The 2024 Oscars aren’t for everyone. You can be a movie fan and not really care for the red carpet interviews, the long victory speeches, the cheesy musical numbers, or the tribute to those who passed away in the past year that’s always a downer.
If that’s the case, and you’re looking for some good TV shows to watch, just head over to Amazon Prime Video. It has a lot of shows, but there are three in particular that are worth your time. One is a 2024 show that just debuted, another is one of 2023’s most underrated series, and the final one is a sci-fi series that should appeal to fans of Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune movies.
Need more Oscar recommendations? Check out how to watch the 2024 Oscars for free, 2024 Oscar predictions, 10 biggest Oscar snubs ever, 10 best Oscar-winning movies ever, 10 most Oscar-nominated movies ever, and 5 great Oscar-winning movies on Amazon Prime Video.
Ever wonder what happened to one of the most famous fictional characters of the 20th century? No, I’m not talking about Scarlett O’Hara or any member of the Corleone family; I’m referring to Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s literary detective who was famously portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Monsieur Spade answers that question and does so in an unexpected and entertaining way. Now older and vacationing in the South of France, Spade is drawn back into detective work when a group of nuns are found brutally murdered at a nearby convent.
Clive Owen stars as the tired and retired Spade, and for those of you who have seen him in Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, you’ll know that this is perfect casting. The series is written and directed by Scott Frank, who knows a thing or two about being clever (he made The Queen’s Gambit for Netflix) and how a good crime story works (he wrote 1998’s excellent Out of Sight).
Jeremy Irons wasn’t nominated for his terrific performance in David Cronenberg’s 1988 movie Dead Ringers. Fast-forward 35 years later, and Rachel Weisz was similarly ignored come awards time for her interpretation of the same role in the limited series remake of the same name.
Dead Ringers tells the story of twin sisters who are pioneering gynecologists with a creepy attachment to one another and an unhealthy interest in genetics. The show, like the film it’s based on, is a great example of the body horror genre, so be prepared for some bloody scenes that look all too real.
Dune: Part Two has inspired a renewed interest in adaptations of mid-century sci-fi novels, and one of the best ones in the last decade was Prime Video’s take on The Man in the High Castle. The show, adapted from the now-classic Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, imagines a future in which the Axis powers won World War II, leaving the U.S. divided into three separate regions. When film emerges that seems to suggest an alternate future, though, new hope rises, and a group of rebels become determined to find the film’s origins.
The Man in the High Castle lasted four seasons, which was enough time for the showrunners and writers to properly flesh out Dick’s complex narrative and end it on a satisfactory note. You definitely can’t binge it all in one night, but you can get in a good couple episodes.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?