David Daw has studied the history and future of television and has a master's in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University along with a BA in genre fiction from NYU. More by David Daw
As television stops being a thing we watch every evening on our TVs and starts being a thing we watch whenever we want on any display we want, we can find TV shows are getting stranger and stranger. The old models for making money are starting to fall apart, and some networks and network executives are trying new things to bring viewers and money back to their networks. This week, I’ve got a collection of shows that experiment with the format and come out with something that just might be the future of television.
Jeffrey has been a working film critic for more than 14 years. He first fell in love with the movies at age six while watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and served as staff critic for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 through 2003. More by Jeffrey M. Anderson
The term “pulp fiction” once referred to an actual type of cheap
paper that certain entertaining, high-concept, lowbrow books and stories
were published on. But since those days are over, the term has stuck
around—mainly thanks to Quentin Tarantino—and has referred to
anything that’s slightly cheap or subversive or not dealing with
“respectable” subject matter. Here are ten “pulpy” movies that you can
stream on Netflix this week.
Evan lives in Brooklyn, NY and enjoys writing about what future may hold and taking long romantic walks on the beach. More by Evan Dashevsky
It wasn’t that long ago that AOL was America’s preferred highway to all the glories of the primordial Internet. Even as the Web has evolved far beyond its dial-up roots, AOL has managed to still… exist. And now, just like every other company (ev-er-yothercompany), AOL has thrown its hat into the wild frontiers of video content creation.
Web series have come a long way since lonelygirl15
Distribution has been democratized and any platform with brand-name recognition can become a mainstram “channel.” As streaming and on-demand services find acceptance among the general public, there is no reason that high-quality, star-driven content shouldn’t be produced by sources beyond the traditional cable and national networks.
David Daw has studied the history and future of television and has a master's in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University along with a BA in genre fiction from NYU. More by David Daw
Amazon’s trying a new experiment this week, releasing eight new comedy pilots and letting users vote on which ones are worth continuing as a full series. Here are five of the eight pilots you should take a look at, and a quick review of Netflix’s new series Hemlock Grove.
[A quick note: I’m skipping rating Amazon’s pilots, since the whole point of the pilot program is to let you watch and decide for yourself if you want more. But you can safely assume that if they’re on this list, I think they’re worth a watch. And note that to watch, you need to be an Amazon Prime member.]
Jeffrey has been a working film critic for more than 14 years. He first fell in love with the movies at age six while watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and served as staff critic for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 through 2003. More by Jeffrey M. Anderson
The “B” movie was a term for a shorter, lower-budget feature film
that would play in front of the high-class “A” movies back in the days
of movie palaces. Though that phenomenon did not last forever, the term
“B” movie stuck, and was used to refer to just about any low-budget,
high-concept movie, usually in marketable genres like crime, horror,
sci-fi, Westerns, beach movies, blaxploitation, kung-fu movies, erotic
movies, monster movies, etc. Eventually, the form had its own legion of
fans, even if—or perhaps because—the movies never achieved the
respect that their “A” cousins did. Here’s a selection of so-called “B”
movies to catch on Netflix this month.
