Streaming
Story Stream
Casual Viewing December 17, 2024
Until recently no Hollywood studio had ever released two movies with the same name at the same time. At most studios, such a strategy would be unthinkable. Audiences might accidentally buy tickets to the wrong film, and the PR fallout would be disast...
The Hollow Allure of Spotify Wrapped December 12, 2024
I joined Spotify, the Swedish streaming service, toward the end of 2020, spending the better part of a Sunday transferring my Apple Music library and local files onto the platform. I had nothing against Apple Music—I was even a little sad to leave it...
Will the Joker Emerge? December 11, 2024
There has been at least one folk song, one look-a-like contest, and one fawning fan account. There is the tripartite catchphrase graffitied on walls across America. There are the gleeful comments and posts, an avalanche of them, thousands and thousan...
Culture Slop December 10, 2024
In a recent interview, Tim Robbins said that if you want a picture of moviemaking’s destiny, imagine a mudslide of algorithmic garbage coming out of the streaming-industrial complex and crushing a human brain—forever. “You go on Netflix right now, yo...
Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano December 05, 2024
I knew the Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor fight had broken through when people who do not normally follow boxing were asking what I thought of the fight. At the Miami Book Fair, I had way more conversations about boxing than I normally do at a liter...
‘Dune: Prophecy’ Doesn’t Pack the Franchise Spice December 04, 2024
A knock-on effect from the rise of streaming services is that established IP is no longer limited to either TV or film: Nowadays, the biggest franchises move between mediums. When Disney+ launched, for instance, small-screen extensions of Star Wars a...
Peacock Needs More Hits October 21, 2024
When Peacock became the streaming hub for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, it didn’t quite go to plan, with users complaining about limited viewing options and a glitchy interface. It was, to quote NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus, a “big di...
'Detroiters' Is One of the Best Sitcoms of the Decade October 16, 2024
Tim Robinson’s ascent to the highest echelons of comedy stardom is one of the more unexpected and gratifying cultural developments of recent years. Robinson’s Netflix series I Think You Should Leave premiered in 2019 and became an out-of-left-field, ...
The Madness of 'Megalopolis' October 01, 2024
I attended a very special, and very strange, preview screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis a few days ahead of its official release. Before the film ran, the screening audience was treated to what was surely meant to be a great privilege, a...
Streaming and Screaming July 09, 2024
The Brentwood Country Mart is a rustic, red-barn-style open-air shopping center in a tony part of West Los Angeles. It sits on the border of Brentwood and Santa Monica, on the corner of San Vicente Boulevard and 26th Street, and it’s the kind of plac...
The Serious Artist July 08, 2024
It is curious to the point of bafflement that one should need to rewrite Pound’s “The Serious Artist” in the year of grace 2024. Across the preceding centuries, other centers of civilization had decided that good art was a blessing and that bad art w...
A Romp Back Through an N.B.A. Racism Scandal July 05, 2024
One upshot of the current glut of streaming platforms is a flood of programming to fill them: something for every attention span, something to plug every potential gap of viewer inactivity that might render a certain streaming service irrelevant whil...
Getting the Question Right July 05, 2024
The Novelist covers six hours in the life of a young man, a struggling novelist. It’s a working morning: our protagonist gets up, makes tea (yerba mate, in a French press), opens his laptop, pulls up his work on Google Docs, logs on to Twitter, then ...
The Failed Promise of Binge TV May 30, 2024
This past week, Netflix dumped the first half of the third season of the Shonda Rhimes–produced Regency soap Bridgerton. Between seasons, I do not think about Bridgerton. I wouldn’t rank it high on my list of the best things Netflix has ever produced...
How Cindy Lee Became Music's Underground Success Story May 21, 2024
It's a happy indie parable for 2024, the way the headlines tell it: a hard-working veteran of the late 2000s underground self-releases, with no promotion, their 32-track magnum opus via sketchy download link on a GeoCities website designed like that ...
The Nostalgic Glow of the Movie Soundtrack May 20, 2024
II Saw the TV Glow is, on its surface, a movie about identity and teenage isolation. But it’s also about how we attach those ideas to art and entertainment consumption during our formative years. And on yet another level, A24’s new psychological comi...
What’s Ailing Prestige TV? May 17, 2024
In the fifth episode of 3 Body Problem, the awkwardly titled Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s best-selling sci-fi novel, a strange act of violence takes place. The United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, in conjunction with a shadowy intelligence agency, deplo...
Allie Rowbottom Chats With Kimberly King Parsons May 15, 2024
Kimberly King Parsons has written a novel and it’s stunning, a testament to the power of prose, a portal. The cover of We Were the Universe is bright pink, bedizened in dancing stars, which once you read the book, you will understand to be psychedeli...
The Re-Reinvention of Television May 15, 2024
There’s a reason the most successful night of primetime used to be branded “Must See TV.” In the late 1990s, NBC’s “ER” would attract more than 30 million viewers a week in its Thursday 10 p.m. time slot. At its peak, the medical drama came close to ...
Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted” and the Fate of Comedy May 13, 2024
One of my favorite G. K. Chesterton observations is “He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.” That’s partly because I like to joke around a lot and partly because I think he was right.Unfortunately, you won’t find...
Not Lost in a Book May 09, 2024
Those of us who believe in the power of books worry all the time that reading, as a pursuit, is collapsing, eclipsed by (depending on the era) streaming video, the internet, the television, or the hula hoop. Yet, somehow, reading persists; more books...
The Package King of Miami May 08, 2024
It was the summer of 2023, and Matt Bergwall, a skinny 21-year-old University of Miami student, was lounging in an infinity pool in Dubai. Beside him was his girlfriend, a blonde Zeta Tau Alpha. The silver Cuban link chain on his wrist glistened as h...
‘Unfrosted’ Is the Latest in Corporate Nostalgia May 08, 2024
Jerry Seinfeld’s movie Unfrosted, which the comedy superstar co-wrote, directed, and stars in, is an unauthorized, fictionalized account of the creation in 1963 of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts, the breakfast product officially described as “toaster pastries.”...
Our Dystopian Future Is Inside Your Gambling App May 07, 2024
Earlier this month, basketball player Jontay Porter, former Toronto Raptors benchwarmer, saw his short and unimpressive NBA career come to an abrupt end. This severe penalty stems from his involvement in a gambling scheme that exploited his access to...
Into the Tubi-Verse April 18, 2024
In May of 2015, Netflix’s movie library was approaching 5,000 titles. A dramatic contraction ensued soon thereafter: By 2017, that number had nearly halved. The library is now about a third smaller than it was at peak size. There are plenty of reason...
