January 15, 2008
Park Slope Hearts Netflix
filed under: Idle Chatter
Last Monday, I was taking our Netflix movie (Spirited Away, a new Top 10 Of All Time for me...) to the mailbox on Seventh Avenue.
As I approached, I saw that a fellow of my approximate demographic - thirtysomething, vaguely gruppy - was standing at the mailbox, staring at it. Clutched in his hand was a red Netflix envelope.
I stood behind him and waited my turn. He looked at me despairingly.
"It's full," he said.
"Ah," I said.
"It's full of Netflix." He shook his head and wandered off, still clutching his rumpled red envelope.
I pulled the mailbox open, and sure enough, its gaping blue maw was crammed with dozens of red envelopes. They were jammed at the back of the chute and it wouldn't open all the way.
Undaunted, I squeezed mine into a crack and chewed on it with the door a couple of times, then left it to its fate.
There were enough DVD's being returned to choke a mailbox. That, my friends, is a truly massive volume of Netflix.
Today I checked the Top 25 for 11215 - a list of movies that my zip code rents more frequently than average. I'm glad to see my nabe living up to its reputation - out of 25, there was a Godard, two Bunuels, a Bergman, an Antonioni, two Wong Kar Wais, a Truffaut and a Werner Herzog.
And, oddly, Videodrome.
Posted by rjt at January 15, 2008 10:15 AMso your neighbors like the classics, they like to be confused and bored, they like movies that no one actually understands, and they like the works of madmen. Bravo.
And there ain't nothing odd about videodrome, Cronenberg rules.
Ebert
I think that for my movies to register on that list, I'd actually have to watch them and return them more than once every two months. (Sheesh)
Posted by: beeg at January 17, 2008 04:12 PMRight? We're on the one-at-home unlimited plan, which I think is $10 a month. Meaning when we watch four movies in a month, we are full of win ($2.50 a movie being less than our local vid store).
Ask me how many months we've watched four Netflix movies or more, since Max was born. Go on, ask me.
Let's see - maybe six? Maybe?
The rest of the time? FAIL.
Posted by: rjt at January 17, 2008 05:19 PMI received my copy of The Italian Job in September, waited until New Years Eve to watch it. Hated it. Still haven't returned it. Probably up to $75 for holding onto this disc. It's a better scheme than running a credit card company.
My Queue hasn't been updated since the 2006 Academy awards.
My DVR, on the other hand, has efficiently delivered me hundreds of hours of stuff I actually watch. and with room left over for the 25 Noggin shows we have just in case the kids declare a Little Bear marathon.
Posted by: perj at January 17, 2008 11:59 PMWhat I need is a company that will send you two hours a week that you could use to actually watch the huge backlog of films you have acquired. I'd subscribe to that in a minute!
My wife and I went to see a movie the other day for the first time in two years. Cost us 45 bucks. We had figured on 60, but we scored free parking and didn't buy any popcorn or drinks. Viewed from that perspective, my obsessive habit of buying DVDs that I don't have time to watch doesn't seem so bad.
Posted by: KG at January 18, 2008 10:11 AMWe have an odd aversion to watching any DVDs we own. We've stopped buying them at all, because once we hit 30-35 discs that we literally never ever ever put in the machine, we realized the futility of it. We'll surf the upper reaches of cable, watching home improvement shows or Americas Most Dumberest Model or whatever, before we'll put in a movie we own.
And every movie we own, we bought because it's a real favorite. I don't understand it.
Posted by: rjt at January 18, 2008 10:39 AMmakes perfect sense, you avoid watching those movies now because you can't allot the quality time to watching them. when your life grants you one of those out of the blue days with nothing scheduled and the kids with a grandparent, you'll take down one of those movies and savor it.
Plus, one day, when the kids are a little older, they'll take down one of those dvd's and ask "what's this?", as my son did with the Star Wars box set (he recognized Darth Vader).