netflix Deal

When Ryan Murphy arrived at Netflix's Hollywood headquarters on a stormy afternoon in January, the 53-year-old producer of such TV breakouts as Glee, The People v. O.J. Simpson and seven installments of American Horror Story says he was expecting a tour of the streaming giant's luxe new space and "maybe a croissant."

But coming in out of the rain, he was whisked to a theater on the top floor of the 14-story building, where content chief Ted Sarandos along with his heads of marketing, social media, scripted and young adults programming awaited. "We want you to know what you mean to us," Sarandos told Murphy, whose catalog of hits streams on the platform. Over the next two hours, the group dazzled him with highly confidential data on the viewing habits of its 117 million global subscribers and lit up a world map on which the countries where his programs were most popular shined brightest.

"I left that meeting feeling that I had seen the future," says Murphy. And in a very real way, he had.

A month later, on Feb. 13, the man who once joked that he planned to be "buried" on the Fox lot announced he'd be leaving his longtime creative home for a five-year Netflix contract worth as much as $300 million. It is by far the richest producing deal in television history and the latest salvo in an arms race that has left traditional media entities like 21st Century Fox sucking wind. ...

After all, the renewal talks for Murphy's contract with 20th Century Fox Television — where he currently has seven shows in production, including two that were previously sold to Netflix — ...

Murphy was able to negotiate a stunning deal that also allows him to stay involved in all seven of those Fox series, which come with significant paychecks of their own. He has no intention of moving his office off the Fox lot either, he says, a plan that has the blessing of Fox TV Group chairman and CEO Dana Walden, who doubles as Murphy's best friend. "As far as I'm concerned," she says, "he can have that office forever." When it's mentioned that the whole arrangement has sparked skepticism about Netflix's ability to make its money back, particularly considering Murphy still has three Fox-owned series in his queue, he and his new bosses cite his track record and his ambition. "Plus," he reasons, "numbers like this aren't just created out of thin air and gifted to you." ...

If you're already asking yourself how much Murphy there is to go around, you are not alone; but the notion that he could be spreading himself too thin is one that the highest-paid producer in television dismisses out of hand. "The word 'more,'" he smiles, "is my favorite word." ...

Murphy, for his part, is not comfortable discussing any deal other than his own, except to say, "I know enough about [Shonda] to know that she's going to have the world's best deal." He hasn't had any conversation with Rhimes about what hers includes or how she is spending her time, nor is he clear yet on how he'll spend his. All he seems certain of at this point is that his day-to-day is poised to change in part because he'd really like it to. One of the things that became clear to him during this process is that he doesn't want to be "just a showrunner" anymore. "It's just not interesting for me to sit in a room for eight hours a day with my mind as a sieve pouring out ideas," he says. Nor is he interested in waking up to a daily ratings report card. "I felt that frustration even with [The Assassination of Gianni] Versace, which I think is one of the best things I've ever done, but you couldn't win because it's like, 'Well, it's no O.J.,'" he says, referring to the first installment of American Crime Story, which smashed ratings records for FX and cleaned up on the awards circuit. "So, the Netflix way is an interesting way because it's a purely creativity way. It is simply 'Your show is doing great' or 'Your show is not doing so great.' That's it. It's not a humiliating 'Your show is down 30 percent.'"

For the time being, Murphy and Netflix are in honeymoon mode. But those who've worked closely with the producer wonder whether someone so fiercely competitive will be able to stand not knowing how, exactly, his work is performing — or live without the level of marketing muscle and executive attention he has grown accustomed to at Fox. There are questions, too, about how Netflix's all-at-once episode dump will go over with a man so adept at keeping audiences on the hook week to week. Just as there are about frustration spreading at Netflix, which will soon be paying Murphy a tremendous amount of money to still be producing fare for Fox. He's already said that his next year will be focused primarily on three shows — Pose, Ratched and The Politician — none of which Netflix owns; and given the enthusiasm with which he details upcoming seasons of Crime Story (Hurricane Katrina, as a theme, is back in, Monica Lewinsky is out) and Horror Story (he's throwing in Joan Collins, he says, and is "interested in Anjelica Huston"), it's unlikely he'll sit on the sidelines there either. "Netflix is just betting that ultimately he's going to want to do new things and that he can handle multiple shows," says a source, "and this is what it took to get him." ...

[Larry2times]

Altered Carbon was good but its got that adaptation thing where all its strengths are in the plot n you rly suspect the book pisses on it cos so much of the dialogue n actings ropey/straight up bad. Kinnaman, Purefoy & the police chief were good though.

If they rly follow through on resurrecting the rebel leader thatd be weak n kinda contrary to the spirit of it I think.

Was v confused by the Blade Runner/cyberpunk aesthetics cos throughout watching I thought it was a Philip K Dick adaptation (misread the authors name which has a K in the middle aswell), felt v snake eating its own tail. Turns out no its grand, everything is just Blade Runner.

[Employee]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... cs-1102121" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As Netflix Goes Global, Can It Avoid Regional Politics?
6:15 AM PDT 4/16/2018

Scandals involving shows in Brazil, Israel and the Philippines highlight the challenge for the streaming giant as it tries to grow internationally while staying above the local political fray.
Netflix has long since gone global.

The majority of Netflix's subscribers are already outside the United States, and that global gap is only going to get wider.

Netflix will publish its fourth-quarter results after the market close April 16, but management has already said it anticipates a net gain of 4.9 million subscribers outside the U.S., against a net increase of 1.45 million subscribers stateside, or year-over-year growth, respectively, of 41 percent internationally, compared with 11 percent domestically.

But as Netflix gets bigger — and more international — the company is running up against a challenge more threatening than Facebook or Amazon Prime: local politics.

Netflix is under fire, around the world, not for its disruptive business model, but for the political content of its programming.

In Brazil, left-wing politicians, critics and journalists have called for a boycott of the streamer to protest its new series The Mechanism, alleging “lies and inaccuracies” in the loosely fictionalized docudrama about the real-life corruption scandal that just saw former Brazilian President Luiz da Silva imprisoned on a 12-year sentence.

Fauda, an Israeli political thriller that Netflix carries worldwide, also sparked threats of a local boycott after a pro-Palestinian (and Nobel Peace Prize-nominated) activist group accused the show, which depicts a secret Israeli commando unit operating inside the West Bank, of being “propaganda glorifying Israeli war crimes.” And the Asian director of Human Rights Watch has called Amo, Netflix's fictionalized miniseries about Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's hugely controversial drug war, “a whitewashed view” of the regime’s crackdown on alleged drug dealers that paints “a ludicrous veneer of civility and lawfulness [over the] human rights calamity that Duterte has inflicted on Filipinos.”

Netflix has so far declined to comment on any of the backlash facing some of its international programming.

The streamer has encountered international controversy before, most famously in its public spat with the Cannes Film Festival, which recently banned Netflix films from official competition. Netflix responded by refusing to submit any of its movies for Cannes screenings, even for out-of-competition or sidebar events.

But Cannes' problem with Netflix is the company's disruptive business model. The festival doesn't like it that the streamer bypasses local theaters by putting its movies up online worldwide, day-and-date. Theater owners around the world have similar complaints. Until very recently, however, no one had any problem with what Netflix was showing, they just griped about how they were showing it. The flare-ups over The Mechanism, Fauda and Amo show that is changing.

Of course, some local controversy could have been expected given Netflix's ambitious global expansion. In order to appeal to local audiences, the company plowed money into local-language production in Rio, Manila, Tokyo, Berlin and elsewhere. Typically, Netflix has gone in big, hiring award-winning local directors — Brazil's Jose Padilha, Filipino auteur Brillante Mendoza — to tell cutting-edge, often politically explosive stories with a strong regional appeal. But what plays in the U.S. as entertainment or simple artistic license — misattributing a quote to the wrong politician (as Padilha is accused of doing in The Mechanism) or depicting as law-abiding Filipino drug police who are accused of “wholesale slaughter” and the killing of more than 12,000 people, as Mendoza does in Amo — can be seen through a local lens as inaccurate at best and, at worst, as deliberate propaganda.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Russia, where the country's culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, has gone so far as to accuse Netflix of “mind control.”

Moscow took aim at Netflix over its 2016 Oscar-winning short film The White Helmets. The British doc follows members of the Syrian volunteer rescue group, who pull the dead and injured from the ruins of buildings bombed by Syrian government forces in rebel-held areas. Russia, whose military forces and air force are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against these same rebels, as well as ISIS and other extremists, consider the White Helmets little more than “crisis actors” promoting a pro-ISIS agenda. Kremlin-backed international media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, have sharply criticized the Syrian volunteer group and singled out the White Helmets film for condemnation.

The same happened earlier this year with Feras Fayyad's documentary The Last Men in Aleppo, which also centers on the work of the White Helmets. When the doc earned an Oscar nomination and was picked up by Netflix, Fayyad came under fire from various Putin-supporting media groups and figures, while the director tells THR that Netflix also faced accusations of "supporting an anti-Russian film, as they called it."

In Israel, across the Syrian border, Fauda may have won six awards — including best drama series, at the Israeli Academy Awards in 2016 — but has fallen foul of the growing Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group that seeks to cut, among other things, global cultural ties with Israel (a tactic that had a powerful impact on ending Apartheid in South Africa). The group wrote an open letter calling on Netflix to ditch the show ahead of the second season’s launch in May.

“If Netflix insists on broadcasting Fauda, we shall have no choice but to call on progressive and liberal Netflix customers in the U.S. and around the world to pressure the company by all legal, peaceful mean possible, including boycotts,” says Hind Awwad, steering committee member at PACBI, the academic and cultural arm of the BDS movement.

“Fauda’s real danger lies in its hyped subtlety, used to normalize and sanitize otherwise horrendous war crimes committed by undercover occupation soldiers against Palestinians, in violation of international law,” adds Awwad.

The call to dump Fauda came March 29, just a day before the Israeli Defense Forces shot dead 17 Palestinian protestors at the Gaza border, injuring more than 1,400 others. “To see such revolting army crimes presented as a 'thriller' for entertainment is beyond racist,” says Awwad. “It cheapens Palestinian lives.”

Even in Europe, Netflix has run into political controversy with its choice of programming. Netflix's first original in Italy, launched last February, was Grillo vs. Grillo, a comedy show created by, and starring, the comedian-turned-founder of the Five Star populist movement Beppe Grillo, which last month became the strongest party in Italy, winning around a third of the votes. The show was the equivalent of Netflix, in America, doing a one-off Celebrity Apprentice special with Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

The special definitely helped bring attention to Netflix in Italy — Grillo is hugely popular, with a Facebook following of 2 million, rivaling that of the country's leading newspapers — but the move also proved divisive. Many pundits wondered why Netflix was giving the man BuzzFeed found to be “leading Europe in fake news and Kremlin propaganda” such a prominent platform. Grillo's off-color and often offensive humor also sparked controversy. One particular bit in the show, involving crass transgender jokes, caused a protest on social media, with Italian LGBT news outlet Gay.it calling his remarks “transphobic vulgarity,” and a blow to LGBTQ rights in the country.

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, sees such controversy as inevitable as Netflix gets bigger, and more global.

“So long as they have politically charged content, they’re going to be susceptible to criticism," he says. "In order to appeal to people in every country, they’re inevitably going to step on some toes.”

To be fair, Netflix has faced similar accusations of political bias in the U.S. The company's appointment last month of Susan Rice, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to its board of directors, led to scattered backlash from right-wing media outlets and bloggers, some calling for Netflix subscribers to cancel their subscriptions. Rice was a top official in the Obama administration and also served as national security adviser for four years. She was highly scrutinized for her part in the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that left four Americans dead. The incident became a focal point for right-wing ire against the Obama government.

Recent reports that Netflix is in talks with President Obama and his wife Michelle on a possible production partnership have further inflamed critics who accuse Netflix of being or becoming a tool of the political left.

But a little controversy, at home or aboard, might not be such a bad thing.

“It’s interesting that [Netflix isn't] playing it safe,” says Mike Lerner, an executive producer on Jehane Noujaim’s documentary The Square, about the explosive 2012-13 protests in Cairo, which was Netflix's first foreign film acquisition, earned the company its first Oscar nomination in 2014 and was banned in Egypt for its perceived criticism of the military. “They’re very politically aware. Ted Sarandos, like Jeff Bezos, is not apolitical. They are liberals and it’s in their best business interests to present the most lively films and shows. Good for them — provoking a debate and a reaction. They’re demonstrating that they are a liberal and open-minded distributor.”

Pachter, however, warns that Netflix “must be sensitive to local outrage” if it is to avoid scandal that could hurt its bottom line. “They’ll have to censor some of their shows if the local government finds them offensive,” he adds. While he thinks controversy and boycotts are unlikely to lead to an outright ban on Netflix — some have even suggested the notoriety surrounding The Mechanism could help the show in Brazil — if the streamer's content goes too far in offending local sensibilities, more regulation could be the result.

“This isn't just a free speech issue and isn't just about politics,” adds Claire Enders from U.K.-based Enders Analysis. For Enders, who has been observing the European media industry for four decades as a U.S. expat, the current debates around Netflix are really about regulation. As the company's international viewership grows, local politicians are beginning to pay attention.

“By 2020, Netflix's audience in the U.K. will be larger than (national commercial network) Channel 4,” Enders says, “do you think they'll be able to avoid the same kind of regulation imposed on every broadcast and pay TV network in this country? They won't.”

Enders predicts the U.K. will lead a regulatory crackdown on the service within the next two years, with the main focus being child protection and the high level of violent and sexually explicit content on Netflix.

“Since having programming with loads of sex and violence is one of Netflix's main selling points, that could have a impact on their popularity,” she notes.

[gusty wingers]

i can't get interested in anything on Netflix anymore as they have lost all credibility to me, everything they do is political fodder for liberals... even a show like lost in space I am unexcited for as I know it will somehow be shit

[Blockhead]

^

[gusty wingers]

is there anything on Netflix good... at all? or is everything like making a murderer where they pretend a cat killing antisocial bozo didn't kill somebody?

[drizzle]

Watched the first 2 eps of Lost In Space and it's dumb as hell in like 30 different ways but I still enjoyed it. Maybe because Neil Marshall directed them.

My favorite thing about it, aside from an incalculable number of plot holes and such, is that the family is hugely dysfunctional to the extent where the animosity between the parents actively puts their children in literal mortal danger and this is played as a cutesy plot point punctuated with an 'OH JAN!' type one liner at the end of ep2.