Watch history
My not-so-recent promotion at work left me perturbed during my free time. I’ve been so used to stress, to doing more than one thing at the same time, and to crunching deadlines, that having nothing work-related to do on weeknights and weekends put me in so much internal pressure.
Thankfully, there’s Netflix.
Subscribing to the video-streaming website always seemed like a luxury to me. Sure, it was a few hundred bucks a month, but those few hundred bucks just seem too much for a service I wasn’t so sure I’d utilize. At least, this was how I used to see it.
Being on Netflix with all the leisure time I have now, however, is just an enlightening experience. I get to watch movies, about which I heard good reviews. There are documentaries that provided me with well-researched information and production-related insight, both of which entertain and inspire me the way documentaries ought to be. And, of course, television series that are a great joy to binge-watch!
Let this be a review of my recent “watch history” to remember what I’ve been up to in the first few months of 2018.
On a different note, the New York Times recently referred to the changing consumption attitude as the “post-text future.” Read about it here. •
Thankfully, there’s Netflix.
Subscribing to the video-streaming website always seemed like a luxury to me. Sure, it was a few hundred bucks a month, but those few hundred bucks just seem too much for a service I wasn’t so sure I’d utilize. At least, this was how I used to see it.
Being on Netflix with all the leisure time I have now, however, is just an enlightening experience. I get to watch movies, about which I heard good reviews. There are documentaries that provided me with well-researched information and production-related insight, both of which entertain and inspire me the way documentaries ought to be. And, of course, television series that are a great joy to binge-watch!
Let this be a review of my recent “watch history” to remember what I’ve been up to in the first few months of 2018.
- Look Who’s Back is funny at its worst and disturbing at its finest, telling its viewers that if we don’t learn from our past mistakes, history will repeat itself. The film is basically history told in the post-modern setting, and what makes it so great is knowing that this can — perhaps, already is — happen in reality.
- Tickled was never what I expected it to be. While the documentary was always showed on top of my “recommended” list, I had been ignoring it for so long because I thought it to be superficial, simplistic, and shallow. I mean, competitive endurance tickling, for a documentary. Really? I was delightfully surprised to find a grappling documentary that reminded me why I want to do long-form journalism. (Also, I must admit that I will never see lifestyle journalism as a so-so, facile beat again. Okay, I still might, honestly.)
- Designated Survivor is like The Newsroom, US politics version. We follow a lead character whose ideals give us hope that fiction translates to reality.
- Queer Eye is the ultimate pick-me-upper, feel-good series! The Fab 5 are cool in their individual ways, and the subjects don’t manifest just a physical transformation. After an episode and an encounter with the Fab 5, they are undoubtedly changed men. This makes the makeover so inspiring!
- Amanda Knox, Sour Grapes, and 13th are all done well in terms of research and production. The themes are new to me, and they are laid out in a narrative that engages the viewers. I hope I can do similar documentaries in the future.
- Black Mirror has been an instant favorite since I watched the first episode of its first season. I love how it shows us the prospect of a dystopian future, brilliantly predicting the path that modern technology is treading as well as the changing behavior of humanity.
- Amo has been controversial because it's the first Philippine-produced series on the website and its theme is polarizing. While I don’t agree with award-winning director Brillante Ma Mendoza’s belief of the necessity of the drug war, I thought it’d be best to suspend my judgment until I see it first.
Tonight, I watched the first episode of Brillante Ma Mendoza's controversial series on Netflix.
— Cherry Mae Salazar (@CMGSalazar) April 13, 2018
I was curious.
The episode basically just established our main character and his environment. He's a student (a minor, most likely). He's a drug runner, who also uses drugs seemingly on occasion. He lives in the slums.
— Cherry Mae Salazar (@CMGSalazar) April 13, 2018
They inspect bags without a search warrant. They arrest people in what seems to be a raid, stereotyping tattooed men as more likely to have committed a crime.
— Cherry Mae Salazar (@CMGSalazar) April 13, 2018
Judging by the pilot episode, Amo is slow-paced (quite an irony since the general theme of the series calls for action-packed sequences — who knows, maybe the pace will build up as the story progresses), plot-driven, and has tendencies to exaggerate.
— Cherry Mae Salazar (@CMGSalazar) April 13, 2018
On a different note, the New York Times recently referred to the changing consumption attitude as the “post-text future.” Read about it here. •