Hacker Cinema
Ozark
2017 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams
A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million in five years to appease a drug boss.
20 positive4 negative2 mixed16 neutralfrom 42 commenters
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44 comments on Hacker News
I always thought the TV show Ozark was fairly accurate in it's depiction of money laundering. The family would buy a small business that they could inject cash and cook the books with fake sales.
Seriously?
The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.
Laundering manufactured consent for cheaper, inferior products as consumer choice is a pretty old trick.
A consumer's perceived preference can be modulated by any number of issues with which the consumer is not properly informed, such as preferring one sweetener over the other, even if there are valid health concerns, thanks to generational brainwashing and an intentional lack of consumer training. What we have today is the consumer market equivalent to the unsophisticated investor market. People getting economically exploited and feeling like it was their own idea.
In the case of video encoders... Actual domain experts should not be forced to cede to the whim of an untrained eye simply for the purpose of capitalists extracting more money from them.
It's one thing for Netflix to experiment with the latest advances in machine learning, as a lot of us do. But when the opening sentence is to their blog is "When you are binge-watching the latest season of Stranger Things or Ozark, we strive to deliver the best possible video quality to your eyes", it's hard not to find issue with A) the commodification of entertainment and patronizing consumer speak and B) a misleading preposition about commitment to quality which the cited response article makes clear is untrue in the case of this product.
Deferring to domain experts in this case is better for every consumer, as they will not be duped into exchanging an increasingly degraded experience in exchange for increasing monthly rates. People feel very strongly about film quality, and for good reason. We're talking about the preservation of art and culture, but Netflix doesn't see it this way, as to them, it's all a commodity, and they manufacture consent for commodification. If the average user can't see this and push back against the degradation of quality that comes with commodification of art, I have a hard time deferring to them over an actual expert.
I stopped watching the show Ozark because of the episode where the saboteur takes an AC line and drops it into the water by a dock in order to electrocute someone. I'm no expert in electricity, but I know that your body has to become a part of the circuit.
Similarly, the pivotal moment at the end of The Astronaut's Wife (1999) had me groaning.
Try this: look up the most highly rated episodes on IMDB and watch only those. Missing the crummy episodes usually does not interfere with understanding the story arc. Often, I set a minimum IMDB score that I will watch, like 8.5 or 9.0 to capture only the best. This works well with series that:
- take a year or two to find their footing or
- have a large cast (some mediocre) that get their own story lines of no consequence occasionally or
- introduce cast members that don't make it or
- implode towards the final season.
I have done this for many series that are somewhat uneven:
- The Americans
- How I Met Your Mother
- Fringe
- Orphan Black
- Halt and Catch Fire
- House of Cards (watching the ratings allows you to miss all of season 6)
- Arrested Development
- Bojack Horseman
- Veep
- 30 Rock
- Jane the Virgin
- Black Mirror
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Suits
- Six Feet Under
- La Femme Nikita
- The Blacklist
- Peaky Blinders
- The Romanoffs
- Ozark
- Westworld (sometimes dropping episodes does not matter)
- Succession
- Borgen
And all of these series have lots of strong episodes.
Series I would not do this with:
- The Bear
- Breaking Bad
- Money Heist
- The Serpent
- Fleabag
- Chernobyl
- The White Lotus
I love unions in American fictional media. The Wire seasons two is centered around the dockworkers who take bribes and are arguing about how corrupt they should be (I’m biased since it’s the most boring season by far). Ozark features a union on the periphery which is introduced by a man carjacking a truck and kneecaping the driver with a shotgun. Can’t wait to see what’s up next.
Fun analysis! Some thoughts and subjective opinions.
- Westworld's very poor showing helped me realize what I think the major flaw is in this analysis, which is that it doesn't properly capture shows that have been on the decline for a while. In Westworld's case, the season scores are as follows: S1 8.86, S2 8.38, S3 80.25, S4 79.38. As you can see, there is a consistent decline from beginning to end, not just a disappointing ending. The series average is propped up by a very strong first season and goes downhill from there. Not sure how to best adjust the calculation to try to take this into account.
- I found The Expanse ending disappointing because it ended mid-plot (which is less excusable than GoT since the authors actually finished the book series), but I also understand that they had to end it somehow and did pretty well with what they had. As a note to anyone that is enjoying The Expanse show but maybe hasn't finished it, I would definitely recommend stopping now and reading the books first, then watching the show. The books actually have a complete arc, but also the first six books pretty closely match the series, so if you watch the show first those books will be a bit of a slog to get through. Doing it the other way I think will work much better, because although you'll know the plot of most of the show in advance, the space battles and other visuals are so cool that it is still a fun watch. Then you can just kinda imagine what the rest of the books would look like if the'd actually made them into the show.
- Ozark being in the Disaster Finale surprised me – I thought the ending was good (if not great). I guess viewers were hoping for a Breaking Bad-tier ending (given the subject matter and strong rest of the show) and so were let down.
- Agree with the author that Lost is a surprise "satisfying finale". It is definitely in my top 5 most disappointing series endings (alongside the unsurprising disaster finales of GoT and Dexter).
- Big Bang Theory had a finale that seemed right in line with the rest of the show, surprised by the delta that puts it into Transcendent territory. I have a sneaking suspicious that non-fans may've been watching other random episodes and rating them (negatively), thus dragging down the season average by a good bit. But non-fans would probably not be tuning in for the finale, thus leaving that score to be entirely dictated by fans.
This stigma is so weird. My first car was Plymouth Voyager and I loved that I can haul a bunch of friends on a hike or I could do a road trip and comfortably sleep in it. My friend had Mazda MPV which was 4x4 and even better.
Now being older I love my minivan because I can fit my family and a ton of stuff. Sliding doors are great in tight city. Drives perfectly fine, it's not a racecar but it actually handles better than many SUVs.
My dream car is Mitsubishi Delica. It's very popular in Georgia (the country) because of the tough mountainous land. I've seen it run circles around jeeps and SUVs.
I am sad this segment of cars is disappearing.
I chuckled when I saw the main protagonist in TV show Ozark being overly attached to his Honda Odyssey. That man knew the real deal.
It is very easy to be a monopoly, especially one that was first in a certain market, or which can use various tactics to make you use their service. You dont remember how Apple would upload some album into your device without your consent?
I find it fascinating how many people allow monopolies for just laziness: "Steam is so great because I have all games in one place - I dont need 20 shortcuts on my desktop". Then Steam (for years - I think they fixed it now and it opens in few seconds, without asking you to login every day), takes 2 minutes to start because it was written by cheapest bidder + it can close your account so you lose all your games.
Multiple services are a way for actual market competition. Otherwise everything becomes Disney, who churns multiple crappy Marvel movies every year (current blockbuster cinema is mostly rubbish), or everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm (Ozark - or what was the show name, basically took popular actors and a popular theme and made a show with no interesting plot, no interesting dialogue).
So scary to see that people agree with that, because they are lazy. This is some Idiocracy level.
By the way, since we are on hacker news: nearly all, if not all shows are on the pirate websites.
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
Georgia has ranked #2 in US film production by some metrics, and it continues to steal hundreds of productions from California every year [1].
Last year Georgia was host to nearly 500 movies and TV shows [2], and has been extensively used for some of the biggest hits and blockbusters: Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Panther, Stranger Things, The Waking Dead, Ozark, Halt and Catch Fire, etc.
Disney, Marvel, and Netflix have major productions here. Winona Ryder was even my downstairs neighbor for a bit during the Stranger Things shoot.
Last year they built a fake White Castle a few blocks from me and then tore it down about a month later [3]. It was so disappointing as everyone was hoping for a real White Castle.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/canada-georgia-benefit-most-from-california-runaway-productions-1235115921/
[2] https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/08/01/georgia-film-industry-sets-another-economic-impact-record
[3] https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/white-castle-edgewood-avenue-downtown-disney-filming
That sounds about right. IIRC I saw a few episodes of Ozark and immediately thought it was appropriate.
I've been binge-watching Ozark, it makes me wonder too if "it's a training" is just a cover story.
TV-script-speculation: Maybe they were trying to spook some other pilot who was supposed to be there, but the poor guest in room 1505 had been reassigned to fly the route of the target pilot.
> the quality of films/TV produced in the west has been in steady decline for quite some time
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
Yeah, absolutely hated the Ozark (TV Series) look. Heavily desaturated, brightness turned down and shifted heavily into blue. Ruined what looks like pretty scenery in the background on photos.
Compare that to Outlander, a cheesy romance show I mostly just kept watching because of the beautiful (saturated) landscape shots.
Because I've read articles like this multiple times. These things pop up from time to time, just like common articles/themes pop up here on HN.
From the discussions on how Ozark is blue, the battle scene in GoT (yes, it's HBO) was too dark, the action movie with one of the Chrises was orange, etc. It's all just a giving of an opinion on someone else's art. Why in the world did Van Gogh make Starry Night blue? Why is there a wedge shape in DaVinci's Last Supper. It's a level of bloviating.
Sleep deprivation is effective too!
But you dont see it in movies as I guess it's just really boring LOL
Although Ozark did it well - sticking Jason Bateman in a hole in mexico and blasting loud music at him!
> Try to articulate what's so weird about nonprofit boards, fundamentally. I think a lot of it is the combination of great power, unclear responsibility, and ~zero accountability; additionally, I haven't been able to find much in the way of clear, widely accepted statements of what makes a good board member.
This can be by design if what's in the TV show Ozark reflects the reality. Powerful people need a charade to exert their influence while avoid accountability.
You cannot spend your way into scaling an original content business. Period.
Every MBA wants to create predictable success with a recipe or a formula but it doesn't work that way. And if you do stumble into an an Ozark, it doesn't mean you can just create 100 Ozarks. Quibi tried to spend their way into original content. It failed spectacularly then.
Many shows were cut short. Without the direct feedback loop of ratings it can be extremely difficult to know what to renew and what not to renew. The wrong metrics can lead you astray. Some shows had too much money. Others not enough.
And the real big lesson in doing all this is that the economics of big budget movies completely fail without theatrical releases. You just cannot recoup production costs otherwise. There's a reason Top Gun: Maverick delayed release 2-3 years.
And if you overspend the only way to recover that is by raising prices. Do that too much and it becomes a vicious cycle just like cable TV of ever-increasing price hikes to balance out the inevitable subscriber losses.
Taste is not subjective. The critics (cc Metacritic, >>> Rotten Tomatoes) are usually right about TV/film.
Decent Netflix TV: Maid, Unbelievable, Ozark, Narcos, Bloodline, Mindhunter, Black Mirror, Sweet Tooth.
They average like one decent TV show every 18 months. It's an absolute disaster.
Ozark, Stranger Things, Grace and Frankie are all wrapping up. Archive 51 was great and very well received and cancelled immediately.
Right now there's kind of a shortage of Netflix-unique good shows. I'm not spending money that I worked for in exchange for... a nature documentary narrated by Obama.
Derry Girls is great but you can watch it months in advance on All4 with a dirt cheap VPN. There is a similar situation for Bodyguard.
They are expecting people to actually sign up (instead of sharing passwords lmao) and watch ads for the off chance that in a year or two maybe Squid Game season 2 is as good as season 1, or that they need to not miss out on Red Notice 2 and 3. It feels like they are literally betting that people need forgettable Gal Gadot movies in the same way that they need cigarettes.
Can you give some examples of what type of movies to produce?
And what’s wrong with Ozark? I thought it’s one of the better shows on Netflix.
In my view they need more creative risky shows like the OA, Altered Carbon, Love, Death & Robots, Dark Mirror and more old HBO style content… quality and like you said not this mass produced stuff trying to satisfy the lowest common denominator, because then you will satisfy no one.
Maybe they have good shows I just don't know about. Their recommendation system seems to be crap. I browse for 20 minutes and then give up frustrated, because I can't find anything interesting.
I was just looking to downgrade my plan. Basic only gives you SD quality, which I'm OK with but only allowing one device at a time is taking the p!ss.
> They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.
Ozark seems like a directly bad comparison because it appears to be one of their last big content swings/risks (and is ending soon) from the first few years where they seemed to heavily curate their projects and who the creators were and who the talent were and give them enough seasons to tell the full story they were hoping to tell. (Ozark is one of the very few and seems one of the last to get its full number of seasons expectation and will get to tell a "complete story".) Ozark is not quite as successful as benchmarks like Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, but it fills a niche and gambles on good talent pulling off a tough tightrope of "bad people doing bad things but you root for them in spite of themselves", which is still a very risky niche even with big "Prestige TV" breakouts such as the aforementioned benchmarks. (I've only finished the first season of Ozark because I have a hard time watching this "cringe" genre, but I recall it was very well made and I enjoyed it for what it was.)
Since Netflix ordered Ozark they have indeed seemed to move their Originals content much more to a algorithm-generated "shotgun" approach: building lots of single season shows (or maybe if first weekend and only first weekend views are high enough, or so it seems, they will get two seasons) and seemingly designed overall to take fewer risks (on creators, on talent, on genres). There's definitely a lot extremely generic or at least extremely low risk programming coming out of Netflix's shotgun at this point. Some of it has still been entertaining.
But calling Ozark out for being a product of the shotgun and "low risk" seems backwards when it seems so much more emblematic of riskier Netflix Originals projects than current ones.
>> They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.
I think the exact opposite: Ozark was great, because it is basically a rip-off of Breaking Bad, which was made by a mainstream TV network (which has a lot of experience and research about what kind of stories people do like). The "risky content" from artists that were "set free" is a recipe for disaster: you spend a lot of money to produce a show that only appeals to some exotic audiences. Netflix has some examples of that. Only once in a while you'll hit the jackpot and have this risky content make you a lot of money.
The main problem of Netflix, more than competition, is quality of content.
They need to think like a Hollywood studio, and less like a Video Supermarket. You need to be a Disney or PBS , Universal or MGM, and the subscribers will pay for high quality content.
The only notable Netflix content seems to be the one purchased externally. Internally developed content, tends to follow a common amorphous pattern, that becomes very predictable as it gets extended into multiple episodes of the same script.
They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.
When I first signed up for Netflix it was (briefly) $8/month. At that stage it had a great catalog of old TV shows, which was (and is) way more interesting to me than movies. I actually figured that anything less than $10/month and I'd subscribe to it forever without thinking about it.
But the prices keep ballooning while the catalog keeps shrinking to the point that Netflix HD is now more expensive than HBO Max. Like WTF? For the record, the UI/UX of HBO Max is decidedly worse than HBO Now was (IMHO).
I support Netflix's strategy of having to make original content as the popularity of streaming caused every content owner to launch their own shitty "me too" streaming platform. Most of these won't survive (eg CBS All Access -> Paramount+).
But Netflix has proven once again you can't solve a problem by simply throwing tons of money at it. HBO is good at producing original content because it has a long history of doing so and has built up a culture to do just that. But Netflix acts like they're just throwing money around (eg [1]). Some of their content is good (eg Ozark). A lot of it is mediocre and samey. Even some of the good stuff gets killed prematurely.
So once Netflix was an "always have". Now it's something I'll sign up for 1-2 months a year to catch up on old content. I'm not paying for 6 different streaming services continually. The only service in my "always have" bucket now is Prime Video simply because Amazon Prime is too useful not to have it.
What I think Netflix should've done is concentrated in building regional content and then dubbing that to other languages and regions. They've had some success with that (eg Money Heist, 3%) but nowhere as much as they could have (IMHO). This should help avoid creating samey content.
But here's how you know this isn't a high-priority strategy: for some reason all the voice acting on dubbed content is beyond terrible. This goes beyond Netflix. Like Netflix has some other dubbed Spanish TV series (I forget the name) and there are common voice actors with Money Heist. And they're bad. Years ago I saw German-dubbed Friends and I couldn't get past how bad the dubbing was.
Why is this? Is this a small industry rife with nepotism? Or is it just something no one cares about?
Anyway, I'm not surprised Netflix is struggling to retain subscribers in the US and Canada. It's simply too expensive and there is now fierce competition.
[1]: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/gilmore-girls-paid-20000-use-john-lennon-song-memorable-rory-dean-moment.html/
Cherries and apples have seeds with traces of a cyanide derivative that can be converted in the stomach.
> Cherries have a small, hardened pit that surrounds their seed, also called a kernel. The kernels of cherry pits and other stone fruits contain the chemical amygdalin. Amygdalin is a cyanogenic glycoside — a chemical that your body converts into the toxic compound hydrogen cyanide.
In Ozark episode S2E19, Darlene poisons her husband Jacob's coffee with ground cherry pits, for a current cultural reference.
The recent "Nobody" is a good twist on action, as well as "Hardcore Henry" is interesting. When the storyline takes unexpected turns, or uses clichés as bait and does not follow through on the cliché can be fresh. In general, a feature length film is too short to do many literary works justice, and serialization does a far better job relating a quality story. For example, Netflix's "Ozark" would not be called "action" in the feature film sense, but the intellectual violence in that show is far and above stupid gun/car/fist violence. Films like "The Congress", "Terminator 2", and "Tropic Thunder" represent the best the Hollywood feature film system can produce.
This reminds me of an episode on Ozark where the main character secretly pays the psychiatrist whom he regularly visits together with the wife to be on his side.
Didn't take long for the equally cunning wife to successfully attempt to bribe the morally bankrupt psychiatrist.
A few? Off the top of my head:
- The Queen's Gambit
- Narcos
- House of Cards
- Russian Doll
- Ozark
- Stranger Things
- Tiger King
- Dear White People
- The Witcher
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Crown
- Space Force
And that's just TV shows. There are a lot of films they've put out that are very good as well.
To recommend some good shows, Mr. Robot seemed to play out its episodes in a good amount of time (only had 4 seasons, 2 wasn't amazing but served its purpose). Another is Ozark, which has been pretty entertaining, and the show's Bateman has said the upcoming season 4 will be its last, so it's not going to be strung too long either.
Ozark I think is far and away the best Netflix-created fiction content. It's actual HBO-level prestige TV, which is hard to say about any of the other non-documentary stuff from Netflix.
If you get into it, Netflix also carries a bunch of good Korean dramas, which tend to have a lot of episodes and honestly just seem to have much more effort put into them than most American TV. Signal and Itaewon Class are two of my current favorites.
Ah. The idea being that if you actually want to make a big withdrawal from your bank account in cash, you do it through Brinks, since your bank itself wouldn’t want to handle that much cash in one place?
Side note: in the first episode of Ozark, the main character withdraws millions from his bank account in cash just by giving them 48 hours notice. The FBI is there to ask him if he’s being coerced and the bank seems reluctant to let him walk out with it until he threatens to start a bank run.
Yeah, all we have so far is the names attached and a few words said on a big stage. We know very little about the shows, and obviously the people working on it will try to make it sound as good as they can. If I had a penny for every time some actor hyped up a movie or show that ended up being awful...
And I agree, Netflix goes for a wider breadth, but they have a significant number of quality and original content. Shows like Maniac, Our Planet, Russian Doll, Master of None, Ozark, Stranger Things, American Vandal and so on. There's something on there for everyone, and enough that you're never out of shows to watch.
Friends is my most watched show on Netflix, but that's because there are 10 seasons with 24 episodes each (i.e. a lot of content) and it's just something that plays in the background while I do other stuff. I wouldn't care too much if it was removed, but I would if they took away Stranger Things, Ozark, Our Earth, The Crown, Altered Carbon, Narcos, Santa Clarita Diet, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye, all the comedy specials and lots more.
>WRT Netflix, their stated strategy was that their access to data was going to allow them to create superior content
I would argue that Netflix has and does do this except for a different definition of superior. They aren't really trying to make a single show with broad market appeal. An algorithm isn't going to help with that anyway. What an algorithm can do is find niches to serve. Netflix has done a good job of creating these smaller shows that have an intense appeal to a small number of people. Gather enough of those shows together and eventually you have everyone covered. It is basically just targeted advertising except with TV shows.
HBO might have GOT that everyone watches, but Netflix has Black Mirror, BoJack Horseman, GLOW, You, The Crown, Russian Doll, Narcos, Maniac, Ozark, One Day At A Time, Big Mouth, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and numerous other shows that have received critical acclaim and everyone probably watches at least one of those.
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
of
- Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
I've seen all of Altered Carbon, some of Ozark, some of Narcos, and 2 seasons of Marvel (Daredevil season 1 and 2).
None of them were particularly amazing.
Someone recently commented elsewhere that they were tired of paying for streaming access to a bunch of shows nobody wants to watch, and they wanted access to the most popular movies/network shows/whatever.
I didn't comment then, but FWIW: some of the best shows available are now streaming originals from Netflix, Prime, etc. If you haven't checked out specifically any of the Netflix originals, you're missing out. It's a complete replacement for the non-sports watcher.
As posted in response elsewhere below, here's a list of Netflix's best work:
- Stranger Things - Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
Also good:
- Atypical - Love - Flaked - Maniac - Master of None - Chef's Table - Making a Murderer
This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix
I tried to skim through it and provide my own short list of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.
Ozark is a 2017 TV show while the article is dated to 2009.
Netflix has created some of the best TV shows I have watched in the past few years.
Strangers things, Maniac, The End of the F*ing World, Narcos, On my block, Master of none, El Chapo, Ozark, Glow, Disenchanted, Black mirror, Dare Devil, 13 reasons why, Jessica Jones, The Punisher, A series of unfortunate events, The OA, Orange is the new black
Those are just some of the ones I can recall at the moment.
Only other shows that I use popcorn time to watch are Game of thrones and Homeland.
The TV series Ozark depicts this.
Yeah, the Atlanta area is home to a lot of movies and TV shows at this point. There's even a huge movie studio built south of Atlanta (Pinewood, opened in 2014).
Most of the recent Marvell movies were shot here.
Recent films shot in Georgia include: Godzilla: King of Monsters, the Ant Man movies, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Pitch Perfect 3, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Some television shows shot here: Stranger Things, Ozark, The Walking Dead, MacGuyver and Atlanta.
There's definitely a booming production industry in the Atlanta area.
Money-Laudering is sometimes confused with different crimes because, in the modern world, it is often a necessary adjunct to financially motivated crimes.
Criminals often do business in cash and can't report it on their income taxes. Money laundering is getting this "dirty" cash safely into a bank account or legal investment without revealing the crimes that caused the accumulation of cash.
In the US, banks are required to "know" their customers. Moving between cash and bank accounts is only possible with an account at the bank and every cash transaction over 10K is reported to the government. Furthermore, traveling with more than 10K into or out of the country requires paperwork to be filed with the government. All of this makes it difficult to use the cash sourced from criminal activity.
AirBnB appears to be an easy way to launder a modest amount of money. Heidi Fleiss was the Hollywood Madam and would have had a "dirty" money problem, not a huge dirty money problem like drug cartels, but nevertheless, lots of cash and no way to explain it to the banks: one million dollars in her first four months[1].
It doesn't seem like AirBnB would be practical for such a large operation; however, think of one of her operatives, they might be able to hide a couple of thousand dollars a week of cash income by pretending to be renting out their place as an AirBnB. The challenge would be on the payment side to AirBnB, setting up enough cards under fake names, etc. because the government also tracks these and would detect any trivial cycles between a set of cards and or people.
The Netflix TV series Ozark, a Breaking Bad kind of show, but staring an accountant rather than a chemist, revolves around this problem.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Fleiss