It’s nearly August, and there’s a sense that summer is already winding down. The start of school looms over children’s minds while adults no longer have to worry about where to vacation.
August is typically a slow month across the board, but nobody told that to Netflix. The streamer will still be cranking out the hits next month, and I’ve picked three under-the-radar shows that I believe are worth your attention. One takes a familiar IP into interesting directions, while the other two are foreign imports that are just as exciting as anything made in the USA.
What is it about The Terminator franchise that is so hard to, pardon the pun, execute? Since the release of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the franchise has consistently disappointed its fans with one convoluted sequel after another. The one bright spot? Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a beloved but shortly-lived series on Fox starring a pre-Game of Thrones Lena Heady that actually generated the same thrills, intrigue, and suspense that James Cameron‘s original movies created so well.
Maybe the small screen is a better fit for the franchise. That’s my hope anyway, as Netflix is about to debut Terminator Zero, a new eight-episode anime series from Bleach‘s Masashi Kudō. This iteration focuses on Malcolm Lee, a scientist who is developing an AI that will compete with Skynet. That’s bad news for Malcolm, as he soon finds himself hunted by a Terminator from the future that is programmed to stop him at all costs.
It wouldn’t be a Netflix monthly viewing guide without at least one murder mystery. The streamer specializes in the genre, having delivered such hits as The Watcher in 2022 and this year’s Bodkin. The latest entry in the crowded genre is A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, a co-production with the BBC that stars Wednesday‘s Emma Myers as the titular amateur sleuth who seeks to solve a murder.
The murder in question is that of Andie Bell, who was slain five years ago by her boyfriend, Sal Singh. Case closed, right? Except Pip (Myers) doesn’t believe Sal did it, and she’s determined to find the real culprit before they strike again. Based on the popular book by Holly Jackson, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder promises to be a breezy late summer watch that is sure to keep you guessing throughout its six episodes.
Grey’s Anatomy has been on the air for almost two decades. That’s an impressive run, but it’s time for a new show focusing on the wild, unbelievable lives of doctors to obsesses over, if only for a season or two. If you’re craving drama, romance, and chaos with pretty people dressed in OR scrubs, then Breathless may be for you.
Set in an overcrowded and underfunded public hospital in Spain, Breathless follows the public and personal lives of its fed-up staff, who have to save lives with very little resources. It’s not all glum, as the series promises to explore their love lives as well, which is just as dramatic as anything you’d find in the emergency room. With a cast that includes Elite breakout Manu Ríos, Breathless is sure to be Netflix’s next surprise streaming hit, so get in early while you can.
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?