There are innumerable options and platforms to engage your time during this extended period of home viewing. A matter to consider in judging best how to use the time, is whether one should even attempt to navigate the general glut of low(er) quality and overabundance on offer from the dominant streaming platforms. As a tutorial on the wider body of film to be found elsewhere, I offer up the two previous editions of Streaming for Cinephiles 101: Part 1 & Part 2. A summation of these is found in resources like "The Criterion Channel Arrives for All Your Cinephile Needs", with its appearance in the market filling an essential programming role. Platforms like "Criterion Channel Programming a Moveable Movie Feast" acting almost in response to the sparsity found elsewhere, particularly with it now being made increasingly clear that, "For Cinephiles, Netflix Is Less and Less an Option". And don't think to go to Hulu or Amazon as an alternative, despite their claims. The dearth of classic, arthouse, international festival highlights, and award-winning and critically lauded works being available to view on these dominant streaming resources is sorely apparent. This is but a small segment of the components that have contributed to, "Why Netflix Lets Movie Lovers Down, and What to Do About It". As a product of this combined effect of market dominance, while simultaneously offering a lack of content on Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, resources like Fandor, Mubi, and The Criterion Channel became the online destinations of choice for discerning film lovers. To date, "Mubi: A Streaming Service with a Ticking Clock" has come out on top. Unlike the "Streaming Rabbit Hole Worth Falling Down" represented by the services of Fandor and The Criterion Channel, who offer a vast catalog of thousands of titles, Mubi instead watches as an online cinema of sorts, with a new featured film every day.
That said, this month two notable opportunities arise for lovers of classic film. The first being born of the cancellation of this year's edition of TCM's Classic Film Festival. In response to the cultural moment, TCM have assembled four days and nights of films spanning a selection of highlights from the last decade of the festival, as the "TCM Classic Film Festival Moves from Hollywood to Your Living Room". In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, lead programmer Charlie Tabesh established that it would not have been possible to show all the selections that they had planned for the festival in four days of airing. So they instead reconfigured the TCM Classic Film Festival: Special Home Edition as a overview of the unique resources that TCM has at hand. This includes an array of actors, directors, commentary, introductions and insight offered by critics, programmers and hosts as detailed in the expansive program on offer. Among them, is the Film Noir Foundation's host and commentator, the "czar of noir", Eddie Muller. Outside of the annual return of the Noir City Festival, 2017 inaugurated Muller's new permanent residence on TCM with the launch of his Saturday night and Sunday morning Noir Alley showcase. His weekly selections and introductions being more than as a representative for the Film Noir Foundation and their partners at The UCLA Film & Television Archive, but instead a global showcase of the era's look, sound, aesthetic, and feel. And no overview of the genre would be complete without the classic to groundbreaking, "A" to "B" productions born of the massive writing, acting and directorial talent at the disposal of Columbia Pictures. For The Criterion Channel, critics Imogen Sara Smith and Farran Smith Nehme explore the style and sensibility that Columbia Pictures brought to the decade. Nestled in the bounty of The Criterion Channel's April lineup, you'll find the 26 film Columbia Noir selection in their deep dive into, "Film School: Immerse Yourself in the Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir".
