NetFlix - Back in da House

When I was commuting between Nashville and Raleigh, NC for fourteen months, one of the best ways to keep from going insane with loneliness away from my family and being generally nocturnal was to have a heavy dose of NetFlix. Three movies at a time filled the bill. I even remember watching Kill Bill 1 & 2 back to back with the laptop roasting my legs before I settled down to go to bed at 2 am for work in a few hours.

There was a resident movie critic inhouse who always suggested movies for me. Sean was the living embodiment of Recommendations - If You Liked _____ , Then You'll Love... . I got a heavy dose of Quentin Tarantino with Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The Butterfly Effect and Phone Booth was disturbing. I Am Sam, Dear Frankie. The Killing Fields and The Grapes of Wrath were moving. The Bourne Supremacy and I Robot wired me beyond caffeine's potential.

As you can probably tell from the movies described, I don't get out too much to the movies. And I probably should because of the sheer fact that I even saw A Movie, even ten years later is automatically in my mind, pretty good to begin with. I missed out on the whole Titanic movie fever - I simply commented, "Was that movie based on a true story?"

I've yet to see a Harry Potter movie, and I seen bits of Lord of the Rings. Is BattleStar Galactica a movie or TV series? I seen Star Wars once or was it Star Trek? That's right, they are two different movies. To my credit, I have seen Blazing Saddles, Terminator Two and The Blues Brothers maybe ten times each.

I was an extra in Ernest Scared Stupid as a pizza delivery guy for two seconds.

I even read of someone - I wished I saved the link - blogging about seeing a movie every week at the local theatre house for one year. Now that's ambitious! I did a variation of that about twenty years ago when I canvassed a city selling for the Yellow Pages. We would be holed up in a apartment complex with Aaron's Rents furniture and some of us were lucky enough to drive home for the weekend - in my case, Memphis to Nashville.

I would tape the newpaper's movie listings on the fridge and head down to the local theatre and maybe catch 3 to 5 movies a week. Life on the road was no fun back then. No VHS, laptops, cable... sitting by the pool and talking shop was the alternative. Thus, seeing a movie every week? Ambitious indeed.

After watching at least 90 to maybe 120 movies (my NetFlix rental history only goes back to October of 2004) in North Carolina over a course of fourteen months, lately my rentals have sat dormant for weeks. With football season winding down, I've recently watched Superman Returns, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, United 93, Syriana and Tuesdays with Morrie. Tonight, I just finished Invincible.

I'm not a movie critic by any stretch of the imagination; I'm just thrilled I can set aside some time to enjoy some movie time with Mrs. WonderDawg and the dogs on the couch.