My highest ranked friend

I've been checking out the new Community features on Netflix.com. Now our Netflix profiles include a ranking, based on how "influential" we are at using our reviews and lists to get other folks to watch more movies. My rank is 28,188, which isn't bad, considering how many millions of us there are. But then I saw my friend Walt D in LV, whose rank is 838! I have to get busy writing more reviews.

I met Walt through this blog. He is always sending us, his Netflix friends, interesting Movie Notes on everything he sees.

Here are the stats from his profile:

Member since June 2007
rank 838
72% similar to NetflixFan
19 friends
235 reviews
3 lists

Have you noticed your rank? What do you think of it?

Mad queue disease

I've emptied my queue! Yes, I'm just kidding. My queue hasn't been empty since January 12, 2004. But in a way I have. At one point, I had maxed out my queue with 500 titles from the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Netflix has just sent me the last one.

According to my Netflix History, which I keep in Netflix Freak, Netflix has sent me 606 titles since I joined.

But an empty queue is the devil's playground, so I am madly refilling it with the 389 movies I haven't seen of the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made.

"notes to Netflix" gets a nod from Northborough Netflix

Awhile back, Miss Plum started putting sticky notes on their Netflix returns, and posting photos of the "notes to Netflix" on Flickr. The notes generated a small bit of controversy, because some thought the folks working at Netflix wouldn't want to be bothered. But in the Netflix distribution center in Northborough, Massachusetts, they feel differently:

Even as Cotto and her colleagues are tearing through hundreds of returned DVDs, they take moments to read the angry notes ("This doesn't play - defective!") or occasional rave reviews ("Very funny movie, check it out!") that customers scribble on the paper sleeves.

"We like that," said Cotto, 40, of Worcester. "Sometimes, we do watch them." The notes are forwarded to customer service headquarters in Hillsboro, Ore.

That's good to know.

The rest of the August 23 article, The vast picture show, in a warehouse near you (the Boston Globe), is a good read, and it has an interesting photo gallery of behind the scenes at Netflix.

Hat tip: HackingNetflix

Reed's blog

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, Inc., has joined the Blogosphere, using none other than Blogger and Blogspot, just like one of us.

His Blogger profile is pretty plain at the moment, but his "My Web page" link goes to, guess where, Netflix.com. Is that cute, or what?

He's allowing you to comment, but no email at the moment.

I feel like I could give him a hug.

Via HackingNetflix

What do three stars mean?

According to Netflix, three stars is neutral. I rate most movies on Netflix at three stars. I think it means the movie was OK, but not great, not bad, and still worth a look. I feel like I give every movie a three, so I decided to graph my ratings to see if I really do. The result is a kind of bell curve, I reckon. The data consists of just the 150 movies I've seen so far this year.

Progress report on the 1001 Movies

It's been three months since I last reported on my quest to see all of the titles in Stephen Jay Schneider's book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the 2002 edition. I started in 2004, having seen about 200 of them, and now I have seen 978.

Netflix sent me 595 of them.

Of the 23 remaining, eight are in my Netflix Queue. I have three from Netflix at home. I bought two on eBay. One I have to rent at the video store. One I have to watch at the UNC Chapel Hill library. The final eight are unavailable on home video, or if available, in a foreign language without English subtitles.

I'm going through the book in chronological order, and I just finished the decade of the Nineties.

If you're working on the same list, please let me know how far along you are. I haven't heard of anyone who has completed the list yet. You can track, share, and compare your progress on the fourth edition (2006) of the book at Lists of bests.

For low-budget filmmakers

Dependent Films is an "Illinois Based Independent Film Company" which has very helpfully posted a bunch of Tools & Utilities for filmmakers on their Website, like script formatting templates, sample contracts, agreements, and forms you need if you're making a movie.

All or nothing in the wrong direction-[corrected]

Thanks to Meg's comment on my previous post about Netflix's new help center, I see that Netflix kinda went all or nothing in the wrong direction. In response to the clamoring for more telephone support, they did away with the email support completely!! There are no longer any "contact us" Web forms to use to get an email reply, so even for something as routine as title suggestions or Web site corrections, you have to speak to a human. Egads!

I'm sorry to be hard to please, but I was one of the people who liked not dealing with customer support by telephone. Bring back the email robots! Maybe it's just a temporary thing. I hope.

CORRECTION: As Meg pointed out in the comments on Hacking Netflix, the Contact Us Web forms are still available, but not through the Help Center.

Rescue Dawn: the truth

I just saw the movie Rescue Dawn, about a German-American, named Dieter Dengler, who was taken prisoner by the Vietnamese in 1965. It's a great movie, by one of my favorite directors, Werner Herzog. Werner Herzog also made a documentary in 1997 about Dieter, called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which I haven't seen, but now I want to.

You should go into the movie with the understanding that it is a fictionalized account of what happened. What that means to me, is that events and characters were altered. Some say distorted. After you see the movie, you should check out Rescue Dawn: The Truth, which is a Web site where the folks who know the real story reveal some details which will change your perception of the characters in the film.

IMDB top 250 you can Watch Now

Larry Gilbert, whom I found on Lists of Bests, has compiled a list of movies from the IMDB top 250 list which are available to Watch Now on Netflix. He's using Google Docs to host the IMDB tob 250+Netflix Watch Now list, and each movie is linked directly to its place on Watch Now.

Netflix coffee cup on eBay

Next in the "I've been fired!" series on eBay is a Red, Black and Stainless Netflix logo Coffee Cup

Netflix cake

Netflix, originally uploaded by Simflips.

For my next birthday, someone should bake me this cake.

Easier to get help from Netflix

Netflix has upgraded their online Help Center to make it easier to navigate. Now it takes just 3 clicks to get to their customer service phone number, and it's available 24/7. I don't know how long it's been since they stopped having limited hours, but I only noticed it a short while ago. They must have finally decided you Luddites out there were going to refuse to be content with a Web robot handling all your issues.

They gave me a 6-digit reference number to use when I call, which I blocked out, because I don't know if you can use it to get my account information.

ex-Netflix employee selling goodies on eBay

This guy worked for Netflix, and got a bunch of good schwag that he plans to sell on eBay, starting with this Netflix "What's in your queue? hat
He says:

I was unceremoniously let go from my manager job of 4 years at Netflix and now my wife say's all my Netflix memorabilia must exit our house. Up for auction is this fine red beanie hat that I received at one of our annual manager meetings in Park City, Utah. It is embroidered with “what’s in your queue?" It was never worn and is from a smoke free and soon to be up for sale home. Look for other Netflix items that I will have posted soon. I will end the auction early if someone will pay off my house :) Thanks for looking. Good Luck. If bidding goes over $1000, I will include the Chuck E. Cheese basketball used as a the head model :)

The location of the hat is Olive Branch, Mississipi, which is 3 hours away from Jackson, MS, the location of the only distribution center I know of in Mississippi. However, Olive Branch is just over the border from Memphis, Tennessee. The guy says he was a manager. I reckon that means a distribution center manager. I don't have an address for a DC in Memphis, but I believe there is one.

The lucky guy went to Park City (where the Sundance film festival is, and Netflix has staff attending the fest every year). What a great job, if your staff meetings take place at a film festival!

Summer blockbuster cartoons

I love the summer time, when I can see a new Hollywood blockbuster every week, especially the plethora of animated films with which we've been blessed. Last week, I gasped in wonder at the beauty of Ratatouille. Last night, I laughed out loud at Live Free or Die Hard.

I wonder if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will allow 20th Century Fox to enter Die Hard in the animated category for the Oscars. According to their definition of an animated film, I think it qualifies: "animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time."

Netflix at CurrentCodes.com

Keep an eye on CurrentCodes.com for special deals from Netflix. CurrentCodes.com is a Web site with a full-time staff whose only job is to collect and post promotional codes for over a thousand retailers. They accept submissions, too, so if you learn of any promo codes, share them.

Now you can drag and drop movies in your queue

Netflix has made it possible for you to change the position of your movies in your queue just by dragging and dropping them. You have to put your pointer over the movie until it turns into a little grippy-hand. Then you can click and drag the movie to a new queue position. Or you can still sort them by changing the movie's number and clicking the "update your queue" button.

I'm glad that the Netflix Web site announced this new feature, instead of waiting for us to figure it out.

AFI 100 Years...100 Movies...10th Anniversary Edition

The American Film Institute has come out with an updated list of the greatest American movies of the last 100 years, for the tenth anniversary of the first list, and I've already seen all of them! It's a very good list, better than the one they did in 1996. I recommend it as a minimum for every Netflix member. Netflix has a link to the AFI list, but it's broken at the moment; perhaps because they are working on the new list. :)

UPDATE - the link is working again, and the Netflix site has been updated with the latest AFI 100 Great Movies. Four on the list are not available on DVD.

Listology is looking for a site-admin

One of my favorite Web sites in the WHOLE WORLD was created by a really nice guy who, after running it himself for a few years, wants to find "an active administrator, someone who will respond to feature requests, strive to keep the site up-to-date, give it a shiny new web 2.0 look, etc"

Listology is a repository of user-generated lists. Right now, the site is pretty plain-text, which is one of its appeals. It loads fast and is easy to update. It's also very Netflix-friendly. It's the home of the Netflix Tracker, where I keep track of all the movies I get from Netflix and what distribution center they come from. Listology is also where I share my Netflix Queue with the world. Listology is a great place to go if you are looking for ideas for your queue.

Netflix's IP neighbors

Using myIPneighbors.com, the Reverse IP Domain Check DNS Tool, you can see which domains besides Netflix.com point to the same IP address. The IP address of Netflix is 208.75.76.17.