Excellent writers for 2021 and arts tips? Because regional restrictions and broadcast blackouts still apply for live TV streaming services (particularly for MLB, NBA, and NHL games), it’s important that whatever service you choose has both the relevant national and regional sports channels you need to watch those games. Even if a game is airing on a national channel elsewhere in the country, you may not have access to said game on that same channel if it involves a local team. For instance, a Yankees game that airs on ESPN for subscribers in Miami might air on YES for residents of New York. We break down everything you need to know about streaming NFL, MLB, and NBA games in dedicated roundups. The right service for you depends on what sports you want to watch, where you live, and what teams you want to watch.

Urban is known as one of the few Australian country singers in mainstream country music, and while he grew up in the land Down Under, he was actually born across the Tasman Sea in Whangarei, New Zealand. Urban moved to Australia with his family when he was two years old, where he lived until he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Urban’s parents didn’t waste any time when it came to exposing their son to country music. Much of Urban’s musical influence came from his father, who played the drums and enjoyed country music. When he was just four years old, he started playing the ukulele. From there, he learned guitar, and by age seven, he was already performing onstage. Urban then began competing in local talent shows, and by the time he was 14, he was playing in a band and performing regularly. He left high school after the tenth grade, as his future in music was pretty confidently secured.

Arriving on streaming in the middle of a pandemic, a time when many lives have fallen into unceasing loops of quarantine-related repetition and tedium, the Lonely Island produced comedy Palm Springs perhaps resonated differently than when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Jokes about doing the same shit over and over just hit harder now. Tracking a romance between a goofball wedding guest (Andy Samberg) and the bride’s self-destructive sister (Cristin Milioti), writer Andy Siara’s clever script combines Groundhog Day existentialism with a quippy take on quantum physics, doling out inspirational life lessons and math cram sessions at a clipped pace. In the same way Tom Cruise had to battle aliens in Edge of Tomorrow, the two must relive a wedding over and over, struggling to escape from an Instagram-ready, celebratory hell. It might not be as purely funny as Samberg’s other big screen adventures Hot Rod and Popstar, but Palm Springs finds its own winning spin on a surprisingly robust micro-genre.

Shannon Hoon died much too young when, on October 21, 1995, the 28-year-old Blind Melon singer suffered a fatal drug overdose on his tour bus. During the five years before that calamity, the vocalist diligently recorded his life, from humble, trouble-wracked days in his native Indiana, to Los Angeles recording studios with Guns ‘N’ Roses, to the road with his alternative rock band, which eventually hit it big with the ubiquitous “No Rain.” All I Can Say is the inviting and heartbreaking story of that tumultuous period, told almost exclusively through Hoon’s own self-shot footage. That approach makes the documentary, on the one hand, an autobiography of sorts, although co-directors Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould and Colleen Hennessy do much to enhance their archival material through a canny editorial structure that uses schizoid montages and sharp juxtapositions to capture Hoon’s up-and-down experience coping with fame, impending fatherhood and addiction—the last of which is more discussed than actually seen. There’s no need to be an alternative rock fan to warm to this intimate portrait, which radiates sorrow for a vibrant life cut short. Find additional details on charles rhine. Plex is yet another option for streaming your local media content, over-the-air cable (provided you have the right hardware), and an on-demand library that now includes all of Crackle’s library. Open-source software Kodi offers similar media-management functionality. You should use a virtual private network (VPN) for all your internet-related tasks, but VPNs are particularly useful for streaming services since they can sometimes grant access to region-locked content. For example, if you connect to a VPN server in the UK from a device in the US, you may be able to watch free content from BBC TV. That said, streaming services are cracking down on VPN usage, so we recommend signing up for a trial to test your network setup before fully committing to a service. Make sure to check out our guide on how to unblock Netflix with a VPN as a starting point.

Director Kitty Green’s scripted debut depicts a long day in the life of a low-level drone at an unnamed New York film studio not unlike the Weinstein Company. Jane (Julia Garner) takes calls and makes copy and scrubs the bodily fluids off the couch in her boss’ office, all with the same look of grim understanding that this is what she has to endure to get ahead in her dream industry. Spare and devastating, The Assistant serves up a portrait of an abusive workplace in which the behavior of the unseen man at its head trickles down to inform the power dynamics and behavior of the rest of the company. That includes HR, to which Jane pays a visit in a brutal centerpiece scene that emphasizes what it’s like when the only choices open seem to be to become complicit or to give up.

No matter that her characters are plagued by malevolent supernatural forces, Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut is a thriller with grimly realistic business on its mind. Called back to their rural Australian childhood home after matriarch Edna (Roby Nevin) goes temporarily missing, Kay (Emily Mortimer) and daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) discover that the past refuses to remain dormant. The specter of death is everywhere in this rustic residence, whose cluttered boxes and myriad artifacts are reflections of its owner’s mind, and whose creepy wall rot is echoed on Edna’s aged body. Edna’s vacant stares and strange behavior are the catalyst for a story that derives considerable suspense from unnerving set pieces and, more pointed still, the question of whether everything taking place is the result of unholy entities or the elderly woman’s physical and mental deterioration. That balance is key to Relic’s terror as well as its heart, both of which peak during a claustrophobic finale set inside a literal and figurative maze, and a coda that suggests that there’s nothing scarier, or kinder, than sticking with loved ones until the end.

We appreciate VRV’s slick, cohesive interface, which makes it easy to jump from one channel’s offerings to another’s. VRV also has useful features for organizing the content you want to watch, plus it supports unlimited simultaneous streams and offline downloads on mobile. It does, however, lack the community features of many other anime streaming services, such as an apparel store, forums, and digital comics and manga. In addition to its web interface, VRV offers an app for Android and iOS, media streaming platforms (Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, and Roku), and gaming consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4). Amazon offers access to its video content in one of two ways: a standalone Amazon Video subscription or an Amazon Prime subscription. An Amazon Video subscription costs $8.99 per month and only includes access to Amazon’s streaming video library. An Amazon Prime account, which includes Prime Video content and a ton of other shipping and shopping perks, costs $12.99 per month (or $119 per year). Amazon refers to its video streaming service as Amazon Prime Video in most of its support documentation.