Jim's Articles

Awesome news writers for 2021 and writing reviews

Top streaming platform offers in 2021? Netflix’s base plan now costs more than Hulu, at $8.99 per month. Netflix doesn’t run traditional ads on any of its content, but you need to pay more (at least $13.99 per month for the Standard plan) if you want to stream HD content and stream on more devices simultaneously. Paramount+’s ad-free tier is $9.99 per month, while HBO Max comes in at a much pricier $14.99 per month. Amazon Prime Video is at $8.99 per month. Shudder, a horror-focused streaming service, matches the price of Hulu’s ad-supported plan, but doesn’t show ads. Apple TV+ is cheaper than all of them at $4.99 per month. As for cable-replacement services, Hulu + Live TV costs the same as YouTube TV ($64.99 per month). Philo ($20 per month) and Sling TV’s Orange & Blue plans ($35 per month each or $50 together) are significantly cheaper. FuboTV starts at a slightly more affordable $59.99 per month, while AT&T TV’s entry-level tier is $69.99 per month, respectively. None of these services offer on-demand content libraries as complete as Hulu’s. You don’t necessarily need to pay to get video streaming entertainment. Our roundup of the best free video streaming services offers both on-demand services and those with preprogrammed channels. Apart from streaming Hulu on the web, you can download apps for mobile platforms (Android and iOS), media streaming devices (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku), smart TVs, and game consoles (PlayStation, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch). Hulu’s live TV tier is available on the PlayStation 4, but PlayStation 3 users are still out of luck when it comes to live TV. When you log in to Hulu for the first time, the service walks you through some personalization options in which you choose, channels, genres, and shows that appeal to you. Hulu uses this information to populate the My Stuff section of the web interface, a feature we discuss a bit later.

After quitting school, Urban continued working his way up the musical ranks in his home country of Australia. He eventually signed a record deal with EMI Records and released his self-titled, debut album in 1991 in Australia only. The album features 15 tracks and produced three singles, “I Never Work on a Sunday,” “Only You” and “Got It Bad.” The album was released to international audiences in 2005. By the early ‘90s, Urban was seeing great success in Australia, so he decided it was time to move to Music City, USA to continue making his mark in country music. Urban moved to Nashville in 1992 and worked many music-related jobs to get his foot in the door. Having already mastered the guitar, Urban served as a session guitarist for artists such as Paul Jefferson, Tim Wilson and Charlie Daniels. He also played guitar on tour with Brooks & Dunn, the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) and Alan Jackson. A young Urban can even be seen playing guitar in Jackson’s 1993 music video for “Mercury Blues.”

The modern gig economy is set up so that the customer rarely has to think very much about the person delivering a package to their door. Sorry We Missed You, the latest working class social drama from 83-year-old English filmmaker Ken Loach, is a harsh reminder that those piles of cardboard Amazon boxes have a human cost. The film follows married couple Ricky (Kris Hitchen) and Abbi (Debbie Honeywood) as they attempt to raise their two kids, keep their humble home in Newcastle, and and hold down jobs stripped of conventional protections. As Ricky’s domineering boss tells him at the beginning of the movie, he’s not an “employee.” No, he’s his own small business owner and independent contractor. Loach finds dark laughs and absurdity in the the convoluted language of precarity, particularly the way management attempts to sell poor working conditions as a form of empowerment, but he also captures the tender, intimate moments that occur in even the most soul-sucking jobs. Ricky and his daughter find joy in knocking on doors and leaving notes; Abbi, who works as a nurse, genuinely cares for her patients like her own family even if the company she works for refuses to pay for her transportation. Though the script leans too hard on melodrama in its final stretch, setting up scenes that don’t always deliver on their dramatic potential, Loach never loses his moral grasp on the material.

Tom Hardy’s gift for hulking intensity and charismatic growling are in full effect in Capone, a fictionalized account of the last year in the life of the legendary American gangster. Trapped in a palatial Florida estate, his mind deteriorating thanks to neurosyphilitic dementia, Al Capone (Hardy) rants, raves, soils himself and freaks out over hallucinatory visions of people, and events, from his past. Writer/director Josh Trank’s film is a subjective affair told largely from Capone’s POV, so that nothing can be trusted and yet everything speaks, symbolically, to the man’s deep-seated ambitions, fears and misgivings. It’s a headfirst dive into delusion, told with free-flowing suspense and absurd comedy, all of which comes to the fore during a late scene in which Capone opens fire on his friends and family with a giant golden tommy gun while wearing a diaper and chomping on a cigar-like carrot. Part Cowardly Lion, part Bugs Bunny, and altogether ferocious even as his sanity frays, Hardy’s Capone is yet another triumph for the star, who ultimately captures his protagonist less through imposing physicality than via his dark, glassy, lost eyes. Discover even more info on priya sharma sacramento. The competition between video streaming services has never been tougher, so some media companies are banding together. For instance, CBS and Viacom merged (again) and launched Paramount+. AT&T announced plans to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery to form a new streaming giant. Amazon is reportedly buying MGM for $9 billion, too, which should considerably boost Prime Video’s library. The increasingly competitive streaming market is not without consequences. Consumers who may have originally been attracted to the flexibility that streaming services offer over cable, now must navigate a crowded and constantly shifting nightmare of streaming rights and new services, many of which continue to rise in cost. Live TV streaming services are also struggling to adjust to the rising costs of broadcast rights from cable channel owners. The price of just about every one of these services has increased considerably over time.

This one didn’t open theatrically, so once upon a time it probably wouldn’t have qualified for this list. But screw it, we live in extraordinary times — and besides, this atmospheric murder thriller set in a small New England fishing village is the kind of artfully mounted, suspenseful little charmer they don’t really make anymore, so it feels extra special. Two cash-strapped sisters, struggling to hold onto their house in the wake of their mom’s death, find themselves in the middle of what appears to be an elaborate, twisted conspiracy involving the town brothel and a gaggle of old-timers with some dark secrets. The central mystery itself is interesting, but the main attractions here are the colorful cast of characters and the compelling sense of place established by writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night is a marriage of the old and the new, blending effects-aided cinematic showmanship to old-school radio drama. In the director’s sterling feature debut (written by James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, and framed as an episode of a Twilight Zone-ish show called “Paradox Theater”), two 1950s high schoolers – confident radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and telephone operator Faye (Sierra McCormick) – stumble upon a strange signal that, they come to suspect, originates from the stars looming above their small-town-USA home. Like Orson Welles’ classic 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast, the film is a tale of potential invasion that plays out over radio waves, and Patterson thus naturally focuses on intently listening faces, and the spoken words that captivate them, as a means of generating anticipation, mystery and suspense. At the same time, his centerpiece sequences are models of formal precision and depth, as protracted shots across sprawling fields, through crowded gymnasiums, and in and out of cramped buildings create pulse-pounding tension while simultaneously conveying the propulsive flow and binding, interconnected nature of narrative storytelling itself.

You can download Netflix on a variety of devices, from your PC and tablet to the Chromecast and game consoles. And yes, you can finally disable the obnoxious auto-playing previews. Other new Netflix features include Screen Lock on Android devices, which prevents unintentional screen taps, and more parental control settings, which allow you to better restrict content and profiles. Alongside Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Disney+, Netflix is one of the few streaming services that supports both offline downloads and 4K and HDR streaming (now on Macs, too). And yes, Netflix’s DVD mailing service still exists if you want newer releases, though streaming is clearly its primary business.