Category: Film Page 75 of 101

New Release Review: Australia

On January 11, 2009

directed by Baz Lurhmann
starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman
Australia/USA 2008; screened 29 November 2008 at AMC Theatres

I admit that I haven’t read many reviews of Australia in toto, but the snippets I have read and the general critical feeling indicates that most critics didn’t think it was very good. At all. And in fact, in many ways, they’re right. Australia is a mess. But it’s a gorgeous, sloppy, enjoyable mess.

Australia is not the great epic of the Australian people, or indeed, a great epic at all. It is not a particularly innovative piece of filmmaking. It is not indicative of a specifically Australian filmmaking sensibility, nor a very strong example of Baz Lurhmann’s own flamboyant filmmaking style. There’s a bit of a sense of failed ambition hanging about the film, because you can tell Lurhmann wanted at least some of those things to be true, especially the first one.

An English noblewoman travels to Australia to get her husband to sell his plantation there and return to England. Instead, her husband is killed and she stays on to run the plantation with the help of an Australian cowboy known only as Drover (because that’s what he is, a cattle drover). Meanwhile, she takes a young aboriginal boy under her protection. Lurhmann’s attempt to bring together a uniquely Australian family pulled from each of Australia’s roots (English, aboriginal, and outback drifters) is obvious to an extreme, which is part of why it fails as a national epic – it’s too calculated.

In addition to the overdetermined theme, the film suffers from tonal inconsistency. It can’t decide whether it’s a farce (the first half-hour is full of Luhrmann-esque quick close-ups and exaggerated facial expressions, as if he wanted to remind us that he’s the one who directed Moulin Rouge before settling into a much more staid style for the rest of the film), western, romance, war, family drama, elegy, social rights message picture, travel brochure or national epic. The western and war sections, especially, are so divisively separated that Lurhmann might have been better off making two films instead of one.

But even after that laundry list of defects, and I could think of more if I wanted to, I can’t get past how much I plain enjoyed watching the film, and I would go see it again in a heartbeat. It’s old-fashioned classic filmmaking in the Hollywood tradition. I hate to keep bringing up David Bordwell’s The Way Hollywood Tells It all the time as if it’s the only film theory book I’ve ever read, but it’s applicable here again – elements in the narrative are carefully placed so as to lead the audience to expect certain things to happen, and they do. So yes, it’s predictable, but satisfyingly so. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman play their characters as larger-than-life mythic figures rather than real people, because that’s what they are. Kidman especially works in her role not because she turns in an outstanding acting performance (she’s done that far better in other films), but because she channels old Hollywood star quality so well when she lets herself.

I’ll grant you I’m a sucker for westerns, and I definitely loved that part the best – there’s nothing revisionist about it, and the first half of the film could easily have been made during the golden age of westerns, full of gorgeous vistas, sweeping music and laconic hero figures. Then, suddenly, World War II starts, and it’s almost a whole different movie, which I didn’t like quite as much as the western, though it’s not particularly bad.

So Australia is a mess, yes, trying to pack too many varied things into one film that never quite meshed into a cohesive whole. But it was a very comfortable-feeling mess, and I unabashedly loved watching it. As a compromise between knowing it’s nowhere near objectively good and my subjective love for it, I give it an Above Average.

[Weird side note – according to IMDb, the aspect ratio is 2.35:1, but I would’ve sworn I saw it in 1.85:1. Anyone else see it in the narrower ratio, or was I just on crack? I even made a note about it in my notebook at the time, that it seemed odd to shoot an epic in 1.85:1.]

My 2008 Recap

By Jandy

On January 4, 2009

In Books and Reading, Film, Gaming, Music

As per usual, I haven’t seen enough 2008 releases to be justified making a Best of 2008 list, so here is my much more egocentric list of my favorite movies that I saw during 2008, no matter when they were released. And I threw in books, music, and games, with the same caveat. The links go to my reviews, reactions, or other previous writings about them. The non-linked ones I, uh, didn’t write about. Because I am lazy. So I’ll throw in a line about them, but I may still write about the more in the future. Or not. Because I am lazy.

Oh, and also, don’t even think these are lists of bests. They’re lists of favorites, 100% subjective. And highly subject to change.

FILM

LOVED

Cleo from 5 to 7

Cleo from 5 to 7 (imdb) – A New Wave film from a female director (Agnes Varda). It’s an excellent combination.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sunrise
Wall-E (imdb) – edit: I managed to forget this one upon publishing this post. BAD JANDY. A breathtakingly beautiful, heartwarming but not maudlin, and prescient sci-fi animated film. Virtually perfect in every way.
Divided We Fall
Easy Rider

The Fall

The Fall (imdb) – A dazzlingly imaginative film set partly in war-torn Spain and partly in the story a dying soldier tells a young girl. Not as cohesive as Pan’s Labyrinth, but very much in the same vein.
Kicking and Screaming
All That Jazz
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Speed Racer (imdb) – One of the most criminally underrated films of the year. A visionary expression of sensory overload and invention. Plus, shiny!
I Walked With a Zombie
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Planet Terror

REALLY LIKED

I'm Not There

I’m Not There
Rachel Getting Married (imdb) – Fantastic acting and script. Just misses being in the “Loved” section because I could strangle Jonathan Demme for misusing the shakicam.
The Savages
Orpheus
Werckmeister Harmonies (imdb) – Director Bela Tarr is known for using reaaaallllly long takes, and he does. But the slow pacing soon becomes mesmerizing and stunningly beautiful.
Iron Man
The Dark Knight (imdb) – I’m sorry, but I have to say I think The Dark Knight is a little overrated. Ledger is fantastic, and the Joker is the best villain the movies have seen in a long time. But I pretty much can’t remember ANY of the scenes without him.
Go
All the President’s Men
Repulsion

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading (imdb) – The black humor Coens return in force (and farce) here. It’s nothing like No Country, but it’s an over-the-top great time.
The Innocents (imdb) – This should’ve been in my Month of Horror post; don’t know how I forgot it. Very well-done quiet (maybe) evil kid horror film based on The Turn of the Screw.
Them!
Let the Right One In
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (imdb) – Perhaps a movie about hipsters running around New York City in search of an elusive band is just made for me. Granted, it’s slight, but it’s really enjoyable.
Australia (imdb) – There are admittedly a lot of tonal problems with Australia, but I enjoyed watching every second of it.
Tell No One (imdb) – A man’s wife is murdered…or is she? When he starts seeing her and hearing from her years later, it quickly becomes clear there’s much more going on in this twisty French thriller.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Transsiberian (imdb) – A couple travels from China via the Transsiberian Railway, but gets pulled into trouble by a couple of young drifters. A solid thriller with a good twist or two.
Shaft (1971) (imdb) – I saw Samuel L. Jackson’s remake a few years ago. As cool as Sam Jackson is, he WISHES he were as cool as Richard Roundtree, the original iconoclastic black private eye facing off with Harlem and Italian gangsters and the NYPD.
Night of the Living Dead

Saawariya

Saawariya (imdb) – This fairy-tale Bollywood film is extremely stylized and imaginative – one of the more interesting Indian films I’ve seen so far. They’re always visually sumptuous, but this one takes it to a whole new level.
The Flower of My Secret (imdb) – Pedro Almodovar film similar to All About My Mother in tone. Not as good, but still very worthwhile.
Synecdoche, New York (imdb) – I can’t do this one justice in a few sentences. I’m still working out in my head what I think about it. The best quote I’ve seen about it, though, is from Roger Ebert: “a film that should never be seen unless you’ve already seen it at least once.”
Les bonnes femmes
Atonement
Village of the Damned (imdb) – Evil alien children take over a rural English town. It’s way better than it sounds, a classic old-school British horror flick.
My Blueberry Nights (imdb) – Wong Kar-Wai’s first English-language film is a visually beautiful odyssey following a girl as she tries to find out what she wants. I’m excited to see his other films now, which I’ve heard are better.
Sunshine
Metropolitan
Some Came Running (imdb) – Frank Sinatra gets to prove his acting chops again as a cynical soldier returning to his small-town home. Shirley MacLaine is a revelation, and Dean Martin gets probably his best role, as well.
Lars and the Real Girl

Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole (imdb) – Reporter Kirk Douglas will do anything to get a good story, even keeping a trapped miner trapped as long as he can to increase the media frenzy. It’s Billy Wilder, so you know it’s going to be solid, and it is.
Two-Lane Blacktop
The Body Snatcher
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Isle of the Dead
Do You Like Hitchcock (imdb) – This Dario Argento film has a film student getting involved with a murder that bears a close resemblance to Strangers on a Train; the overall film also had plenty of Rear Window and I like to think a little Vertigo in there.
Be Kind, Rewind
Leatherheads
Shadows (imdb) – John Cassavetes’ first film, and often hailed as the beginning of American independent film. Touches on show business, youth, and sibling rivalry, but the tough look at 1960s racial issues is the most interesting aspect.
In Bruges (imdb) – I expected a comic action film, and it is that sometimes, but it’s also got a huge dose of thoughtful philosophy in there, as two hitmen go to Bruges (read: Purgatory) to wait out a botched job.

RECOMMENDED

Hannah Takes the Stairs
Lacombe, Lucien (imdb) – A young German boy falls into working with the Nazis during WWII, but finds his loyalties divided when he befriends a Jewish family – and falls in love with the family’s daughter. It’s a big tough at first to relate to the implacable boy, but there’s more here than meets the eye.
The Seventh Victim (imdb) – Val Lewton, occultism, missing sisters, overall creepiness – what more do you want?

Made in USA

Made in USA
The Blue Angel
Lola Montes (imdb) – Max Ophuls’ only widescreen, color feature about the rise and fall of a the title character in the courts of Europe is sumptuous, but a little distancing. Perhaps purposefully.
Paprika
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Lantana
Mickey One
Michael Clayton
The Cool World (imdb) – Another early independent film, this is the story of a young Harlem boy who thinks everything in his life would be better if he just had a gun, and thus some power and authority. Hard to see due to rights issues, so if you get the chance, jump on it.
I Am Legend
Papillon
Bottle Rocket
Ghost Ship

BOOKS

LOVED

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James – First thing I’ve read by James, and I was highly impressed. His mastery of depicting the interior life is a great foreshadowing of Modernism.
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons – Proof that graphic novels can be just as complex and well-written as traditional novels.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – The basis for my current revaluation of Hemingway, who I used to not like. But this one is great.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – A Victorian mystery, and with my general dislike of Victorian lit, I was shocked at how much I liked it. It’s perfectly written, and so much more than *just* a mystery.
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers – Similarly here, as this is technically a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, but the mystery is almost secondary to Sayers’ exploration of life at an Oxford women’s college, with side notes on feminism, class, and academia.

LIKED

Good Night Mr. Holmes by Carol Nelson Douglas – Douglas rewrites Sherlock Holmes from a woman’s point of view, making Irene Adler, the only person to outwit Holmes (in A Scandal in Bohemia), the heroine.
Alias Grace Margaret Atwood – Grace is a convicted murderess, shuttled between prison and mental institution; she tells her story to a sympathetic doctor who hopes to absolve her. But the truth of the matter is elusive, even to the reader.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Ichebe – A leader in an African tribe struggles with pride and the conflict between tribal customs and the incoming Christian missionaries. Achebe is known for being among the first to bring a truly African voice into English-language literature, and his minimalist style suits the story perfectly.
Spook Country by William Gibson

MUSIC

With music it’s more “these are what I’ve been listening to the most in 2008.” Although I think I did acquire all of these albums in 2008, even though several of them are from earlier. All 2006-2008, though, I think. I linked Music Monday or concert coverage posts where I had them; otherwise tacked on a MySpace link so you can hear them yourself.

LOVED

Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
The Submarines – Honeysuckle Weeks
Babyshambles – Shotters Nation (MySpace)
Mates of State – Rearrange Us
Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We are Doomed / Hold On Now, Youngster
Metric – Live It Out (MySpace)
Army Navy – Army Navy
Silversun Pickups – Carnavas
The Apples in Stereo – New Magnetic Wonder (MySpace)
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (MySpace)

REALLY LIKE

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (MySpace)
We are Scientists – Brain Thrust Mastery (MySpace)
She & Him – Volume One (MySpace)
I’m From Barcelona – Who Killed Harry Houdini / Let Me Introduce My Friends (MySpace)
The Rosebuds – Life Like
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
The Fratellis – Here We Stand

GAMES

LOVE

Mass Effect
Bioshock – One of the most amazing stories and art direction in any game ever.
Bully – Like GTA, but at a boarding school. :) Not particularly innovative, but a blast to play.
Portal – The only problem with Portal is it’s too short! Fantastic puzzle game with a fun story to boot.
Fallout 3 – I’ve only played a few hours of this, but I can already tell it’s headed to the “loved” category. Looks fantastic and plays like Oblivion (aka, my fave game of all time).
Rock Band 2 – Not much different than Rock Band, but don’t fix what ain’t broken, and the improvements made are good. I just keeping coming back for more.

REALLY LIKE

Fable 2 – Does a nice job of improving on the first Fable, which was already good. The difficulty’s not perfect, though – I found I got through the whole main quest with very little leveling.
Guitar Hero: World Tour – The first Guitar Hero game that remotely gives Rock Band any competition, to my mind. I actually think the gameplay is a bit better, but the overall experience was less enjoyable.
Assassin’s Creed – Climbing up every building in town and running over rooftops never got old. The gameplay here is spectacular, but it’s not one I’d ever play again. Looking forward to seeing what the sequels do with the story, though.
Mirror’s Edge – Again, groundbreaking gameplay, once you get the hang of it. But I’m about halfway through and I’m already bored with the story and missions. Still, paves the way for potentially stupendous games in the future.
Lost Odyssey

20 Favorite Actresses

By Jandy

On December 19, 2008

In Film

The film blogosphere has another meme going around, this time started by Nathaniel R. of Film Experience, who has called for bloggers to celebrate twenty of their favorite actresses. No one’s tagged me, but that never stopped me before! So many actresses are worthy to be on a list like this, but in the end, I went with the actresses that can sell me on a film – the ones I’ll see in anything, just because they’re in it. Oh, and the level of my girl-crush on them is factored in as well. ;)

I originally wrote a paragraph about each actress (like Arbogast did in his very informative take on the meme), but opted instead for a more minimalist approach. If you want more info on the actresses or why I love them, let me know.

Maria Bello (especially: The Cooler, Thank You For Smoking, A History of Violence)

A Month of Horror

By Jandy

On December 7, 2008

In Film

I’ve never been a big fan of horror films and usually try to avoid them, but the horror genre has become such a significant gap in my cinematic experience (“you’ve never seen Night of the Living Dead?! OMGWTFBBQ!”) that I decided to make a concerted effort during the month of October to catch up on some horror classics and expand my horror repertoire. I didn’t get through nearly all of the recommendations I got for the project, but hey! I’m all set for next year. :) Anyway, October’s long gone, but here’s a brief rundown of the Horror Experiment, which I actually enjoyed quite a lot.

Val Lewton series

The Silent Movie Theatre devoted October to horror, as well, including a double-feature series of Val Lewton-produced films, which are among the best classic horror films ever made (along with the Universal monster series). I wrote a bit about most of Lewton’s films in this Film on TV post, when TCM played a Lewton festival. I won’t repeat myself on Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie or Isle of the Dead, or The Body Snatcher, except to say that I saw all of them for the second (or third, or fourth) time in October, and they get better each time. The only film in the Silent Movie Theatre’s series I hadn’t seen was The Ghost Ship (not to be confused with the 2002 film Ghost Ship), which isn’t particularly a horror film. It was a well-done psychological drama, exploring (as all of Lewton’s films do) the potential horror that anyone may carry within themselves – in this case, a ship’s second in command becoming paranoid that the captain may want him dead. It reminded me of The Caine Mutiny more than anything else.
Cat People – USA 1942; directed by Jacques Tourneur; starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith – IMDb
I Walked With a Zombie – USA 1943; directed by Jacques Tourneur; starring Frances Dee, James Ellison – IMDb
The Ghost Ship – USA 1943; directed by Mark Robson; starring Richard Dix, Russell Wade – IMDb
The Body Snatcher – USA 1945; directed by Robert Wise; starring Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell – IMDb
Isle of the Dead – USA 1945; directed by Mark Robson; starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew – IMDb
Amazon (box set of these all these Lewton films, plus a couple of others)

Night of the Living Dead

Zombies have always been a particular dislike of mine, keeping me away from pretty much all of George Romero’s films. But I bit the bullet and crossed the best-known zombie movie of all time off my list. And you know what? It’s good. And I think my blind hatred of zombies is fading (more on that in a bit). I found it especially interesting that the hero character is black – in 1968, Romero reversed racial stereotypes that still plague horror films today. I can’t decide whether I liked that the zombies were caused by radioactivity. It’s very classic sci-fi nuclear paranoia, but I sort of like horror to be more unexplained.
USA 1968; directed by George A. Romero; starring Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea
IMDb | Amazon (note: there are at least eight editions of Night of the Living Dead on DVD; from a bit of quick research, the Millennium Edition I’ve linked here seems to be unanimously the best print)

Rosemary’s Baby

I put this one off for a long time because I was afraid that a Roman Polanski-directed film about the birth of the anti-Christ would be too freaky. It isn’t. Most of it was actually a little boring. Lots of Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer being subtly odd and Mia Farrow being subtly creeped out. The part where she was impregnated by the devil was definitely freaky, but in a very over-the-top way that made it not quite work for me. I did, however, learn that if you do happen to be impregnated by the devil, be prepared for an extremely uncomfortable pregnancy.
USA 1968; directed by Roman Polanski; starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon
IMDb | Amazon

Tales from the Crypt

This got recommended me after I mentioned that 1945’s anthology film Dead of Night was one of my favorite horror movies. In this anthology horror film, five people get lost while exploring a crypt and the crypt-keeper tells them grisly stories that may be in the future – or in their past. The five stories are all interesting and macabre, almost like Twilight Zone episodes. I really like the anthology format; most horror films seem to have about a half-hour or hour long story stretched into two hours anyway.
USA 1972; directed by Freddie Francis; starring Ralph Richardson, Joan Collins, Peter Cushing
IMDb | Amazon

Retribution

I’ve delved a very little bit into the world of Japanese horror (with Kwaidan, which still deserves a rewatch from me, and Ringu, which I honestly didn’t like as much as its American remake), and though I’m still struggling with my understanding of Japanese cinema, Retribution is definitely my favorite Jhorror so far, and I’m looking foward to seeing some of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s other films. A detective is haunted by a woman in a red dress and has to delve deep in his memories to figure out why. It’s thoughtful, creepy, has lovely cinematography, and somehow the jump scenes didn’t bother me as much as usual. The end was a little disappointing, though – like Kurosawa didn’t quite know how to finish and just threw something on that doesn’t really make sense.
Japan 2006; directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; starring Kôji Yakusho, Riona Hazuki
IMDb | Amazon

Planet Terror

Here’s how I know my zombie-hatred is on the way out. I LOVED Planet Terror. I avoided even the idea of seeing Grindhouse in theatres, because it sounded so totally not my thing, and I never thought that I would remotely enjoy Robert Rodriguez’s part of the double-feature more than Tarantino’s. (I never did make it through Death Proof, out of sheer boredom.) But Planet Terror takes Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, Kill Bill, and I don’t know what all else and turns up the gleeful schlock meter to eleven. You’ve got zombies, gratuitous blood, sharpshooters, explosions, girls with machine gun legs, and dialogue like “Looks like a no-brainer!” (from an ER doctor regarding a patient – in the next shot, we see she literally has no brains, presumably because the zombies have eaten them). My liking Planet Terror as much as I did is basically a giant flashing neon sign that I have been avoiding horror movies for far too long, at least the schlocky b-movie kind.
USA 2007; directed by Robert Rodriguez; starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez
IMDb | Amazon

Let the Right One In

At the other side of the spectrum from Planet Terror is this unusual Swedish vampire flick, which may still be playing in limited release. Catch it if you can. A young boy, ridiculed and bullied at school, befriends his new neighbor, a mysterious girl who seems much sadder and wiser than her apparent age. Then there are some murders and it starts getting harder for her to keep her true nature hidden, and the boy has to choose how to react to her after he finds out what she is. The pacing is leisurely, the photography moody – wait, it’s a Swedish film, these things are taken for granted. There are a couple of incongruously comic scenes that I didn’t care for too much, and I think the film has been overhyped by critics, but in general, it is a welcome and refreshing change from the average horror film.
Sweden 2008; directed by Tomas Alfredson ; starring Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson
IMDb | Amazon (coming to DVD March 9, 2009)

Netflix Recommendations, or How I Apparently Ruin the Queue Curve

By Jandy

On November 22, 2008

In Film

The million dollar prize for improving Netflix’s recommendation system (Cinematch) by 10% has been out there for a couple of years now, and programmers are now within a few tenths of a percent of getting there. The New York Times has a new article about it here. Not a lot of new information over the various articles that have come out since the prize was announced, but I’m still stymied by how weird I am, apparently, in the movie rental world.

Cinematch has, in fact, become a video-store roboclerk: its suggestions now drive a surprising 60 percent of Netflixâ€™s rentals. It also often steers a customerâ€™s attention away from big-grossing hits toward smaller, independent movies. Traditional video stores depend on hits; just-out-of-the-theaters blockbusters account for 80 percent of what they rent. At Netflix, by contrast, 70 percent of what it sends out is from the backlist â€” older movies or small, independent ones. A good recommendation system, in other words, does not merely help people find new stuff. As Netflix has discovered, it also spurs them to consume more stuff.

For Netflix, this is doubly important. Customers pay a flat monthly rate, generally $16.99 (although cheaper plans are available), to check out as many movies as they want. The problem with this business model is that new members often have a couple of dozen movies in mind that they want to see, but after that theyâ€™re not sure what to check out next, and their requests slow. And a customer paying $17 a month for only one movie every month or two is at risk of canceling his subscription; the plan makes financial sense, from a userâ€™s point of view, only if you rent a lot of movies.

Okay, first off, I do want to know how they’re deriving the fact that Cinematch is responsible for 60% of Netflix’s rentals. Are they going off how many people rent movies from the recommendation page or from the “movies like this” thing that pops up when you add a movie to your queue? Because if so, the number’s suspect. To me, saying a recommendation system is responsible for a rental means that the person would not have rented it without the recommendation. But I add things ALL THE TIME from the pop up thing not because I didn’t know about the film or that I wanted to rent it but because it’s convenient and saves me from having to search for it. But that’s a bit by the by.

“New members often have a couple of dozen movies in mind that they want to see, but after that they’re not sure what to check out next.” Wow. I can’t even imagine that. I have somewhere around 1450 films spread across three Netflix queues (you can only have 500 per queue), and that’s not including the 400+ discs worth of TV shows that I have in yet another queue. (It does, however, include several instant watch movies that I’ve seen before and probably wouldn’t rent if they weren’t streaming for free.) A couple of dozen? I’m sorry, I can’t wrap my head around that. There are probably 24 films in theatrical release RIGHT NOW I’d see. Much less the last 100 years of cinematic history. Clearly I am strange.

There’s also an interesting bit earlier in the article about how much Napoleon Dynamite; and other love-them-or-hate-them films like Lost in Translation; and I Heart Huckabees; throw off the system, because it’s so difficult to predict whether someone will like them or not. I can totally see that, and all the films they mentioned are ones that I tend to avoid recommending most of the time, for the same reason. Except Lost in Translation, because I have mad, blind love for Sofia Coppola.

The good thing about all this is, I think, the fact that the recommendations are apparently encouraging people to check out more offbeat, older, and independent films. That’s a great thing about a subscription service with so wide a selection – the cost of experimentation is very low. I often think this should be a critic’s job, too – rather than warn people away from the latest multiplex blockbuster that they’re going to see anyway, turn them on to a hidden gem they might otherwise miss amidst the flurry of big studio publicity. (I think Netflix should put up pages for all the major festivals, since that’s where the best indies first come to light. It would certainly save me a lot of time and effort currently spent in searching Netflix for every festival film every few months in case it suddenly ended up with a distribution deal. /selfish)

So tell me, do you use Netflix’s recommendations? Or if you’re not a Netflix subscriber, some other sort of algorithmic recommenations, like Flixster? Does it influence 60% of your rentals? Does anyone relyÂ on recommendations of this sort, rather than also factoring in human recommendations, whether from friends, critics, or bloggers – or a personal affinity for a cast or crew member? In other words, if Netflix recommended a movie (with a higher than 4.5 predicted star rating, let’s say) you hadn’t heard of, and you didn’t know any of the actors or the director, would you rent it without digging up more info? I wouldn’t. But as already decided, I am strange. And maybe I would get to that unknown film, once I got done with the 1400 already in my queue. :)

Ooh, just got to the end of the article (yes, I’m reading and writing at the same time – sue me), and found this: “[Netflix CEO Reed] Hastings is even considering hiring cinephiles to watch all 100,000 movies in the Netflix library and write up, by hand, pages of adjectives describing each movie, a cloud of tags that would offer a subjective view of what makes films similar or dissimilar. It might imbue Cinematch with more unpredictable, humanlike intelligence.” I WANT THAT JOB. When that job is posted, Mr. Hastings, let me know, mmkay?