ThePlagueYears

Every picture tells a story  This is one of my forays into composite picture making. 

I have this thing...where I gives eyes to portraits I've made of ancient statues. Statues I find very co-operative subjects, like captive owls. They never complain or fidget or tell me to hurry up. This one, a Roman bust I shot at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2010, has eyes transplanted from a baby - which is perhaps a little odd. (Well, yes, the whole thing is odd.) The background is a Roman fresco, I think from Pompei, also sourced on the Web.

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Karen saw me trolling through the website of the subscription-free Tubi streaming video service earlier today and said, "O god, you're not looking for more TV to watch? We can't watch all we've got." Which is true. Still, it's hard to resist free. 

How does Tubi do it? It's owned by Fox, which is very much about making money, so there has to be a catch. And of course, there is: Tubi inserts paid advertising into the content. You can't zip through the ads either, as you can with stuff you record off the air on a PVR. So is it worth it?

Well, along with the inevitable crap, Tubi does offer some gems. By browsing the 'Award Winners and Nominees' and 'Highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes' categories, I was able to find half a dozen movies I wouldn't mind seeing, or seeing again, including some that were on my watch list but I missed. 

We could mute the sound when the commercials come on, I suppose.

Examples? 

There's Mr. Turner (2014), a film about the 19th century proto-impressionist painter JMW Turner. It's by the British director Mike Leigh who is best known for Secrets and Lies, the movie that made Brenda Blethyn a star. This one features character actor Timothy Spall in a rare leading-man role as Turner. Leigh is one of my favourites, and I've seen a lot of his films, but not Mr Turner. 

Tubi also has Leigh's Another Year (2010), starring Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville (you'll recognize their faces even if you can't place their names - Broadbent was Horace Slughorn in the Potter movies.) It's about a lonely middle-aged divorcee's relationship with her comfortably-married friends. That probably doesn't make it sound terribly exciting, but Leigh's elevator pitches seldom do. This one I've seen and can recommend highly.

Another that was on my list but I never got to see is Amour (2012), a late-life romance about married music teachers dealing with the aftermath of a stroke. It's by the Austrian director Michael Haneke. Again, it may not sound terrifically exciting, but it stars big-name French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert, and it got rave reviews.

I was also interested to see some good older movies, including Pelle The Conqueror (1987) by Billie August, starring the great Swedish-French actor Max von Sydow, who first rose to fame in the 1950s and 60s playing in Ingmar Bergman films. 

Peter O'Toole at Henry II, Richard Burton as Becket in Becket (1964)

Tubi has Beckett (1964), the movie that first got me interested in film when I saw it as a treat for my fifteenth birthday. Peter O'Toole as King Henry II and Richard Burton as the meddlesome priest - later saint - Thomas Beckett. I fear the acting style might seem a little mannered and over-the-top nowadays, but I remember the movie fondly. 

If you have a smart TV, Tubi might be available directly on it. There is an app for Apple TV, which I've already installed and is how we would watch it. There may be apps for it on other TV streamers too, such as Google Chromecast, Rocku and Amazon Fire.

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Have I showed you a picture of my grandson lately? Here's Louis, kitted out for a Northumberland winter.

Isn't he adorable?