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Happy Friday!
Netflix cancellations always come as a shock, both for audiences and creators. Recently, when The OA’s Brit Marling heard of her show’s cancellation, she said all she could do was to have “a good cry.”
But this week’s top pick has a different story, one of audience and creators coming together. Top Boy was salvaged by rapper Drake after he was a fan of the show and was not happy with it being cancelled after only two seasons.
This experience was also beneficial to Drake, as he would later go on to produce the HBO hit series Euphoria.
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
Top Boy
Season three is new today on Netflix.
If you liked The Wire, this show is for you.
In its quick four-episode first season, Top Boy follows a kid who gets caught in a rivalry between two drug gangs in his London neighborhood. With his mother admitted to hospital, he’s left to fend for himself.
Top Boy is a gritty crime thriller, but it’s also filled with excellent depictions of morality and other non-plot-related moments. To quote Drake when asked about why he invested in the show: “that human element drew me in."
📰 The Guardian said of the new season: "more violent, more gripping, more shocking than ever."
📺 On Netflix everywhere 🍅 rating: 100%
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Elena
Not to be confused with the 2011 Andrey Zvyagintsev movie by the same name.
Filmmaker Petra Costa tells the story of moving to New York from Brazil to follow her dream, the same one her mother once followed, of becoming an actress.
She carries memories of a third person who made the same move, a sister called Elena. Elena left her when she was seven-years-old, and after intermittent calls and messages, disappeared.
This documentary is a tale of three women: of their feelings separation, longing, and ambition. It’s made to be a visual poem of their story.
📰 The New York Times: “Elena unfolds like a cinematic dream whose central image is water, which symbolizes the washing away of grief. But more than that, it represents the stream of life, with beautiful images of women floating through time.”
📺 on Netflix U.S. and select other countries; 🍅 rating: 84%
Readers’ top picks
Mads Mikkelsen’s Arctic on Amazon Prime is our readers’ favourite movie for the fourth week in a row. It’s a survival story where the Danish actor plays a man trying to find assistance after a plane crash.
I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson on Netflix is our readers’ favourite show. It’s a satire from ex-SNL cast member Tim Robinson, filled with many funny and original sketches.
New titles worth your time
A new Netflix mini-series called Unbelievable premieres today. It’s based on a Pulitzer-winning true-crime story of a teen rape and the injustice that followed. The show is receiving widespread acclaim, including this opening paragraph from Vulture, which called it a “radical, exceptional crime series”:
Unbelievable, one of the best crime dramas in recent memory and one of the best shows of 2019, takes an approach that is rare for the genre. Yes, itcontains a central mystery, and yes, a key question coursing beneath the Netflix limited series’ eight episodes is what would motivate a man to potentially become a serial rapist. But more than anything else, Unbelievable … is concerned with the victims of that rapist, how they are treated by an inconsistent criminal justice system, and what a difference it makes when a woman who says she’s been assaulted is not only heard, but treated with compassion. This should not qualify as a radical approach to crime storytelling. But it indeed feels radical.
Another new show premieres today, this time on Amazon Prime. Undone is an adult animation about a girl who starts seeing her dead father after a car accident. The animation is gorgeous and unique; it looks like one small step away from reality:
Great titles that will soon expire
George Harrison: Living in the Material World expires from Netflix tomorrow, September 14th. It’s an excellent Beatles documentary that was directed by Martin Scorsese; you probably remember us raving about it here once or twice.
No notable titles expire from Amazon Prime this week, except the Martin Scorsese fantasy Hugo which leaves today (featured in last week’s newsletter).
The Newsflash: When Netflix was almost sold to Amazon
This week the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article on the little-known story of when Netflix founders flew to Seattle to sell their company to Amazon. They called it:
A trip to Seattle that could have changed the world as we know it
It’s a fantastic read, written by Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph. You can find it here.
This table was made from recycled doors. I could clearly see where the holes that used to hold the doorknobs had been patched.
“OK, Jeff,” [Amazon CEO] I said, grinning. “What’s with all the doors?”
“It’s a deliberate message,” he explained. “It’s a way of saying that we spend money on things that affect our customers, not on things that don’t.”
Netflix was the same way, I told him. We didn’t even provide chairs.
(Hashtag not something to be proud of.)
The article is full of anecdotes like that, about how Netflix almost got called “Kibble” and Amazon almost “Cadabra,” to which Jeff Bezos said “the problem is that Cadabra sounds a little too much like cadaver”.
But the most interesting part of the article is how Netflix used that meeting to pivot in terms of strategy and become who they are today. Instead of selling to a bigger company, they reconsidered what they do.
“We just have to figure out some way to get out of selling DVDs,” I said to him [Randolph to Reed]. “Doing rental and sales is confusing for our customers and unnecessarily complex for ops. And if we don’t sell, Amazon will destroy us when they enter the field. I think we get out now. Focus on rental.”
Reed arched his eyebrows.
“Kinda puts all our eggs in one basket,” he said.
“That’s the only way to make sure you don’t break any,” I replied.
And they haven’t been broken yet.
That’s it for this week, I hope there is something in there for you.
The next edition will go out on Friday, September 20th.
Until then,
Bilal Zou, founder [bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com]