Recently I got access to Netflix (courtesy of one of my friend) and I was propelled towards the sunshine it threw at me. I was caught off guard by the sheer content of Netflix, especially after I had used Amazon’s Prime for quite some time. While I still think Netflix’s subscription plan of Rs 800 per month is a wee too much in Indian context (compared to Rs 999 for a YEAR of Amazon Prime) we can get around that by sharing it with friends. So as of now lets talk about the shows that I watched in a month and my views about it.
I subscribed to Amazon Prime on December 2016 with the free trial. Paid Rs 500 for an year from Feb 2017, and ever since enjoying it. Prime has been my goto almost every night for a dose of entertainment. I have watched so much content in the last 9 months that I think I can now separate the wheat from the chaff and suggest shows better. I will start with a small review of the shows that I completed and then will add the shows which I intend to watch next. I will go alphabetically: Brothers Conflict is an anime series about a girl who moves in with his 13 step brothers, each having a unique personality. The story then progresses where every one is trying to get a piece of her affection. This was a weird show and I am glad it doesn’t have a second season. I have seen good animes, and this was not one of them. I wouldn’t recommend. Censorship In The Future is a 5 min short and is a great mock of how censorship would look like in future if it’s going to continue at the current pace. And it’s hilarious at best. Must watch! Extant (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): a mystery thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space. I admit this show isn’t that bad. I enjoyed the show with it’s alien abduction and sci fi elements. An AI robot reminded of David from the Steven Spielberg’s movie AI. It isn’t the best show on planets, but it’s worth for it’s story arc and thematic elements. Kommune presents The Storytellers: (Drama: Plays/Performance, World Cinema: Indian): Remember the good old days of sitting around a campfire sharing stories? The Storytellers is a modern day take on that. At a time when interactions primarily take place across screens, The Storytellers encourages people to look up and connect with one another by sharing their personal life experiences face to face, without inhibitions and with honesty. I watched all stories featured on the show. I liked every bit of it. These were under 10 min six stories that were nice to hear. Must watch! Le Mans: If it hadn’t for Prime, I probably would have not discovered that a race happens in France that stretches for 24 hours straight and is a true test for endurance and efficiency. This show was a breath of fresh air for sports and absolutely loves every minute of it. Watching how the drivers and there crew battle to finish the race (and not just coming in top 3), was an enchanting experience. If you are thrill seeker and love speed, this documentary is a Must Watch! Mr. Robot (Crime, Drama, Thriller): Follows Elliot, a young programmer working as a cyber-security engineer by day, and a vigilante hacker by night. I have watched the show before it came on Prime. But haven’t got a rerun of it on Prime. The 1st episode I watched didn’t have any censorship on it. This show is ab absolutely must watch if you haven’t already. People of Earth (Comedy): Damn, this show was good. There aren’t much shows that blend comedy with Sci Fi with such finesse. The main character of the show is mundane yet so likable. This is also a much watch on this list._ _ Person of Interest: Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line), Michael Emerson (Lost) and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle & Flow) team up in this thought-provoking crime action drama from The Dark Knight’s Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions (Fringe, Lost, Alias). Set in New York City, this procedural centers on an ex-CIA agent, presumed dead, who partners with a mysterious billionaire to prevent violent crimes. This show was not originally on my list. But then I started watching it trusting the IMDb rating of 8.5. I was glad I did that, cause right now I have just finished season 3 and god damn, it just goes on keeping interesting. A super computer (maybe sentient, we don’t know) helps a group of people saving lives, the show takes you on a ride. It keeps you on the edge and never makes a moment dull. The show moves too fast for it’s own advantage, cause we get to see so many angles to the premise. Just when you think you had enough, it punches your gut and makes you realize, the story have just started! The mid of season seems like season finale and you can’t stop binge watching the next season after one ends. I could write so much about the show. Despite this show being too much violent for my taste I still love it. This show is an emotional coaster of emotions and views. Absolutely must watch. Scorpion: Scorpion is based on the true story of Walter O’Brien, an eccentric genius with the world’s fourth-highest I.Q. and the creator of a company of brilliant misfits who use their mental muscle to defend the planet against complex high-tech threats of the modern age. Another show that was added after I made the initial list, I had already watched the first season of this earlier last year. So I knew what I was getting into. This show about a few people with high IQ, is inspired from a self proclaimed genius Walter O’Brien. I can’t say anything about the real Walter, but this show is an ingenious attempt to entertain, as well as inspiring students to take up science. This show also have a side that attempts to show how difficult is for people with high IQ (Intelligent Quotient) to maintain their EQ (Emotional Quotient) levels. I loved the show to the very end of season 3. Must watch for sure. The Last Ship: Navy Captain Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) and his crew must find a cure after a pandemic wipes out billions of people worldwide. Scientist Rachel Scott is assigned to the U.S.S. Nathan James to investigate the cause of the rapidly spreading virus. Chandler and his crew may be humanity’s last hope in the wake of a worldwide catastrophe. Again a show that was not in my original list but which have become a must watch. This show isn’t science fiction (although does deal with an apocalyptic world). The show seems a propaganda for endorsing Navy for US, but grows on to be much more than that. The story is good. The action scenes on par, and the execution just phenomenal. The navy captain Tom Chandler is like a super hero in the series and for good reasons. This series is quite a different kind of action show, since it’s basically about war on ocean, something new from all the hoards of crime series out there. The Man in the High Castle (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): A glimpse into an alternate history of North America. What life after WWII may have been like if the Nazis had won the war. This show is phenomenal. It’s like an alternate reality where Germany have won the war and along with Japan rule US. The attention to detail is breathtaking, story just epic and execution worthy of Oscar. The show have a bit of sci fi element that I wouldn’t want to spoil. The show deserves every bit of appreciation. It’s the series like this which makes me believe that Hollywood creates entire world!_ _ The Tick: In a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an accountant with mental health issues and zero powers comes to suspect his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead. This new show as Amazon original is a comedy superhero that doesn’t take itself seriously. The show was good to watch, but didn’t leave any lasting impressions. It’s not on my must watch list. To watch list: I have these shows yet to watch. Some are from the original post and some are new: Dexter: (Crime, Drama, Mystery): When blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan is not out solving murders, he spends his time as a serial killer who eliminates those who do bad things. I initially watched a couple of episodes and thought the show might be censored. So stopped watching. But it seems the show isn’t censored after all. I might resume watching it soon._ _ Dexter’s Laboratory: This cartoon show was a riot in my childhood days. It was a perfect example of how cool the cartoon shows of late 90’s were! There are tons of episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory and alas the Prime contains only a handful of it. The season 1 of Dexter’s Laboratory on Prime starts from someone mid of actual season 2 and ends with somewhat mid of season 3. I would love to see all episodes of Dexter’s Laboratory but I am not hopeful of it. Elementary (Crime, Drama, Mystery): A modern take on the cases of Sherlock Holmes, with the detective now living in New York City. I just never got around to start watching this. Fringe (Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi): An FBI agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena. I started watching this series, but it couldn’t hold my interest. The story seemed too convenient. It has a rating of 8.4 on IMDb. I may pick this up later. Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime): On one fateful night, Edward loses an arm and a leg, and Alphonse losing his entire body in an alchemy experiment gone awry. From this point, Edward’s only concern is finding a way to return his brother to his body. He soon finds himself in the service of the government as a State Alchemist. It is here the amazing story of the youngest State Alchemist in history begins. Haven’t got around to start watching this. Maybe soon. Startup (Crime, Thriller): Nick Capelli emerges from prison into a world where his once strong mafia family has eroded, leaving him with no direction, but an uncontrollable need to try to recreate his past criminal life. In the modern world where the mafia doesn’t command respect like it used to, this series takes a look at what it would take for a modern crime organization to rise today. Haven’t picked up the show. The New Archie’s: An updated version of the animated version of the classic comic book series. I have read a comic of Archie. That’s what I know it from. I would like to watch this one season animated Archie. The World’s War (Documentary, History): British historian David Olusoga, along with other historians, narrates the story of millions of Indian, African and Asian troops who fought and died alongside French and British troops to help win the war against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. V (Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller): Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) stars in this reimagining of the hit miniseries from Scott Peters, creator of The 4400. “Visitors” appear in every major city in the world, promoting a message of peace … but could they be a threat to our existence? I would probably start watching this soon. Wolverine and the X-Men (Animation, Action, Adventure ): The story picks up one year after the attack on Xavier Institute that caused the disbanding of X-Men and the mysterious disappearance of Professor X and Jean Grey. Wolverine must reunite his team to find out what happened that fateful night. Their position as mutants doesn’t make things any easier as the MRD (Mutant Response Division) is hunting down and exterminating them. As for Movies, I have watched only quite a few movies on Amazon in the last 9 months. Some of them are: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice_:_ Found the movie absolutely slow and boring. But a few must have liked it. Or it was a very dark movie that I was not prepared for. Befikre: I wasn’t prepared for this mindless garbage too. The film that I was better not watching. Hindi Medium: Absolutely gem of a film. Irfan does a great job again with this really great film that is a must watch. The song by those children on stage absolutely blew me away. I had watched this film on theater and I will watch it again anytime! SpongeBob SquarePants: Sponge Out Of Water: Well, I wanted to watch the film since I love SpongeBob the original animated series. I must say movie was a roller coaster ride too. There are a lot movies in my backlog now, then when I started with Prime. Almost all of below movies have been added in the last 9 months: Deepwater Horizon La La Land Sully Parched The Walk Titli Poorna Plus following are the movies that is on my watchlist since long: Mr. X in Bombay (1964): Shobha’s dad who is a scientist gets into a difficult situation after an experiment he was conducting goes wrong and kills his employee Manohar. Indian Sci Fi movie from way back. I can’t miss to watch this. Saving Private Ryan (Action, Drama, War): Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action. Sarbjit (Biography, Drama, History): Biopic of Sarabjit Singh, a farmer residing at Bhikiwind, Punjab, near the Indo-Pak border, crossed the border after having a couple of drinks. However, he was mistaken to be an Indian spy and was sentenced to capital punishment. I had no idea, this list would grow so big, but Amazon Prime have been really great till now!
Important Note: This is not a promotional write up. Amazon’s not paying me to write this. I always believed Traditional TV to be a very poor medium of entertainment. We want to choose what ‘we’ want to watch and ‘when’ to watch them, instead of letting the TV decide for us. With the pace of modern life, we want greater control on the content and timing. Thankfully, traditional TV is now officially dead. Before we continue to the rest of the article let us take a moment of silence for the Traditional TV as our parents knew it! Welcome Amazon Prime Video in India. With all the contents and shortcomings of it (coming below), I think the wishful thinking of a good and legal streaming service isn’t just a wish anymore. The introductory price of the subscription too, Rs 499 for a year comes to around Rs 41 a month, is highly welcoming indeed. Compare it with the most basic plan Netflix provides which is Rs 500 PER MONTH, and you can see why the price provided by Amazon seems surprising. I have managed to start with the 30 day trial first, just to test the features of this streaming option Amazon Prime is providing. I did hear about some content being censored on Amazon Prime, but I can easily check the length of the video on IMDb, before deciding to add it to my watchlist. So far content wise its a bit of a let down, still I managed to shortlist various good stuff on my watchlist. I certainly hope new content will be added, and also browsing of content would be a bit better in future. I tried to analyze the content provided under Amazon’s Prime Video. Here’s some from my shortlist. Do note that the genre I like to watch, which will heavily influence my opinion on the content provided by Amazon are: Sci Fi, Action, Thriller, Cyberpunk, Fantasy. I dislike Horror and (only) Drama shows in general. Note: The direct links to the Amazon Prime website won’t work if you aren’t login to Amazon prime service. I intend to mention IMDb link in future if there’s demand.
Below is a list of 21 movies to be released in 2016 that are most hyped. If you love Sci-Fi, Superhero, Adventure, Action, Fantasy and Thriller then this list should be on your IMDb watchlist. The list is arranged as per the US release date.
(Release date: 12 Feb 2016) [Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi] Plot: A former Special Forces operative turned mercenary is subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers and adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Marvel had a field trip with this character since months now, put in place excellent PR campaigns and been preparing for this movie since they got the Deadpool wrong in Wolverine movie. The hype can’t be more real than this and perfect to start the year!
(Release date: 18 Feb 2016) [Crime, Drama] Plot: A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town. Added this out of league movie, just because of the tone from the trailer.
Heroes is an American series which aired during 2006-07. Each episode every week use to take my breath away. Heroes is back after nine years as Heroes Reborn. And this is when I felt nostalgic and decided to re-watch the first original season of Heroes. And damn I realized it was more awesome then I initially thought. This article is an account of my views about the breathtaking original season of the show.
When a group of my friend insisted me to watch a Bollywood movie I had two choices. Salman Khan’s seemingly mindless flick, “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” or an VFX intensive “Bahubali“. For my geek oriented mind the later was an obvious choice. But as it turned out choice was a myth and I was dragged to the theaters for Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Now, I am not a Salman fan. I like him as a guy, but despise his movies a lot. At least which came out from past few years. So when I went to watch this movie I had totally zero expectations. The formulaic approach of releasing movie on festivals like Eid, I totally thought this was also going to be a mindless no-brainer and an insult-to-Physics action movie. So believe me when I say that you have got to see this movie! It shattered most of my expectations and proved to be a game changer for his stereotypical role that had become of Salman in recent times. And I am not exaggerating.
I was able to watch Predestination few days ago and the movie was every bit I was expecting. I started to draft this blog, but it took me a while to complete. Maybe the cause of my fixation with Time Travel and having been read a lot about Time Paradoxes, I understood the “main plot” in one shot. Heck, I would even say that the movie felt a little slow even if it was clocked around 90 min, for what was it worth. But the reason why I put “main plot” in quotes is that while the plot is crystal clear in my mind, to be able to write this post, I watched it again just so to note more details that I may have missed the first time. The least you know about Predestination more you will enjoy it. Hence this article isn’t actually a review but an analysis of the movie’s plot. Needless to say, if you are into Time Travel movies, it’s best to watch the movie first and then come back here in case you need to know what actually happened in the movie.
I use to watch a few Bollywood movies. And then I saw Ugly from Anurag Kashyap. What followed next were a lot of surprises and regrets. I was surprised since I never expected such a movie to be coming out from today’s Indian cinemas, and regret since I have seen very few movies of Kashyap’s movie before and none from the recent times! Quoting from IMDb,
A lot of time have passed since I last wrote a good movie review and after I watched Theory of Everything, I had this urge to write that I couldn’t contain. The Theory of Everything is a biographical movie which tells the story about the romantic side of Stephen Hawking and his relationship with his first wife, mostly unknown to the general public including me. Movies like this (based on some living legendary person) always feels a little diplomatic (like The Social Network) but are still, for the lack of a better word, interesting and also motivational. In my teenage years I use to love all those documentaries on Discovery about theories with mind bending possibilities. It always use to take me to amazing realm of a world that remains invisible to the naked eye. Hence it was natural that I was expecting to be dazzled yet again and experience that once again on big screen. But what I saw actually was the story of him before he become a successful physicist. The movie is a story not about his professional work rather it’s solely focused on the personal life of Stephen Hawking. We got to know about how incredibly nice Jane (his first wife) was with Stephen. She was an incredible woman to sacrifice so much of her life for the love she had for Stephen. Her devotion towards Hawking for so many years was rather unparalleled. I was expecting a cameo of real Stephen Hawking in the movie, but Eddie Redmayne, the actor who played Stephen did such an incredible job that the cameo wasn’t really missed. I haven’t watched other works of Redmayne but the portrayal of him as Hawking really transpired my imagination and felt like it was the real Hawking himself on the screen. The wife of Hawking was acted by Felicity Jones who was also good. Involvement of David Thewlis was a little distracting at first since I was used to see him as Lupin in Harry Potter movies. Guess what, he is a professor in this movie too and hence I didn’t find it out of character. Anyone who have read the Marriages subsection on Wikipedia had already read the whole plot of this movie, since the story is consistent with what was shown on screen. In a nutshell, The Theory of Everything is a Romantic and emotional film that grips you till the end, except when in second half you realize it’s not just a romantic film, but a Biography first. Even though having interest in Cosmology and Physics, I enjoyed the film very much. I got to know the personal side of his personality, about the man I have always adored as a cosmologist. If I could reverse the time, I would still watch this film and probably love it again. Now, here are some Fun facts which I came to know after some research (no spoilers):
While my choice of genre doesn’t really allow me to digest modern popcorn blockbuster Bollywood movies, I often tend to enjoy them occasionally if served with a good story and execution. I will have to say that Bobby Jasoos was not one of them.
