A Reply: It's my List Dude...Let Me Worry About It

I LOVE cinema. In every aspect of it, I love it. I say cinema in this post because I use cinema as encompassing all aspects of film and film related business. I don't know if that's using incorrectly, but it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

Allow me to say again, I love cinema. Why? Because it's so universal while still allotting for opposing opinions. This kind of debate can and usually does come in the form of abstract and concrete meanings of movies, but doesn't have to.

Case in point: these past two posts. Similar themes, but as I am about to show, different opinions.

I've often touted Netflix as one of, if not the, best business I interact with. Constantly improving their business to make it more accessible while always providing prices that are more than reasonable are two of the reasons I love Netflix. (This site is not sponsored by Netflix, but if y'all want to send a few free years my way, it could be.)

And thus we get to the opposition. I couldn't be more different in use of Netflix than my buddy The Walrus. The slight, and hopefully minimal animosity depicted in the title prompted me to provide a view of the other side.

I've been an off-and-on member for a few years now, mainly because I was in school and couldn't even scrounge up that well-priced subscription fee. Being in the business world with steady income, I believe that I'm now a lifer; and it sure hasn't taken me long to build up a substantial queue.

Playing opposite to Walrus' straight-laced and rigid queue, mine echos the tide; films ebbing and flowing. I'm constantly hearing about movies and I feel compelled to add it to my list same as The Walrus. However, I'm very much a pusher upper. I'm one who likes to be "in the know." Especially when it comes to movies. I see something I like, I add it and push it to the top. If something else comes along that's been talked about, it might get pushed over. Reading about them in textbooks usually equals them getting throw into the single digits.

There's also the problem with spoilers. I recently watched The Usual Suspects. I'd had the movie spoiled forever ago, but thought it was still worth watching. It wasn't. The ending would've been enthralling had I not known it, but instead, I found myself just waiting for the realization to come across the character's faces. I believe we take movies for granted. I saw an interesting question posed on Cinematical that asked, "What movie do you wish you could see again for the first time?" That question got me thinking. We only get to see a movie for the first time once. I know that sounds obvious, but think back to some of your favorites. The Sixth Sense is the uber-referenced shocker movie. Star Wars, The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, and Citizen Kane are part of those as well. Sure it's fun to go back and re-watch those movies when you know the twist, but nothing can really ever match those initial viewings; and when they're spoiled by others, it can really diminish the experience.

Another big aspect of my ever-changing queue is television. I have many television series on my queue. I hate to start and stop, and so I always evolve the queue to make sure I don't start a series before I'm ready. For the longest time, The Sopranos sat in and around the number ten spot, never quite fulfilling its destiny to make the trip home. It's such a long series, and even going straight through the DVDs, it would take me forever to see them all, and so I never began. Until one day, I sent some back and forgot to update my queue, receiving the first disc of the show by accident. Still unwilling to start the series, I sent it immediately back and deleted the whole series from my queue for fear of it interrupting some of those sacred days of DVD travel time.

Maybe as the Walrus stated, it's just a matter age, being just a few tree rings younger than the Walrus, maybe my ADHD generation just doesn't have the patience to go through that queue one-by-one. Self-disclosure: I actually have been prescribed adderall for ADHD. Or maybe it's just a different attack pattern.

Since Señor Morsa has yet to answer my comment on his post, I will ask again. Have you always been this way, or during those honeymoon years were you a 'pusher-upper'?

P.S. - F'real though, you should see Let The Right One In stat. It's on instant view, so it's not like cheating!

It's My List Dude.....Let me worry about it.

So here I am ladies and gentlemen, making my first, and hopefully not last, contribution to my good friend The Doctor's little slice of cyberspace. We've know each other for awhile now, and though our tastes are often quite different, we both enjoy the hell out of a good movie. So after a much appreciated invitation, here I am, and here goes.

I don't like crowds. Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat. I'm not even talking about a football stadium full of 66,000 people, although if truth be told, they drive me nuts too, but even 30 or 40 people waiting in line to buy movie tickets drives me crazy. It wasn't always like this. In my younger days, I would bust my tail to get to the theater on opening day to see the a new release. I mean, this is a guy who saw Star Wars Episode IV when it was released the first time in the theater 12 times. So I've had my day. However, those days of opening weekend box office are few and far between these days. Instead, with the DVD explosion of the last decade, my own in house home theater complete with 92" front projection, and my own popcorn machine, I find myself venturing out less and less and opting for a home viewing.

The perfect companion for my growing anti-social tendencies came into my life in 2000. When Netflix came along, I was ripe for the picking. I've always been the worst possible video store rental customer. I take 30 minutes to an hour sizing up my options, I can never remember when a movie is due back, and I tend to be more on the Art House/Independent Film side of the aisle. So when I saw Netflix advertised in the now "online" only Premiere magazine, I signed up immediately. We were a marriage made in heaven. In those early days, they were still a little sparse on titles. They boasted 1 million DVD's, but I still found myself coming up empty on some searches. But as time passed, and they got bigger and more popular, those days quickly disappeared. So now they are my go to place for movies. I still get out to the theater from time to time, but less than 10 times a year for sure. I did see Alice in Wonderland on opening weekend in IMAX-3D, but we can just chalk that up to a perfect storm of Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton, and a rare free Friday.

So after much back story and a little more than a bit of beating around the bush, we finally come to the subject of this post. What's the best way to use Netflix. This question came up as The Doctor recommended a movie to me over the weekend. He recommended "Let the Right One In" and insisted that I should move it to the top of my queue. I checked, and "Let the Right One In" is way down the list in #203 on my Netflix queue. So should I move it up? What about all those other movies in between? For me the queue is the best part about Netflix. I don't have to go to the video store and make value judgements about which movie is more worthy of my attention or which movie I might like better. When I read about a movie in Entertainment Weekly, or see A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips discussing it on "At the Movies", I'll head to my computer and add it to my queue. This is almost always months before the movie even has a release date on DVD, but Netflix has it listed and "Saves" it for me. This little bit of magic is what keeps me sending them my monthly payments.

I'm a sporadic movie watcher. I'll watch 12 movies one month and then go the next two without even watching one. But Netflix keeps them all neatly organized and waiting for me. So I tend to keep my list in the order of their addition, and not in order of how interested I am in seeing the film. If it's on the list I want to see it, so does it make sense for me to keep moving stuff around. My thought has always been, "I'll get to it". Sure I miss out on a conversation here and there because I'm usually a year or more behind in seeing a movie. Is that truly so bad? Without those conversations, I'm usually able to form my own opinion of a movie without a great deal of input. Even if a movie is all over the internet and television, and takes front and center in office conversations, by the time I get around to seeing it, most of that stuff has subsided and I'm left on my own with the film. I get to decide what I think. But the biggest thing is that I can just forget about it. I watch a movie, I send it back, I get another movie. I don't have to decide. I don't have to value one over another. I don't have to do anything. For me that's perfect.

So to the Doctor, I humbly say, "It's on my list, I'll get to it eventually". And to the rest of you I look for input. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you think my argument to be flimsy and trite. Well let me hear your alternative. How do you manage your list? How do I decide? What criteria do I use to order this list? But most importantly, "When it comes to stewed prunes, is three enough, or is four too many?"