Instant Picks of the Week 4/1/16

by Thomas Seraydarian · April 1, 2016

Thanks to Instant Picks of the Week, gone are the days of scrolling mindlessly through your queue! No longer will you have to sift through the vastness of what’s coming to the instant viewing wastelands this month! Whether you’re looking for a stellar film or an exciting new show to binge, here are the hottest releases in film and television on instant viewing platforms that we know you’ll love, or at the very least not despise.

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FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME (Netflix)

A masterwork in pacing, patience, and subtlety, FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME is a hypnotizing and utterly captivating directorial outing that challenges our preconceptions of cinema and what the medium can do. Putting such haughty intellectual subgenres as slow cinema to shame, FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME develops and progresses at a snail’s pace, allowing for expansive temporal spaces that allow the viewer to maximize upon reflexivity. What does it mean to view and consume this kind of artistic expression? Is this art? Is this the logical conclusion to the visual form? An aggressively mediated simulacra, the mere representation of a burning log and some faint crackles has come to be a fixture in every family’s home over the holiday season, the very effigy of its fiery visage a metonymic space in which we deposit our beliefs about the definition of familial relations and their intimate interactions with our participation in the holiday season.

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FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME: CASCADE MOUNTAIN STREAM (Netflix)

“But Thomas,” you say, “including two installments of FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME is cheating!” Well, if that’s your opinion, then I don’t think you’re properly considering the implications of FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME: CASCADE MOUNTAIN STREAM. This is exactly what it purports to be, a static shot of a mountain stream that is every flowing. However, this is proudly “presented” by FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME! The images of a crackling fire has become such an undeniable juggernaut in our cultural industry that no, not even the director of the film presents this spiritual sequel, but the larger-than-life presence of the film itself. This is a bold step forward for filmmaking, as it posits that the character of a produced work of art can become so massive that it trumps its creator. Art can be imbued with such personality that it takes on a life of its own. Isn’t that the goal of anyone who aims to bring something beautiful into this world?