Netflix

I have succumbed. I love to watch movies but I never seem to get around to going to ...the theater...the video store. Saying you are movie fan and being a movie fan are two different things. As much as I talk about liking movies, the total that I saw during 2004, in theater and at home was a paltry forty. So I determined that at the first of the year I would try out Netflix. Now I have no excuse. It will come down to my ability to manage time. If I can find an hour each evening to watch part of a movie, this might pay for itself. With three movies in the house at a time there should be no excuse. I figure that if I watch five or six movies a month Netflix will pay for itself. With the help of Videohound, Maltin's and Martin and Porter's video guides, and the wonderful 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die, there should be no problem in making choices. Included will be a lot of recent movies that I missed, science fiction classics, mystery classics, film noir and lots of foreign films. I also have a long list of spy movies that I took from a book long ago and when I tried to find them on VHS out of almost one hundred I could only find a few. With the advent of DVD I may be able to find more.

I've just finished watching Cinema Paradiso. I had seen this film some years back, but I had read that the director's cut added another fifty minutes to the film. I watched the original cut first, then the director's cut immediately after. The original cut left quite a bit unanswered and the director's cut gave the answers. For the most part the added minutes were after the original cut ended.

We'll have to see whether this all works for me. Whether I find or make the time for these films. I'm hopeful I can make it work and that I will see more films this year. I'll report in a few months and twll you how it's going.