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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#301

Post by hardwaregeek »

vimy wrote: post #87
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).

Any recommendations?

The Naked City by Jules Dassin is a really good police procedural. If you like stuff like Law & Order, this is the progenitor.

The Third Man is classic, classic noir. Between the on location shooting in Vienna, fantastic performances by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, and really distinctive cinematography, it's just stunning.

A Man Escaped. To quote Godard, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music". If you like simple, but beautiful films, watch Bresson. A Man Escaped makes all other prison break films, with their endless plot twists and convolutions, seem utterly pointless. Instead Bresson focuses on the character, the drama and the methodical process of breaking out.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#302

Post by aero-glide2 »

wut42 wrote: post #16

> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions. This part is a real nugget.

Amazon is becomingly scarily huge. But if Bezos keeps funding Blue Origin (and it actually starts sending stuff to orbit), I'm okay with it.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#303

Post by debacle »

anoncow wrote: post #178
midasuni wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Mars will have better laws?

If Musk playing with BTC is any indication, Mars would've been an interesting socio-political experiment if we had the terraforming technology.

Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was an interesting socio-political experiment.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#305

Post by forgingahead »

someperson wrote: post #17

This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made). I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compa…

SG1 is indeed an amazing series, the showrunners did a great job blending action, mythology, and light-hearted sci-fi into a very watchable show.

I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence of "Origins".

I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of modern "entertainment" has become.

Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO was in the works, but never got released.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#306

Post by NegativeLatency »

vimy wrote: post #87
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).

Any recommendations?

Dr Strangelove, All About Eve, Singing in the Rain

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#307

Post by [deleted] »

nkozyra wrote: post #258
skystarman wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago. But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental…

> But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to multiple services to get the content you want because it's otherwise siloed. Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#308

Post by dylan604 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #188
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of dollars per year on content that I can own going forward. The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...

>I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version

Sounds like you need to go and produce some content and distribute it this way to show the world the way to englightenment. Please come back and post a Show HN on how well it worked out for you.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#309

Post by airstrike »

delecti wrote: post #205
jerf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it hands down better than any Star Trek except possibly TNG. And that's giving TNG some grace due to being a bit older; take that away and I'll give SG-1 the prize. I will agree that people can reasonably disagree about Deep Space Nine vs SG-1. But that's the level of quality we're talking about, in my opinion. It's top tier, and much less well known. Also strongly recommend binging the first season in par…

I did a full rewatch of SG1 a few years ago, and what surprised me is how instantly the show found its footing. If you watch the first and last season of any Trek show, you can see how the writing and characterization takes a while to settle into place. Character development is part of that, but it goes beyond that. If you watch the first and last season of SG1, the writing has its footing nailed down immediately. No…

That may have been helped by the fact that SG-1 got the green light for 4 full seasons right off the bat, so it gave showrunners the opportunity to write a cohesive and comprehensive story which really laid the foundation for the franchise after the original movie.

I don't have a source handy, but I recall reading about that many years ago.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#310

Post by jbverschoor »

ben7799 wrote: post #67
genmon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the trillies As in companies with a trillion dollar market cap? I hadn't heard that slang before -- I like it.

It's from a David Brin book IIRC... Existence. Good book.. there are a class of people worth trillions of dollars and he explores all kinds of weird things that could happen. Like trillie teenagers launching themselves into space on joy riding rockets illegally. That's just one tiny little aspect of the story.

Never heard of that. Just made it up :)
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