Don't Cross the Online Streaming Services - Netflix vs Amazon

The Man In The High Castle is a novel by sci-fi legend Philip K Dick and I daresay that even if you haven't read his books you are at least familiar with some of the adaptations of his work; the most famous being Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? adapted into Blade Runner. The Man In The High Castle imagined a world in which the Allies lost World War II and America was invaded and occupied by the Nazis and the Japanese. The Japanese took the western half of the country and the Nazis the East. The book dealt with the "Americans" living under the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes. Amazon Prime have recently adapted this book into a television show with the same name and I recently watched the first episode. I should say that while I am a fan of Philip K Dick I have not read the book.

The first episode was very good and did a great job of setting up this new world, with references to the Nazis dropping an atom bomb on Washington DC and clearly that was one of the reasons the Allies lost the war. I remember reading the comments of a Japanese general saying an invasion of America would never work as while you could perhaps defeat their armies it had a huge population that was heavily armed and any occupation would fail. In the show, especially in the Eastern Nazi half of America, they have done a lot of work imagining how the Nazis have kept the country under their control, for example, the Hitler Youth has been established in America suggesting that children are being brought up under the belief that being a Nazi is a good thing. There is a resistance to both the Nazis and the Japanese but increasingly this seems to be from the older generations, people who lived in the old, free America.

The story in the first episode involved a film that showed the Allies winning World War II, films that are supposedly made by "The Man In The High Castle". Possession of such a film would be considered treasonous. Whether it is a propaganda film made by the resistance or that it is meant that the timeline had been altered so the Nazis won and this film is rare evidence of that change, has not yet been made clear. A thoroughly chilling scene is when a truck driver is pulled over by a police officer and while they are talking ash fell to the ground from the sky, the police officer explained that since it was Tuesday the hospital would have just euthanised anyone considered a burden to the state - the crippled, the old, etc. What is most chilling is that this officer is an American, someone who fought in World War II against the Nazis and Japanese, who doesn't seem appalled at the awful murder of these people, to him it is just a simple fact of life.

This show has been made by Amazon and is available to Amazon Prime subscribers. A few years ago the idea of Amazon making actual shows would have been laughable, they sold stuff, they didn't make it. Certainly no one would have thought that it would be well-made quality drama. Amazon's stable of shows it's made include Hand of God, crime drama Bosch and probably most famously Transparent. Transparent is a sitcom about an elderly man who came out to his family as transgender and would henceforth be living as a woman. The main character is played by the brilliant Jeffrey Tambor who has been in many things but I knew him most from the imprisoned housing developer George Bluth in Arrested Development. Transparent has been a big success for Amazon and they have been lauded for the sensitive handling of this issue and, importantly, being very funny (I have not actually gotten round to watching it but I've heard good things).

Amazon is essentially in a two-horse race with the other online streaming service Netflix and they too have made a host of original shows. I originally subscribed to Netflix as it was the only place to legally watch Breaking Bad, then they were making a new season of Arrested Development and so on and so on. Personally I think Netflix has made much better programmes with House of Cards featuring Kevin Spacey as probably their biggest success. Other great programmes are:

• Bojack Horseman - animated show about an actor who was on a hugely popular sitcom in the 90s but hasn't done much since. And he's a horse, but he's like a person, he talks, he wears clothes etc. It is hysterically funny but also at times very tragic.
• Orange is the New Black - a drama in a women's prison based on the real life story of a middle-class woman arrested for a drug related crime she committed ten years ago, this is someone who would never have expected to be sent to prison. The show is very good at looking at the reasons why these people are in prison and how bizarre the prison system in Amercia is, for example America has the highest percentage of people in prison in the world, around 700 people per 100,000 is in prison, in comparison in England and Wales it is 145 people per 100,000. 
• The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Kimmy has been trapped in an underground bunker for years by an insane cult leader and the show started with their rescue. Kimmy goes out into the world trying to make a life after missing out on so much. This is a very dark premise for a sitcom but it is very funny and the cameo role of the cult leader is one of the best examples of casting ever.
• Daredevil - television series based on the Marvel comic books, very dark and brooding. One of the best decisions of the show is that he doesn't wear the Daredevil costume at first but fights crime dressed in black and a mask pulled over the top half of his face. The fight scenes have a brutal sense of realism to them, Daredevil hits someone and they get back up, that doesn't happen with most superheroes. Also just released is Jessica Jones, another Marvel comic adaptation that exists in the same world as Daredevil.

• They have brought back at least two great shows - the first being Arrested Development but also essentially making new episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David, the HBO sketch show starring David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, under the new name of With Bob and David. I loved Mr. Show and never thought the show would be brought back, Bob Odenkirk has had recent success playing Saul Goodman/James McGill in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul and David Cross has subsequently played Tobias Funke in Arrested Development.

So far Netflix have made far more shows that Amazon and, in my opinion, better shows. But it is certainly true that both have made programmes that would have perhaps struggled to get aired on normal television channels.

In terms of which is the better service to subscribe to if you can only have one (in our household we subscribe to both) again I prefer Netflix. There is something odd but interesting about Netflix and the way they do business. Until very recently Netflix didn't organise it's programmes and films in the simple categories of Film - Horror or Television - Comedy, no instead they would have categories like Dark Films, Gritty Dramas, Classic Sci-Fi and often these labels seemed to have very little to do with the selection of films and programmes. While they have introdcued a more traditional system they have kept their peculiar categories as well.

Netflix also seemed to have more unusual one-off programmes and documentaries. It has the outstanding Ragnarok, the bizarre stand up from John Hodgman about the end of the world (who is my own personal hero and fake internet judge), old documentaries about the American Civil War, a lot of stand up comedy from American comedians not known well in the UK such as Mike Birbiglia, Nick Offerman and more.

If we must have a VHS-Betamax style showdown between these two online services I would definitely support Netflix - the weirder, more original one of the two and as inaccurate as this may be Netflix does feel more like the underdog against the giant corporation that is Amazon.

My History Of Horror - An Overlooked Genre Of Cinema

Spoiler Warning - some spoilers for The Exorcist, The Babadook, Rosemary's Baby and The Ring

I've previously written a blog about how I consider musicals the worst genre of cinema (and I stand by that) but horror is also an area of cinema that I don't know much about. I was given a very poor introduction to horror through films like Halloween and Child's Play and I maintain that they are awful films. I've never really cared for any of the "slasher" films and I don't like Scream - although that might be more because I was less aware of the conventions they were playing with. A few years ago I watched a very interesting series A History of Horror made and presented by Mark Gatiss. I'm a big fan of Mark Gatiss and despite not knowing much about horror it was very interesting and it did kindle my enthusiasm for getting better acquainted with horror.

I don't like having such gaps in my cinematic knowledge so I sought out horror films that might be worth watching. One of the first was Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski's classic horror film about satanists trying to bring forth the birth of the antichrist. I loved the film and the creeping sense of terror and paranoia that took over Rosemary as she slowly became aware of the plot to make her child the antichrist. It is another film that told the viewer don't trust anyone and the closer they were to you just meant they could hurt you more. For a large part of  the film it is unclear whether the satanists are really in touch with the Devil or just think they are. The behaviour of Rosemary's husband was typical not just of being involved a satanic cult but also an abusive husband; belittling Rosemary's opinions, keeping her from seeing friends and family, and trying to control more and more of her life. The shocking conclusion to the film is that Rosemary does give birth and the baby is indeed the child of satan and as the film ends it seemed that Rosemary had agreed to raise the child.

Halloween is a good opportunity to seek out horror films and I picked three- The Exorcist, The Ring and The Babadook and I felt this represented a good range of horror films, a classic Hollywood film, a more modern example in The Ring and absolutely bang up to date with The Babadook. As with Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist is a classic film that I had wanted to watch for some time. I was a little disappointed with the film but bits of it were excellent. Essentially it is the story of a demonic possession and is one of those films that is stitched into culture and parts are so familiar from parodies and other films it has influenced. It also had an excellent soundtrack which turned a rather innocuous tune into something deeply sinister.

 The stand out performance was of the mother of the possessed child and she excellently portrayed the exhaustion and panic that someone going through such a process would have. To the film's credit they spent a long time with doctors pursuing a medical or psychological explanation and it was only in desperation that they turned to an exorcism. Another brilliant move was to have Father Karras be a trained psychiatrist and was as skeptical as anyone about demonic possession.

Next up was The Babadook.This film dealt with some very dangerous territory; what if a parent hated and/or resented their child? The film is about a mother and her young son. the son was going through a difficult time in that he had a lot of nightmares about monsters and so would be unable to sleep, meaning the mother couldn't sleep either. The mother relied on the tested method of reading to her child to get him back to sleep and on one occasion the child picked a book neither of them recognised - The Babadook. It started off being very jolly and the sort of thing for children before completely changing tone and scaring the child senseless. What followed was the Babadook, a sort of ghost and/or monster terrorising the family, who has been seemingly summoned by the reading of the book. At one point the monster seemed to even possess the mother and the possibility of her killing her child is raised. The issue of resenting and or hating the child is skilfully dealt with. The mother's husband died in a car accident driving them to the hospital so she could give birth to the child. Even before the terror of the babadook the mother seemed to be close to some sort of breakdown. When the Babadook possessed her this tension is ramped up and at some points seemed to be on the verge of trying to kill the child. The film dealt with issues of mental illness and depression very well and some people have suggested all the bad things are only happening in the mother's mind.


And so to The Ring. This is the original Japanese version which everybody seemed to agree was far superior to the American remake. I was on the understanding this it was a very scary film and while I enjoyed it I didn't find it particularly scary. I think many of the things I found odd about the film are probably just conventions of Japanese cinema. For example out of the blue one character stated he was psychic and that was never explored or questioned it was just accepted. One character, an elderly Japanese man, is one of the worst actors I've ever seen and whatever he tried to do seemed completely unreal and staged; at times reminded me of the Richard Ayoade's brilliant comedy performance of Dean Lerner/Thornton Reed.

Thornton Reed Bad Actor

There were also some moments that felt more comedic than horrific. Some time ago I watched the recent Japanese film 13 Assassins and while for most of the time it was a very serious, sometimes brutal, samurai film there were odd comedic moments that didn't match the tone of the rest of the film. The initial idea of watching a cursed tape that will lead to your death was very good, especially if like me you're watching it on dvd, but I was surprised at how quickly the characters accepted the curse was happening. Something the four horror films I've mentioned all have in common is children. Obviously in Rosemary's Baby there is a baby, in the Exorcist it is a young girl who is being possessed, in The Babadook the child is one of the two central characters and in The Ring the fact that the main character's son watched the tape has raised the stakes considerably. It is no surprise that anything where children are going to be harmed makes everything a bit more dramatic.


Bringing it back to Mark Gatiss I suppose I did watch some horror on television; namely The League of Gentlemen. Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson formed the bizarre sketch troupe in the mid nineties (and won the Perrier award at the Edinburgh Fringe) and although it was first and foremost a comedy it had plenty of horror. There was the mysterious butcher selling an unknown and addictive "meat", the odd family of toad enthusiasts with their twin daughters who act like the sisters in The Shining, the gypsy circus ringmaster who kidnaps women (who apparently many do find terrifying) and, of course, the proprietors of the local shop who only serve local people. I didn't like the show at first as I think I expected a normal comedy and found it all very weird but I stuck with it and found it to be one of the funniest programmes on television. Mark Gatiss is probably better known now for his contributions to Doctor Who and Sherlock but I still think of him as one of the League of Gentlemen. Shearsmith and Pemberton continued to work together and produced the even weirder Psychoville where horror is far more part of the show and the brilliant Inside Number Nine which at times forgoes comedy altogether and episodes will just be horror (and sometimes oddly emotional as well). Each episode of Inside Number 9 is it's own story with new characters, the hook being they all take place in a place denoted by the number '9'. The first series had an episode almost set entirely in a cupboard with people playing 'sardines', whereas the next episode had virtually no dialogue and relied on silent comedy. The second series has continued in this vein with all kinds of different settings.

 The assorted League of Gentlemen team have always worn their references and influences on their sleeve and I think I must have missed many of the horror references in their work (I did catch the episode of Psychoville which was a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Rope in which the story took place in realtime and is about people hiding the body of someone they've murdered).

A less funny example of horror television is American Horror Story. I am years behind with this show and only just watching the first season but was intrigued when I learned about how each season works. The first season is very much focused on a particular house that the lead characters move into to. But each new season keeps the cast of actors but has them play completely new characters in a new location and a different theme. So the first season is mainly about this house, Season 2 an asylum, season 3 a coven of witches and so on. Again it took me a little while to get into the show but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wouldn't say it has been scary as yet but I am considering skipping season 2 completely as anything set in an asylum really freaks me out, whether it be One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest which is a brilliant film that I own but have only watched once or the episode of Peep Show where they keep trying to get each other sectioned under the mental health act.  I do feel that not watching a horror show because it might potentially be too scary can only be a strong recommendation.

So far getting more into horror has only been a good thing but I am sure there are plenty of bad horror films waiting to be watched.

Repetition Is The Death of Magic: Covers, Remakes and Reboots

Major spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road and minor spoilers for Battlestar Galactica

Ryans Adams is a very talented singer-songwriter from America. Bryan Adams is a very successful singer-songwriter who Canada has apologised for on several occasions. I am a big fan of Ryan Adams. On many occasions when I have expressed my admiration for his music someone has said how much they like Summer of 69 as well and that is very annoying. I hold a particular dislike of Bryan Adams who I put in arguably the worst category of musician: "someone who should know better" which is reserved for those people who do have talent but have used it very poorly, As you can imagine Ryan Adams hates this situation even more and has been known to throw people out of gigs if they shout out requests for Bryan Adams songs.

For years Ryan Adams has played with the dangerous flame of covering relatively recent songs, for example he covered Wonderwall by Oasis and so good was his interpretation that Noel Gallagher said it's better than the original. Even more recently Ryan Adams has covered Taylor Swift's album 1989 in entirety. I cannot stress enough that Ryan Adams isn't doing this in an ironic way and as far as I can tell he is a big fan of the album. My sarcasm and cynicism has become such a problem that I can't always convey sincerity convincingly but Ryan Adams genuinely meant this as a tribute to Swift. Covering a whole album certainly puts an artist on dangerous ground it reminds me of what John Cusack's character Rob in High Fidelity said about making a mix tape, you're using someone else's words to express yourself.

I am not a fan of Taylor Swift and I have become very isolated from what is popular and from what most people watch and listen to. That's not bragging - it's just a consequence of the way pop culture works now and anyone could do it. With the death of appointment television and the rise of Netflix et al I have very easily managed to avoid watching television in the manner it was originally broadcast so very few adverts, no reality television, just stuff I really want to watch. With music it's even worse as for years the only two radio stations I listen to are 6 Music and Radio 4 (Radio 5 Live does get an honourable mention for Kermode And Mayo's Film Review as I listen to the podcast version of that show) and I don't watch MTV so I am in something of an echo chamber of musical taste. just getting back more of what I like.

In terms of real pop music the only people I know about are Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and I don't care for any of their music and I am dimly aware that Beyonce and Lady Gaga aren't exactly new acts. I had heard the song Shake It Off but it was only at a recent wedding that someone pointed out that it was Taylor Swift (and the fact that it took my attendance at a wedding to hear pop music says a lot about my cultural isolation). I do think the lyrics to that song are terrible and practically gibberish and seemed to be about explaining to children how verbs work "haters gonna hate, players gonna play" and the B-side might just be her reciting "I before E except after C". Now as much as I don't like Taylor Swift's music I really like the Ryan Adams version of it. Why is this? Well, Adams' covers are done in a different style, they're slower, more mournful, it is far sadder in tone and far less pop but the inescapable truth is that, Shake It Off aside, there must be more to Taylor Swift's music than I had first appreciated.

 I think when talking of covers it is important to mention Me First and The Gimme Gimmes who are a covers band and play pop songs in very interesting ways. They sometimes veer too close to just being comedy but when they get it right they make a great song. This is their version of Nothing Compares To You

In cinema and television covers are remakes or reboots. Hollywood is very keen on these as they have been running low on ideas for decades. Not to say they don't have new good ideas, or that they aren't good scripts being written, but remakes are just so much easier and every so often rumour of a new remake will be reported like the first stages of a hurricane. Normally I'm suspicious of remakes or reboots but there have been two recent examples that are great - Mad Max:Fury Road and Battlestar Galactica.

The original Battlestar Galactica existed purely because some television executive saw how much money Star Wars was making and wanted to make a television rip-off of it. It was not a good programme. I hadn't expected much of the remake until I one of the best ad campaigns for a television show ever. Sky ran a series of adverts that started with a quote about BSG and it was things like "the most intelligent drama on television" and "the only show talking about the war on terror" and then it would say "Battlestar Galactica". And this was all true, BSG was doing episodes essentially about the War on Terror. It's not an original observation but good science fiction is a way to talk about what's going on now - Twilight Zone episodes about paranoia of alien invasion were discussing communist witch-hunts and Battlestar Galactica had a clash of religious/cultures, suicide bombings, occupation of foreign lands and trying to impose order, the moral arguments for and against torture.

Something it had in common with the Mad Max reboot was the presence of strong female characters, the acknowledged best fighter pilot was Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, the President was Laura Roslin who would stare down admirals and killer robots. And so we get to Mad Max: Fury Road and what may be the best reboot ever. The original Mad Max trilogy is an odd collection of films and each could essentially stand alone and the same goes for MM:FR.

In this new film Max isn't even the central character instead it is Charlize Theron playing Furiosa (I'm a big fan of Charlize Theron especially her guest appearance in Arrested Development). The film is essentially a long chase - Furiosa drove the "war-rig" for the insane warlord Immortan Joe but it turned out on this drive Immortan's slave-wives had begged Furiousa to help them escape. When Immorten Joe realised this he goes off in pursuit. It's telling that Max isn't even mentioned in that plot summary and a good editor could probably completely cut him out. Max just happened to be present and he helped Furiosa and the other women. There is a lot of feminism in Mad Max, the wives show bravery and self-determination in risking their lives to try and escape and, to put it simply, Furiousa is a bad-ass. She's also a bad-ass with just one arm who probably would have beaten Max in a fist fight if it wasn't for outside interference. In one scene Max is trying to use their sniper rifle and kept missing so he gives the rifle to Furiosa and she rested in one his shoulder and made the shot. That is a lot of it right there, Max is there to offer support to Furiosa. So thorough was George Miller in wanting to portray women who had been the victim of such terrible abuse  accurately the author of The Vagina Monologues Eve Ensler was hired as a consultant.

It would be a mistake to think the film is "just" a feminist action film (which would be great already) whichever way you look at it it's spectacular. The special effects are amazing and aside from a storm are largely practical effects driven rather than computer generated. When a car flipped over it  had really flipped over. This does matter as a single car crash in MM:FR has more impact than two hours of Michael Bay's weightless Transformers smashing into each other. The script is cut to the bone but still full of great lines. It makes you care about the characters and you want them to escape. It is a brilliant film.

 So far I think it's the film of the year and Theron should win Best Actress at the Oscars but I don't think that will happen. A quick word on George Miller is the director for all four Mad Max films, Miller is seventy years old and has just made a film so thrilling that I'm not sure a seventy year old should watch, let alone direct. In between the last Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and MM:FR Miller has worked on Babe and Babe: Pig In The City as well as the dancing penguin movies Happy Feet. To put it mildly he has had an odd career.

Podcast Recommendation

As it has been mentioned I will recommend the Kermode and Mayo's Film Review on Radio 5 Live. It is a cliche to say about any BBC show that "it is worth the licence fee alone" but I will say however much it costs to run Radio 5 Live so they can report on sport and whatever else it is they do is worth it as it also produces this show. At first I did not care for Mark Kermode. I had seen him doing bits on the Culture Show, Newsnight Review and introducing films on channel 4 and I had him marked down as an intellectual snob and a bit pretentious. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem as I am an intellectual snob and a bit pretentious but I also knew he had given a Kermode award to High School Musical. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term for the stress caused by holding two contradictory opinions and that was how I felt about Kermode - was he a cultural snob or did he like cultural trash like High School Musical. How could he genuinely like something as weird and brilliant as Pan's Labrinyth and vacuous as High School Musical? And I assumed he was being disingenuous. After being badgered by lots of people to listen to his actual show I found out that, in fact, he does like both. The show is worth listening to just for Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's conversations and in-jokes but Kermode is an articulate and intelligent critic who really loves films. He is one of the very few critics who is as interesting and entertaining when praising a film as he is damning one. That said, here he is talking about the Sex and the City film (he doesn't like it):

Hello to Jason Isaacs.