Excellent writers for 2021 and writing tips? As the competition between video streaming services intensifies, differentiation is ever-important. Hulu continues to offer both a strong on-demand streaming library and a robust live TV option. The service is an excellent option for watching popular TV shows and we like its broad platform support, even if Hulu’s original series are hit-or-miss. On the live TV front, Hulu’s channel coverage is top-notch and its DVR features compare well to the competition’s. Despite a few missteps, Hulu keeps its Editors’ Choice award because no other service can quite match its combination of streaming content. What Can You Watch on Hulu? Hulu’s on-demand library has always been about TV shows and that emphasis remains. The service offers hundreds of seasons and thousands of episodes from major networks. The rise of network-specific streaming services, like Paramount+ and NBC’s Peacock, has cut into this content library. However, Disney’s role in Hulu and its vast library of former 21st Century FOX content that doesn’t fit Disney+’s more family-friendly profile will likely keep Hulu afloat.
When Urban arrived in Nashville to continue his country career, he assembled a band called The Ranch with Peter Clarke and Jerry Flowers. The band earned a contract with Capitol Records and released a self-titled album in 1997. This album originally featured 12 tracks, including “Some Days You Gotta Dance,” which was later recorded by The Chicks, “Desiree,” which was covered by David Nail, and “Walkin’ the Country,” which was re-recorded by Scotty McCreery. Urban re-released the album in 2004 under the name Keith Urban and The Ranch, and added two new tracks, “Stuck in the Middle with You” and “Billy.” In his early years in Nashville, Urban developed a drug problem, particularly with cocaine, and entered rehab in 1998. After completing rehab, he released his self-titled American debut album and went on to release 2002’s Golden Road and 2004’s Be Here, but his struggle with addiction wasn’t completely gone. In June 2006, he married actress Nicole Kidman, and just a few months later, Kidman helped him through a drug relapse. Urban entered rehab again in October 2006 and has spoken many times about Kidman’s support during that trying time.
In short stories like The Lottery and novels like The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson conjured unease, tension, and queasy strangeness that made them difficult to put down. Fittingly, Shirley, an adaptation of a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, examines a highly pressurized moment in the author’s life that makes for occasionally nerve-rattling viewing. As played by Elisabeth Moss, Jackson can be temperamental, brilliant, and cruel, especially to Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred (Logan Lerman), the newlywed couple that move into the paper-strewn house she shares with her controlling professor husband (Michael Stuhlbarg). Where Decker’s previous exploration of the creative process, the dizzying Madeline’s Madeline, took an often nonlinear, combustible approach, Shirley retains some of the stuffy mechanics of the writerly biopic, particularly in the scenes of Jackson typing away at what will become her novel Hangsaman. (That book, which was partially inspired by the real-life disappearance of college student Paula Jean Welden, was written earlier in Jackson’s life than the movie portrays.) But Moss’s mischievous performance, the subtle interplay between the two women, and the feeling that the movie could tilt over the edge into chaos, chasing darker impulses and rolling around in the mud with Decker’s roaming camera, keeps it from falling into many of the traps set by the often worshipful “great artist” micro-genre.
Deepfake technology gets a stunning workout in Welcome to Chechnya, as documentarian David France uses the face-transforming device to mask the identities of his subjects: a group of LGBTQ+ activists intent on smuggling gay men and women out of their native Chechnya before the government can kidnap, torture and murder them. That the Russian-controlled state is on a genocidal mission to “cleanse the blood” of the nation by exterminating its homosexual population is a terrifying reality brought to light by France, who details the efforts of these brave souls to use subterfuge to sneak at-risk individuals to safer European enclaves. At the center of his tale is Maxim Lapunov, whose release from a Chechnyan torture chamber—and resultant knowledge of the government’s monstrous activities—turns him into the state’s Enemy Number One. Lapunov’s courageous desire to legally strike back at the system is one of many threads exposing the fascistic new Final Solution being perpetrated by Putin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. A cry for help and a call to arms, it’s nothing short of straight-up horrifying. Find extra info at pete fenner. Can You Stream Sports Online? Sports fans may worry that they won’t be able to watch live sports when they ditch cable. However, that’s simply not the case. Many of the video streaming options we reviewed are also among the best sports streaming services. Regardless of whether you want to watch regional, national, or international sports coverage, there is a service that meets your needs. Although blackouts and cancellations may still apply, these streaming options offer distinct advantages over cable, including full-featured apps on many platforms and simultaneous streaming capabilities. Football, basketball, basketball fans should also check out our roundup of the best NFL streaming services, best MLB streaming services, best NBA streaming services, and the best NHL streaming services.
Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu loves to play with procedure and form; he’s an ideal director for playful tales about bureaucrats, cops, and other officials in a country still wrestling with the decades-long fallout from a communist dictatorship. His movies are cosmic comedies shot through with moments of ironic tragedy, and this crime comedy-drama might be his weirdest one yet. It starts off as a bizarro tale about a policeman who has to learn a “whistling” language used by the inhabitants of one of the Canary Islands in order to help free a gangster from prison, then twists into a moving meditation on love, loyalty, and self-improvement. Best experienced without knowing anything beforehand; I’ve already said too much!
The mythic quality of the Cordillera – the towering eastern stretch of the Andes mountains that serves as both a protective and isolating barrier for the city of Santiago – is harmonized with the grand, destructive illusions of Chile’s Pinochet regime in The Cordillera of Dreams, documentarian Patricio Guzmán’s personal rumination on his homeland’s tumultuous history, and his relationship to it. From vast sights of the snow-capped Andes, to grainy on-the-street video footage of Pinochet tyranny, to introspective interviews with fellow artists, Guzmán’s film (the third entry in a trilogy that also includes Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button) examines the catastrophic upheaval of 1973’s coup d’état, and the lingering scars it left on him and the country’s citizens. In vistas of the ancient and immovable Cordillera, close-ups of cracks lining the hardscrabble soil, and gazes into labyrinth-like patterns found on junkyard car doors, Guzmán (who also serves as narrator) evokes a poetic sense of imposing mysteries and unrepairable fissures, which spread through him – and economically unbalanced Chilean culture – like the solemn valleys that course between the Andes’ peaks.
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.