The Amazon Prime Video thread

Sounds like another winning series on Prime Video.

Nice, looks like its available May 14th.

Regarding the phrase “Underground Railroad”, I have to confess, this was me when I first heard it as well:

When I first heard the phrase “the underground railroad” as a child, I thought it was a literal locomotive churning under the surface, transporting Black people to salvation. Jenkins makes that fantasy a reality. In this fabled alternate universe, there’s a system of smartly dressed porters, dark tunnels, bending rails, and beautified trains, where mystical fairy dust seems to emanate from the locomotives’ hard-charging orange glow.

That was a cool book. I had no idea that Amazon was making it a series, and it’s coming out next week. Sweet.

I just finished Invincible. It starts out as a decent enough superhero story, but it’s really quite good once it finds its footing. It also does not end on a cliffhanger, which surprised me. I enjoyed it a lot!

Also, it has been renewed for two more seasons!

We have a dedicated thread if you’re interested :

And I agree, I really enjoyed the show (especially once it got going).

It was a cool book, but I need to re-read it before watching, I think. This series sounds more fantastical than I remember the book being.

Thanks. I don’t believe I’ve seen that one. Will watch it.
But while on that page, I noticed two other stone classics that are also free with Prime:
Night Of The Hunter, which just may be the best film I’ve ever seen.
And Sunset Boulevard, which, while not amongst my favorites, is certainly near the top of the field.
Both of these were filmed in stunning Ultra-Noir™!

Holy shit. And The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers, another of my favorites, and Kirk Douglas’ first film.

Has Prime always had this much Noir on it, and I just never bothered to check? Wow.

Prime also has a bunch of silent movies, classic and otherwise. And random things like old serials. (Prime is a great fan of things in the public domain.)

You guys made me browse and I found this random show called Daughter of Lupin which is a Japanese TV comedy about the daughter of Lupin, famed criminal, dating a son in a family of cops.

For some reason the tag has qt3 on it so it’s destiny

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront/ref=sv_atv_logo?tag=qt3-20&node=2858778011

This is really quite something. Probably my favorite contemporary television show related to slavery and the African-American experience.

I haven’t started watching yet- I had some (properly-vaccinated) riends over on Sunday, and my bestie was talking it up, though he said that first episode is brutal. My gal said it sounded interesting, so I’m waiting to start it with her later this week.

It definitely is, but I was able to stick with it no problem. Assuming your friend was referring to the horrificness of any specific scenes and not about themes, etc., there’s nothing that comes even close to a couple of specific scenes in Them that were just too much for me.

Amazon buys MGM, as rumored. Prime is only going to get better. That’s a lot of content and a lot of IP they’ve grabbed.

That’s couch money compared to what AT&T paid for Time Warner.

Modern-day MGM is a couch-change company compared to Warners, though. It doesn’t even own full rights to Bond (the Broccoli family still controls the creative end.)

Yeah, even ignoring the pandemic, in 2019, MGM had total revenue of $1.5bn and made a $428m loss (after a $120m profit the year before). In the same year Warner Media had $35bn in revenues and contributed operating profit of $10.7bn. It’s a completely different scale of business (not to mention profitability).

Also, it’s really quite astonishing how thin their present movie slate is. In 2019 their entire theatrical revenue was $21.7m (vs $29.5m the year before). They made $414m in TV licensing of older movies. So it’s not the sort of business that’s going to attract a high multiple, because it’s basically all back catalogue. The TV production/distribution side looks a bit healthier.

Oh, and they also have $2bn of debt.

As of end 2019:

I don’t know about you, but Bond aside none of those sound like guaranteed bank. Creed II did fairly well, so that might be their best shot.

MGM has long been the runt of the major studios. Its glory days are decades in the past. They’ve got the back catalog and they’ve got Bond. But even in the 90s and aughts, they didn’t have much of a production slate.

I’d love another Thomas Crown Affair, and Brosnan is still young enough!