As if Prime weren’t already amazing value, Amazon has decided to roll free streaming of movies and TV into the bargain. “Over 5,000 titles” so far. I have no idea at present whether this includes anything unavailable through Netflix, but it’s a heckuva bonus and a move I sure didn’t see coming.
I went to check the videos out, and discovered only the primary account holder can watch the streaming videos. In this case, my wife and I are on my Mom’s Amazon account, so no streaming for us.
Also doesn’t work if you have a student Prime account, or an Amazon Mom Prime account. (I didn’t even know about Amazon Mom till I was researching this; cool program for parents of young kids!)
So in addition to being a nice benefit for current members, it works as an upsell incentive for people on free or shared Prime accounts.
College students don’t need Amazon to stream movies to them, they’ve already got it all figured out on their own, better selection too.
BTW: Gotta be careful running around Amazon’s digital streaming selections willynilly. There’s the potential for pay-per-view stuff to get mixed in with the prime stuff. Not everything they stream is free, and with all the “One-Click” rental options it could be easy to spend money when you weren’t expecting it.
That’s great news, and as a monocle-and-smoking-jacket member of the primary account holder elite, I feel it’s about time that Amazon shrugged off all of the moochers.
So, is this going to be the clearinghouse thread for movie recommendation within this system? I, for one, am thrilled to be able to see Patrick Stewart’s stage performance of Macbeth.
By the way, has anyone figured out how to create a queue? Other than wishlisting?
Just watched In the Electric Mist, based off a book by James Lee Burke. The film stars:
Tommy Lee Jones
Peter Sarsgaard
Mary Steenburgen
John Goodman
Kelly Macdonald
Ned Beatty
Pruitt Taylor Vince
What a fucking train wreck. James Lee Burke often has a hard time writing a fully cohesive and coherent story, without blundering off into nonsensical lapses in logic that he never quite manages to tie together, and this movie is a testament to what can happen when the screenwriters and editors don’t make any effort to plug the holes.
IMDB rates the movie at 6.1, I’d give it a 4. The performances are absolutely terrible, and Tommy Lee Jones ends up playing Tommy Lee Jones, instead of the Dave Robicheaux we all know and love/loathe from the books.
I don’t know what he hell happened to John Goodman, but you can’t understand half of what he says, and they really should have done the audience a favor and edited out his double D man boobs.
Sarsgaard was wasted, and Ned Beatty should have stopped after Homicide.
This is a really bad port.
I was excited by the idea, particularly since you can download the movies to your PC and then stream to a media player (like the 360). I don’t use Netflix streaming because my ~1.3 mbps DSL is inadequate for anything but very poor quality. I’d rather wait for the DVD / Blue Ray unless it’s only available through streaming (i.e. 1984). I’d much rather a service where I download and them stream locally.
The problem being that the movies / TV content available via Amazon Prime doesn’t interest me. I’ve either seen it, or don’t want to see it.
Assuming they are serious about pursuing this, the selection will no doubt expand. Netflix’s selection was utterly shit to begin with.
There’s definitely some interesting stuff there… lotta BBC TV stuff, NatGeo documentaries, and a few decent movies here and there like Contact. Watching Ladehawke again is a trip (and holy crap was Michele Pfeiffer stunning in that movie). The other documentaries include Deep Water, Food, Inc. and some other interesting ones.
— Alan
ARISE!
Terry Gilliam is jumping on this. Amazon will bankroll Terry Gilliam's cursed 'Don Quixote' movie
There are many famously unmade films, but few are as well-documented as Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. The Monty Python star has been trying to make his passion project since 1998, the most successful, erm, unsuccessful attempt being documented in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. Now, the director has revealed that Amazon will stump up cash to shoot the film as part of a deal he signed back in May. According to an interview in Indiewire, the plan is for a theatrical release in the US that’ll be followed “a month or two afterwards” by a splashy premiere on Amazon Prime.
The obvious question to ask is why Amazon is putting money on such a famously doomed project? It seems clear that the company enjoys courting filmmakers with a high-standing amongst critics. That can be seen in its recent track record, since it’s signed deals with big names like Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jim Jarmusch in the last six months alone. As far as Gilliam is concerned, it’s because the site’s studio business is still in its “formative stages” that is, as yet, untouched by a studio-system style bureaucracy.
In addition to getting the funding that he’s been seeking, Gilliam believes that he’s gaining far more artistic freedom than under the traditional system. When discussing another project, Defective Detective, the director mentioned that his films have had to be “compressed,” presumably to meet a cinema-friendly run time. Now, however, Gilliam could produce a mini-series style version of the story that’ll satisfy his artistic sensibilities and, hopefully, draw plenty more crowds towards paying for a Prime subscription.
The wife was watching Pompeii and I caught Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in it as Atticus, I think. Of course this got me thinking about the HBO series Oz, where he played Adebisi. And it seems that Amazon Prime has the entire series to stream. My weekend is filled.
Arise once more!
There is an amazingly bad movie on Amazon Prime streaming called Fateful Findings. This movie makes The Room look like a masterpiece. I recommend that everyone go watch it. You will be forever changed.
Oh, shit. That was on the Flophouse and they made it sound like the most amazing thing ever. I hope it’s on UK Amazon.
Crap, it’s not. Though I can import the DVD, which is odd, because I could have sworn they said it wasn’t on general release.
Oh boy oh boy. Turns out Breen didn’t just make one awesomely terribad movie (Fateful Findings). He’s made a bunch of them, and they all have the same appalling production values, acting and sociopathic messiah complex plots. The Flophouse did another one, Pass Thru, which only seems to be available from Breen himself, but you can watch Double Down on Youtube. I heartily recommend doing so.
I struggle to find good things on Amazon Prime streaming. They put up so much garbage! Tonight, though, I discovered that they added Foul King, one of my favorite Korean movies. It’s a comedy starring Song Kang Ho as a failing banker who finds his place in the world by embracing his childhood dreams of being a professional wrestler. He comes under the tutelage of a coach who was once famous for being a cheat.
Comments on the Amazon page describe it as featuring dubbed Chinese audio. It isn’t; so perhaps these remarks are from an earlier iteration.
If the idea of a French language rock musical about Joan of Arc sounds appealing, then have I got the Amazon Prime streaming pick for you:
I first heard about it when John Waters put it at the top of his 2018 top ten list. He says you’ll hate it. I quite liked it.
It’s a Neal Breen movie, they are perhaps some of the worst things ever made.
— Alan
Last time I checked Amazon Prime for anything new it was like rummaging through the bargain DVD bin at my local petrol station.
If your petrol station bargain bin has any Neal Breen, buy it!