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| The Minis + Movies Channel |
It might be what they call too little too late, but here they are, for the discerning cinema and motorcycle repair video connoisseur, 70 channels ranging in price around the $2.99 a month mark. For those not already subscribed to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus or all three this should be a boon. There’s one called Pets TV, for your cats jumping in and out of boxes needs, but they have movies galore. So here’s a rough look-see, from the perspective of me, your humble writer. There’s such a dazzling array that you could conceivably walk away from the subscription page a few hundred dollars poorer, but all the richer in content that is occasionally unique. Depending on your interests, you could in effect create a viewing environment where normal TV is just a memory.
I looked amongst the list (check ’em), and there are the motorcycle repair videos (FixMyHog Premium), Big Think Mentor for smart folks or them what crave smartenin’, girls needing exercise videos 24/7 (Monthly Pass) or kids (Sesame Street). The one thing that really caught my eye was the Roger Corman Drive-In, mainly because I had no idea Corman was considered enough of a household name to stand next to Justice Central or Recipe TV. But he is, because: “Cult auteur Roger Corman invented SHARKTOPUS and modern cinema.” In that order? But the channel has only twenty films, not even including SHARKTOPUS! and the classics he actually directed are in short supply. Meanwhile Corman curates a free stretch of awesome stuff on normal non-paying youtube, including his own-directed It Conquered the World (below), not yet on on any of his DVDs and one of my personal favorites.
But I’m prejudiced as a big Corman fan of the old school who’s used to struggling through bad dupes of his many public domain titles and his own label’s old pan and scan cropped DVDs (the new batch–on blu-ray and/or triple, double, and quadruple bills– is awesome).
I next visited Asylum.net which one would think wound be Xtreme Violence indies but is actually the main receptacle for such shallow surface rips as Transmorphers, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies and 2012: Doomsday, and originals like Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus and Two-Headed Shark Attack. ($2.99 per month) Even if you don’t subscribe, I recommend checking out the promo video on their home page, which links a lot of the monster action of all the films together perfectly, and was magically self-synchronized to the theme music of How the West was Won that happened to playing on TCM behind me as I watched said promo on mute. Magic metatextual synchronicity is always a good sign!
There’s some other things of interest to film buffs though, to be frank, horror indie gruesomeness (Screambox) and foreign are the titles most easily sunk under mountains of amateur gibberish, film festival choices that no one else would ever pick in their right mind, and those foreign dramas that test the patience of anyone without a stash of Xanax in their secret pocket. I have a low tolerance for boring ‘ze commissar stole our last potato! My son is coming home from ze war’ style films. I think only rich people like those things, makes them feel connected to their serfs, maybe. Still –I’m an Antonioni fan, when the Xanax is working, so what do I know? Just that in my opinion the best way to go is a 3 film at a time Netflix subscription and to get Amazon Prime. Between them and TCM you can see just about anything. Not everything, though. And there’s no doubt that like them, youtube will survive, so who knows where these channels will be in five years?
Hmm, my outburst about ‘ze commissar stole our potato’ films might be unwarranted. Looking these channels–aside from the Docu Pix (above) doesn’t seem to be too many super boring depressing neorealist third world starving Baltic farmer films at all. Sooo… I’d like to sswivel my tack 180 degrees and rant instead against the cold first world imperialism of YouTube in not giving these farmers a voice! Give the potato-less farmers a voice!
Moving on, if you speak or read Spanish, there are a lot of cool channels here that might be worth an investment. Some looks pretty badass, like Hombre Pix, “un canal dedicado al hombre Latino Americano, con programaciòn 100% en español. ” and only $1.99 a month, and yes muy caliente mujer esta in los canal, con lucha libre!
For $2.99 a month there’s also Magnet Releasing (below) which includes an array of foreign and domestic titles in various genres, all of certain calibre that lets you know these films weren’t just accumulated willy nilly but developed by the long arm of Magnolia pictures. That’s fine! And even if most of this stuff comes and goes on Netflix streaming, your money will help them build a bigger community, maybe fund more movies, which is what all these channels say, i.e. the more subscribers the better the channel, like kickstarter!
So there you have it. There are more cool channels of course. I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve gathered mainly what interests me: horror, cult, macho lucha libre in español, and finding the trash in art and the art in trash. I don’t have kids, so I can’t watch Sesame Street or the Henson Workshop channels. I probably will never watch Sharktopus either. Low budget monster movies lost all their cache once they went CGI in the 90s. But a younger critic may find the secret gold therein. If you do or find something cooler than Magnet or AsylumNet let me know. ONG BAK!
