Netflix dropped a trailer for its upcoming series The Sandman, which is set to debut on August 5th. The highly anticipated show is based on the popular graphic novels by Neil Gaiman from the nineties, and features the likes of Tom Sturridge, Gwendolyn Christie, Stephen Fry and Patton Oswalt. Netflix also announced today that Mark Hamill will be voicing the kingdom’s resident handyman Merv Pumpkinhead.
The new trailer is less than two minutes long, but gives us a good glimpse at how the show will recreate the mystical realms in which the story is set. The Sandman follows the King of Dreams, also known as Morpheus (played by Sturridge) after he escapes captivity and returns to his now suffering kingdom, the Dreaming. But a number of people aren’t happy about that, including the occult detective Johanna Constantine (played by Jenna Coleman) and The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), a former inhabitant of the Dreaming who went rogue.
The decision to adapt Gaiman’s best-selling graphic novel series may seem like a no-brainer for studio execs, but it took a lot of effort to actually make happen. A planned film adaptation by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Batman Begins screenwriter David Goyer fell apart after disagreements with the studio. Admittedly, the show’s source material is a tricky one to adapt and spans multiple timelines. Gaiman has previously stated, “I’d rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie.” Hopefully, the Netflix treatment will do the story justice.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has only been in theaters for a few weeks, but you won’t need to wait much longer to catch the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie at home. It will start streaming on Disney+ on June 22nd at no extra cost to subscribers.
In another example of the theatrical exclusivity window narrowing, the movie will be available on Disney+ just 47 days after its arrival in theaters. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Free Guy also landed on Disney+ just 45 days or so into their theatrical runs.
It used to be the case that movies would be in cinemas only for 90 days before they were available as home entertainment options, but the pandemic upended that. Some major studios, including Disney, started putting movies up on streaming services or made them available for digital rental on the same day they debuted in theaters. Netflix and some smaller studios and distributors adopted the day-and-date approach long before the onset of COVID-19 prevention measures.
Meanwhile, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness isn’t the only MCU property coming to Disney+ this month. The Ms. Marvel series will premiere on June 8th.
Four decades after famed film director Quentin Tarantino and his “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary started their employment at Video Archives in 1983, the pair are reuniting once again to host a podcast exploring those seminal moments and the movies that influenced their later careers in The Video Archives Podcast, premiering on Sirius Stitcher later this summer.
“We never imagined that 30 years after we worked together behind the counter at Video Archives, we would be together again doing the exact same thing we did back then: talking passionately about movies on VHS,” Tarantino and Avary said in a joint statement. “Watching movies was what originally brought us together and made us friends, and it’s our love of movies that still brings us together today.”
The films will be pulled from Tarantino’s extensive collection of more than 8,000 tapes and DVDs — Video Archives’ actual archives that he bought after the rental shop went out of business.
Disney+ is finally ready to share more details of its Willow revival. The streamer has revealed that the TV series (simply titled Willow) will premiere November 30th. The accompany teaser trailer doesn’t show much, but it has an older Willow Ufgood returning to save a future empress from the clutches of evil. He’ll join an eclectic band of adventurers, but this time he’s clearly more experienced than in the 1988 movie.
The show sees Warwick Davis reprise his role as Willow. At least a few familiar actors are joining the cast, including Ellie Bamber (most recently in Netflix’s The Serpent) and Disney alumnus Erin Kellyman (Solo and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Jon Chu was originally slated to direct, but was replaced by multiple directors when he had to step down due to pandemic restrictions. Willow movie director Ron Howard is involved as an executive producer.
The announcement comes just as Disney shared a wave of details about its next Star Wars shows, including Andor and Skeleton Crew. The company isn’t shy about its Disney+ strategy, then. The service is packing its schedule with ever more originals in a bid to keep people watching, and it’s not afraid to mine multiple old franchises in the process.
Now that Top Gun: Maverick is finally reaching theaters, the matching Microsoft Flight Simulator expansion is launching as well. Microsoft and Asobo Studio have released the free add-on to both hype up the Tom Cruise movie and give you a taste of the US Navy’s real-world flight training. You’ll get a “Maverick Edition” livery for the F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet, but you’ll also learn how to land on an aircraft carrier, perform combat maneuvers and navigate challenging terrain at low altitude.
There’s also a more fantastical element. You’ll fly a fictional hypersonic aircraft from the movie, the Darkstar, that can push Mach 10 and climb above 150,000 feet — for context, even the SR-71 Blackbird didn’t manage sustained flight beyond 85,000 feet. This might be the closest you’ll get to seeing Earth from the stratosphere, not to mention traveling at speeds that make cross-continent flights seem trivial.
Both the movie and game add-on have taken a long time to arrive. Top Gun: Maverick was originally slated to debut in July 2019, but the combination of action sequence filming and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it back multiple times until Paramount settled on its May 27th premiere. As the Flight Simulator expansion was closely tied to the film, Microsoft and Asobo delayed the game content from November 2021 to this month. It’s safe to say both will feel overdue if you’ve ever wanted to venture well beyond the limits of Flight Sim‘s usual civilian aircraft.
Netflix will expand its accessibility features in 10 additional languages, part of an effort to accommodate users who are hearing and vision-impaired. Starting this month and through early 2023, Netflix will roll out Audio Descriptions (AD), Subtitles …
Wanna know what I miss? Mid-budget studio comedies, the sort that filled the gaps in cinema’s annual calendar. The sort of lightweight, low-energy fare you and your friends could watch on a Saturday morning in the multiplex. Often they’d feature a Saturday Night Live alumnus on an initial foray into the movie industry proper, but just as equally not. Sometimes the films did well, but more often not, would underperform until it developed a second life on late-night cable, video rentals or even DVD sales. You know, stuff like So I Married An Axe Murderer.
There aren’t many cinema-released mid-budget comedy movies these days, and for good reason. Comedy is a more subjective artform than, say, action, and doesn’t travel as well around the world as, say, action. There’s no room these days for an unadulterated comedy movie with a budget in the low-double-digit millions given the economics. Hell, even something as flat and awful as Holmes and Watson cost $42 million, and couldn’t recoup that figure at the box office. I’m sure that film, too, will eventually catch on with some future generation of kids and stoners who delight in it as much as I have a soft spot for some of these early ’90s comedies I was too young to see in cinemas.
Of course, these mid-budget comedies have been priced out of cinemas and straight into our homes, thanks to Netflix. Regardless of the quality, films like The Bubble and Don’t Look Up would, in a previous era, would have slotted into a multiplex roster quite easily. But Netflix’s desire to milk as much sitting-on-the-couch-time-as-possible from every piece of IP it owns is a big problem. Mostly because of its insistence of taking ideas that would have made brisk multiplex movies and dragged them out into time-wasting miniseries. There’s a reason that so many Netflix series have pacing problems as a fun 90-minute story is padded out to four, six, eight or twelve hours.
Which is a neat segue into talking about The Pentaverate, Netflix’s latest comedy featuring a depending-on-who-you-ask long overdue return by Mike Myers. On the surface, it’s a comedy about a secret society which has helped shape the course of human history, except they’re (apparently) nice. Myers plays eight characters, given his endless love of prosthetics and desire to be remembered as his generations’ Peter Sellers. He’s joined by Lydia West, Keegan-Michael Key, Debi Mazar, Ryn Alleyne, Neil Mullarchy, Jenifer Saunders and Ken Jeong. And there’s plenty of A-list talent behind the camera too, with Orbital on soundtrack duties and Tim Kirkby directing.
Our star is Ken Scarborough, a retirement-age Toronto-based local TV journalist who is destined to be retired. On the quest for a big story to save his career, he visits the Canadian Conspiracy Convention (CanConCon) and discovers The Pentaverate. From there, his journey is to infiltrate the organization and, with the help of his cameraperson Reilly, try to expose it. Except, of course, Scarborough is walking in on a conspiracy hatched by one of the Pentaverate’s own for reasons that are fairly obvious as soon as you see who’s running the thing.
Myers is a child of the ‘70s, but his British expat parents imbued in him a love of all things British and ‘60s. Much of The Pentaverate is lifted wholesale from legendary ‘60s series The Prisoner and fans of that show will get a kick out of spotting what’s been stolen. Myers’ love for the show even extends to stealing the best joke from the series, albeit the Canadian manages to blow the punchline here. Hell, even the shadowy cabal’s helicopters are the same brand as what was used to fly people in and out of the Village.
(An aside: Are we living in the age of celebrities producing big-budget fanfiction? After all, this The Prisoner riff comes only a few years after Seth MacFarlane was able to launch his own Star Trek series.)
Unfortunately, despite the wealth of talent here, The Pentaverate falls a little flat because it’s clearly in the wrong format. There’s no proof, far as I can see, that the film was originally a screenplay and then expanded out to a TV-friendly three hours, but it sure feels that way. You can feel the narrative stretching, as characters wait around for their plot thread to start back up. Do we need multiple sequences of people riding a “hyperloop” around pulling g-force faces? No, but you can imagine Reed Hastings behind the camera, tapping his watch and insisting the runtime gets as close to three hours as possible.
This stretching also means that every joke in the show’s arsenal gets repeated a little too many times. You know that friend who really got into Austin Powers and just kept shouting lines from the film into your face? Well, buckle in for plenty of jokes about how Canadians are nice, dicks are funny, no, Canadians are really nice, and dicks are really, really funny. Oh and sex jokes, the sort that your pre-teen nephew likes to make, you’ll get some of those, too. The neater, smarter touches, like the fourth-wall breaking Netflix spokesperson who goes back and edits some sequences to “remove” some of the “profanity” also grow tiresome with repetition.
Unfortunately, while the show can be funny, and it’s a delight to see Myers returning to his roots somewhat, the show drags. I’m sure it would have been a breezy, 89-minute movie that would have enabled viewers to forgive its faults. It would be an interesting experiment to hand this over to a talented editor and see if they couldn’t trim this down to something a lot pacier. Until then, however, it’s for Myers and Prisoner diehards only, at least until a whole new generation of kids are old enough to find it in the infinite scroll in twenty years.
Streaming is a curious beast. One minute you’ll be enjoying the ’80s vibe of Stranger Thingsand the next you’ll be struggling to pick something from that overwhelming catalog. Sometimes, though, you’ll stumble on something that you’d normally never choose — a Netflix suggestion from a friend or a recent addition that had escaped your glance as you navigated Amazon Prime Video’s curated menus.
However, once you’ve watched that movie or TV show and moved on, it may drop back into relative obscurity, reducing your chances of remembering and paying that recommendation forward many months later. You may also have watched something, hated it and want to make sure it doesn’t impact future recommendations. Luckily, many streaming services keep a running list of the things you’ve watched (if they haven’t been removed from the catalog due to licensing agreements). Here’s how to find them.
Netflix
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Finding your viewing history on Netflix is a simple affair. Visit Netflix.com, ensure you’re logged in and then hover over your profile name. Select Your Account from the menu. Now, scroll down to the bottom and select Viewing Activity. You should now be presented with a list of everything you’ve streamed on your account.
While you’re there, you can decide how your history impacts Netflix recommendations. Clicking the X next to a title will ensure it’s deleted from your Recently Watched or Continue Watching row, but it will also ensure that Netflix doesn’t use a moment of streaming weakness against you. Once it has been removed, it won’t appear in your list until you watch it again.
Apple TV+
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Apple’s catalog of streaming originals might not be as broad as, say, Netflix or Disney+, but the iPhone-maker has a very comprehensive movie and TV store that can help fill the gaps.
If you’re looking to see what you’ve recently watched on either Apple TV+ or inside Apple’s TV app generally, the company does provide a way to see your viewing history, but it’s hidden away right at the bottom of the TV app itself.
Simply open the TV app on a Mac or iOS device and keep scrolling to the very bottom of the Watch Now tab. There, you’ll see a small selection of your most recently viewed content. Select the ‘See All’ link to view everything you’ve ever watched on Apple TV (this may also include movies and TV shows from third-party apps you have installed on your Apple TV streamer.)
Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer a dedicated ‘Recently Watched’ section in the TV+ web UI, opting instead for an ‘Up Next’ section. You can, however, clear what you have watched by heading to Settings and selecting Clear Play History. Alternatively, click here.
You can also remove individual movies and TV episodes from your Recently Watched list by long-pressing on the thumbnail of the content you wish to remove and selecting ‘Remove from Recently Watched.’ Perfect, if you’ve viewed something you told your significant other you’d wait for them to watch together.
Disney+
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Disney+ may now be over two years old, but it’s not quite yet caught up with the likes of Netflix and Amazon when it comes to features. Sadly, that means you can’t currently see your viewing history on Disney+.
Like many of its rivals, Disney does offer a Continue Watching section, which may help surface movies or TV shows that you may have stopped viewing just as the credits began to roll.
If it’s something you feel very strongly about, you can head to the Disney+ website and hit the Give Feedback button at the bottom to, very politely, request that they add the feature.
Hulu
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If you’re a Disney+ subscriber in the US, there’s a chance that you may have signed up for the Disney Bundle to get subscriptions to Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu for a discounted price. Unlike Disney+, however, Hulu does allow you to properly maintain your watch history both inside its apps and on the web.
It may not be immediately obvious, but Hulu keeps your viewing history inside the Keep Watching section, from which you can browse the movies and TV shows you’ve already streamed. To make things confusing, you cannot see the individual episodes of a show you’ve already watched in the Keep Watching section, so you’ll need to select the Details page of a particular series and add it to My Stuff. This will also let you see how many unwatched episodes you’ve got left to stream.
To remove content, navigate to the Keep Watching page and click on the X to purge it from your watch history. On mobile, tap the three dots on the thumbnail of the selected show or movie and hit Remove from Watch History.
HBO Max
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As it stands, HBO Max doesn’t offer a way to see everything you’ve watched. It does, however, automatically add movies and TV series that you haven’t finished watching to its Continue Watching row on the home screen of the service.
To remove a movie or show from your Continue Watching listing in your app or on the web, tap on your profile icon, then Continue Watching, and then Edit. Then, simply tap the X next to an individual item or Clear All to remove everything. When you’re finished, hit Done.
Amazon Prime Video
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Unlike Netflix, Amazon doesn’t make it easy to see what you’ve previously watched. In fact, it buries its listing inside a number of links that you wouldn’t otherwise check.
If you want to go the manual route, ensure you’re logged in on the Amazon website and click the Your Account link on the top bar. On the resulting page, scroll down to Personalization and click Improve Your Recommendations. Now, on the left menu, click Videos You’ve Watched.
Here, you can rate a TV show or movie so that Amazon can better understand your likes and dislikes or exclude that listing entirely. If you’ve found that both Netflix and Amazon have done a poor job of matching content to your interests, this is a good way to provide it with more insight.
Peacock
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Peacock doesn’t currently provide a way to see everything you’ve streamed on its service. It does, however, offer a Continue Watching section that will list all of the movies and TV shows that you have started but may not have completely finished.
Paramount+
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Paramount+ also doesn’t currently provide a way to see everything you’ve watched. There is a Keep Watching section, though, that lists all of the movies and TV shows that you have started but may not have completely finished.
