Premium writing experts for 2021 and arts guides

Excellent streaming platform offers right now? As the competition between video streaming services intensifies, differentiation is ever-important. Hulu continues to offer both a strong on-demand streaming library and a robust live TV option. The service is an excellent option for watching popular TV shows and we like its broad platform support, even if Hulu’s original series are hit-or-miss. On the live TV front, Hulu’s channel coverage is top-notch and its DVR features compare well to the competition’s. Despite a few missteps, Hulu keeps its Editors’ Choice award because no other service can quite match its combination of streaming content. What Can You Watch on Hulu? Hulu’s on-demand library has always been about TV shows and that emphasis remains. The service offers hundreds of seasons and thousands of episodes from major networks. The rise of network-specific streaming services, like Paramount+ and NBC’s Peacock, has cut into this content library. However, Disney’s role in Hulu and its vast library of former 21st Century FOX content that doesn’t fit Disney+’s more family-friendly profile will likely keep Hulu afloat.

When Urban arrived in Nashville to continue his country career, he assembled a band called The Ranch with Peter Clarke and Jerry Flowers. The band earned a contract with Capitol Records and released a self-titled album in 1997. This album originally featured 12 tracks, including “Some Days You Gotta Dance,” which was later recorded by The Chicks, “Desiree,” which was covered by David Nail, and “Walkin’ the Country,” which was re-recorded by Scotty McCreery. Urban re-released the album in 2004 under the name Keith Urban and The Ranch, and added two new tracks, “Stuck in the Middle with You” and “Billy.” In his early years in Nashville, Urban developed a drug problem, particularly with cocaine, and entered rehab in 1998. After completing rehab, he released his self-titled American debut album and went on to release 2002’s Golden Road and 2004’s Be Here, but his struggle with addiction wasn’t completely gone. In June 2006, he married actress Nicole Kidman, and just a few months later, Kidman helped him through a drug relapse. Urban entered rehab again in October 2006 and has spoken many times about Kidman’s support during that trying time.

For a certain type of moviegoer, any film where Nicolas Cage says the word “alpacas” multiple times is worth seeking out. Luckily, Color Out of Space, a psychedelic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story from 1927, offers more than just furry animals and unhinged Cage theatrics. Mixing hints of science-fiction intrigue and bursts horror movie excess, along with a couple splashes of stoner-friendly comedy, Richard Stanley’s proudly weird B-movie vibrates on its own peculiar frequency. Cage’s Nathan, a chatty farmer with a loving wife (Joely Richardson) and a pair of mildly rebellious kids, must contend with a meteoroid that crashes in his front yard, shooting purple light all over his property and infecting the local water supply. Is it some space invader? A demonic spirit? A biological force indiscriminately wreaking havoc on the fabric of reality itself? The squishy unknowability of the evil is precisely the point, and Stanley melds Evil Dead-like gore showdowns with Pink Floyd laser light freak-outs to thrilling effect, achieving a moving and disquieting type of genre alchemy that should appeal to fans of Cage’s out-there turn in the similarly odd hybrid Mandy. Again, you’ll know if this is in your wheelhouse or not.

Using cheery smiles and go-getter glares to conceal profound depths of resentment, ambition and greed, Hugh Jackman gives the performance of his career as Roslyn, Long Island public school superintendent Dr. Frank Tassone in Bad Education. A dramatic account of the historic embezzlement scandal that engulfed Tassone and his colleagues – most notably, assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) – Cory Finley’s film (based on Robert Kolker’s New York Magazine article) is a ruthlessly efficient and even-keeled affair about the intense pressures of suburban academia, where educational-ranking achievements and college acceptance rates are intimately intertwined with real-estate prices. The director lays out the myriad forces at play in this ostensibly picture-perfect milieu in exacting detail, and his preference for longer takes means that the focus remains squarely on his performers. That, in turn, allows the HBO feature to rest on the sturdy shoulders of Jackman, who never resorts to caricature in embodying Tassone as a discontent striver whose eagerness for validation dovetailed with his lifelong deceptiveness, to disastrous ends. Discover more details at https://mytrendingstories.com/angela-mercado. The competition between video streaming services has never been tougher, so some media companies are banding together. For instance, CBS and Viacom merged (again) and launched Paramount+. AT&T announced plans to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery to form a new streaming giant. Amazon is reportedly buying MGM for $9 billion, too, which should considerably boost Prime Video’s library. The increasingly competitive streaming market is not without consequences. Consumers who may have originally been attracted to the flexibility that streaming services offer over cable, now must navigate a crowded and constantly shifting nightmare of streaming rights and new services, many of which continue to rise in cost. Live TV streaming services are also struggling to adjust to the rising costs of broadcast rights from cable channel owners. The price of just about every one of these services has increased considerably over time.

This one didn’t open theatrically, so once upon a time it probably wouldn’t have qualified for this list. But screw it, we live in extraordinary times — and besides, this atmospheric murder thriller set in a small New England fishing village is the kind of artfully mounted, suspenseful little charmer they don’t really make anymore, so it feels extra special. Two cash-strapped sisters, struggling to hold onto their house in the wake of their mom’s death, find themselves in the middle of what appears to be an elaborate, twisted conspiracy involving the town brothel and a gaggle of old-timers with some dark secrets. The central mystery itself is interesting, but the main attractions here are the colorful cast of characters and the compelling sense of place established by writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

The mythic quality of the Cordillera – the towering eastern stretch of the Andes mountains that serves as both a protective and isolating barrier for the city of Santiago – is harmonized with the grand, destructive illusions of Chile’s Pinochet regime in The Cordillera of Dreams, documentarian Patricio Guzmán’s personal rumination on his homeland’s tumultuous history, and his relationship to it. From vast sights of the snow-capped Andes, to grainy on-the-street video footage of Pinochet tyranny, to introspective interviews with fellow artists, Guzmán’s film (the third entry in a trilogy that also includes Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button) examines the catastrophic upheaval of 1973’s coup d’état, and the lingering scars it left on him and the country’s citizens. In vistas of the ancient and immovable Cordillera, close-ups of cracks lining the hardscrabble soil, and gazes into labyrinth-like patterns found on junkyard car doors, Guzmán (who also serves as narrator) evokes a poetic sense of imposing mysteries and unrepairable fissures, which spread through him – and economically unbalanced Chilean culture – like the solemn valleys that course between the Andes’ peaks.

NBC’s Peacock offers three tiers: an ad-supported free plan with about 13,000 hours of content, a Premium tier with 20,000 hours, some live sports, and clips-based channels; and a Premium Plus option with all of the content in the Premium tier, but with no ads when you stream on-demand titles. Although you can’t stream some of NBC’s biggest hits on-demand (Friends, Seinfeld, and The Office), you can watch other popular past and current entries from NBC such as 30 Rock, Cheers, Friday Night Lights, King of Queens, Parks and Recreation, Saturday Night Live, Will and Grace, Chicago Fire, Law & Order: SVU, Superstore, and This is Us. Other non-NBC shows include Battlestar Galactica, Downton Abbey, Eureka, House, Monk, Psych, Ray Donovan, Real Husbands of Hollywood, The Affair, Undercover Boss, and Warehouse 13. Peacock doesn’t yet have many original shows, but The Office is now on Peacock, too. Peacock’s movie library has shrunk since launch and some titles have moved from the free level to the paid Premium tier, but it still includes popular titles such as Burn After Reading, Children of Men, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Field of Dreams, Frost/Nixon, Inside Man, Law Abiding Citizen, Mamma Mia!, Pride & Prejudice (2005), Schindler’s List, Traffic, and Zombieland. Peacock is slowing expanding its live sports content; it recently streamed an NFL playoff game, is gaining some IndyCar coverage, and will soon be the home of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).