The Parade's Gone By...

"The secret of the silent film lay in its unique ability to conjure up a situation that closely involved an audience, because demands were made on its imagination. The audience responded to suggestion, supplied the missing sounds and voices, and became a creative contributor to the process of projection."
--Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By...

lbangs on listology.com recommended this book to me.

Wait status

Out of 489 titles in my queue, only 9 have a wait status other than "now". I average about 20 rentals per month on the 5-out plan. I have been a member since January 12, 2004.

Progress Part 2

In response to receiving four titles from me today, Netflix is shipping one today, and three tomorrow. I think that's because the latter three are not available from the local DC. They quickly filled my first slot this morning with the only title available at the local DC and waited until afternoon to ship the others, because they were checking inventory at nearby DCs.

ROTTEN TOMATOES: Movie Reviews & Previews

New to the Links menu. Essential.

Also added IMDB, but of course, if you didn't know about IMDB, I wouldn't let you read my blog, now would I?

The Criterion Collection

Another way to find excellent films for the queue.

Progress

I returned 4 titles yesterday, so last night was a Netflix-free deadzone. I had to go to Hollywood Video. I rented The Manchurian Candidate, Owning Mahony, and Reservoir Dogs, so now I can remove them from my queue. Good news is that I can keep them all until Sunday and it was only $8.54. I must have had a $ credit left over.

More good news is that Netflix received my four titles TODAY and is shipping their replacements TODAY. They had to skip the top three in my queue to find one immediately available. I have a lot of rare silent titles from the 20's at the top. They're rare because the old films cost so much to restore. The DVDs are expensive, usually in excess of $20 even on Amazon, new or used.

I broke my promise to myself, which was that I wouldn't add anything else to my queue. I wanted to see a sample of William S. Hart's work, because he's supposed to be the prototypical authentic cowboy, so I rented a couple of his titles which are in the silent Western genre. One of them also contains a Will Rogers spoof.

The Greatest Films (according to Tim Dirks)

I love this site! Loads of great suggestions for my queue. Gives a great overview of early film history. Inspires my appreciation for the accomplishments of earliest filmmakers. I've viewed many of the 100 greatest silents.

The bfi 100

The British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films of the 20th Century are a good starting point for familiarizing myself with what the British think are the greatest British films. Interesting, because Netflix hardly even categorizes many of these as "British". For example, Netflix categorizes The Third Man as film noir, classic, suspense--but not British.

Broke even

Today marks the break-even point of the month for me. I've succeeded in watching 8 DVDs on the 5-out plan, which makes them $3.75 each, equal to Blockbster or H'wood Video. This is the latest in the month it has ever occurred.

My listology profile: RosieCotton

I am RosieCotton. There, I've said it. Boy, do I feel better now.

Welcome to Netflix Fan's blog

At the urging of my friend MikeK at hackingnetflix.com, I've finally put my annoying chatter out where the FBI can find it. I'm a fan of Netflix, the online DVD subscription service. As of today, I have 490 movies in my queue. Viewing them at the rate of four per week, it will take 2.35 years to see them all. That's if I stop adding to it now :).