Spring is in full swing with these offerings on the services streaming to your home screen this May.
Amazon Prime Video
Arriving on 14 May 2021 is the historical fiction drama series ‘The Underground Railroad’, directed by Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk), and based on Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel of the same name. In this adaptation, the figurative railroad, that helped slaves to freedom through networks of abolitionists, safe houses and hidden routes in reality, is literal, with tracks, conductors and engineers.
Netflix
Amy Adams (The Master), Gary Oldman (Mank), Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight) are the heavyweight cast in the psychological thriller ‘The Woman In The Window’, also available from 14 May 2021. Directed by Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) from a screenplay by Tracy Letts (Le Man ’66), the life of an agoraphobic psychologist is turned upside down when she starts to dig deeper after the neighbour she befriends disappears.
Disney+
Emma Stone (The Favourite) takes over from Glenn Close (101 Dalmations, and who executive-produces with Stone) as the second actor to take on legendary Disney villain Cruella de Vil in her third live-action outing (after Close’s features ‘101 Dalmations’ and ‘102 Dalmations’, in 1996 and 2000, respectively) entitled ‘Cruella’. Who else? Rather than remaking the 1961 animation in live-action a la Close, Stone’s vehicle charts the origin story of the evil fashionista opposite Emma Thompson (Late Night) and Mark Strong (Shazam!).
The comedy-drama debuts on 28 May 2021.
In Scotland I attended Dunfermline High School from 2010 to 2016 and Edinburgh Napier University from 2016 to 2020, emerging with two Advanced Higher and five Higher qualifications from the former and graduating with an undergraduate bachelor of arts honours degree in journalism from the latter. After two years away from further education due to the coronavirus pandemic, I'm going to be studying the MFA Photography course at York St John University in England from 2022 to 2024. I've achieved The Duke of Edinburgh’s (Bronze) Award and received grade five level certification for electronic keyboard from Trinity College London. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, writing, watching television series, listening to music and going to the cinema as well as catching up with friends, travelling by railway and hostelling overnight and overindulging in food and drinks in a pub or restaurant then having to go to the gym to burn it all off again.
By studying journalism and photography, my aim of practicing photojournalism professionally will hopefully be once step closer. Both are partial artforms requiring the rest of the work to be undertaken by the audience, the specialism of photojournalism, however, providing each of its two parts with greater context. Exploring photographic techniques (aerial, timelapse, editing) through a variety of journalistic styles (features, poetry, songwriting) will allow me to develop my portfolio, hone my camera skillset and narrow my focus further in anticipation of working life. Without a global pandemic to deal with this time. Fingers crossed.
