10.08.2007

wmtc movie season is officially open

The Red Sox won the Division Series (the first round of playoffs), completing the three-game sweep with a thrubbing of the Team Formerly Known As Anaheim in their own corporate ballpark.

We were hoping for sweeps in every division series, which would have been a first, but Cleveland fell down on the job, and the Yankees won a game. We won't know who we play in the League Championship until that series ends.

This means, among other things, that I have a lot of free evenings coming up, so it seemed like a good time to re-join Zip.

I had some problems with them a while back (follow-up here, then improvement here), but I've decided to rejoin. No other option gives me such a huge selection. Throw in convenience and value, and I'm pretty much stuck with them.

Since my main problem with Zip was the order in which they shipped my movies, I'll tweak the system a bit to make it work for me.

With Netflix (pre-Canada), our movie queue represented every movie we might ever wish to see - Laura and Allan's movie universe. I didn't keep a movie list anymore: whenever I heard of a movie that sounded interesting, or thought of an old movie I wanted to see again, I would just throw it on the queue.

With Zip, since they were unable to get their priority-order system working, I'll have to keep our ZipList short and sweet. If it only contains my top 10 titles, then any movie they send will be high priority. And perhaps they've improved while I've been watching baseball. It could happen.

So that brings me to The List.

Back in July, I said:
This reminds me that I have not seen a single movie since Opening Day. Not one. We used to watch movies on off nights, or when there's a day game, or sometimes when our team is on the west coast. But now when there's no game, we just want to hang out in our backyard.

And, since I expect the Red Sox to play in (and win) the World Series, I won't see a movie til November.

I never even finished my movie list from the 2006 baseball season. I might have to give up on the list altogether.

This turned out to be true straight through October. Not one movie. Can you imagine how far behind I am on movie viewing? I guess I'm fortunate that the majority of movies don't interest me. But still. It's ridiculous.

So... what have you seen in the past six months that's been particularly memorable?

To give you an idea of what movies I like, I'll share my current short ZipList, which I reconstructed this morning. These are movies that were on my to-see list before baseball season started.
Sicko - yes, I never saw Sicko, but I will soon
Volver
Away From Her
The Queen
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Notes on a Scandal
The Simpsons Movie (just added that)
The Son (Le Fils)
Little Miss Sunshine
Flirting
The Hoax
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
The History Boys
Brick
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

We like good dramas, political movies, solid independent films with good writing and great acting, paranoid thrillers, noir, cons, smart comedies, and the occaisional dumb comedy but it had better be really funny. We see everything by Almodóvar, John Sayles and Ken Loach. I like movies with strong, convincing teenage characters, like Thirteen and Show Me Love.

No science fiction, no movies primarily seen for special effects, car chases or explosions. No giant armies running across sweeping plains holding up weapons and shouting. Coming of age, coming out, coming apart: good. Grossing out, catch phrases, celebrity vehicles: bad.

I just flipped through some of my old Netflix queues, and picked out some favourites from past years:
Bad Education
Vera Drake
Control Room
Super Size Me
The Station Agent
The Fog of War
The Triplets of Belleville
My Life Without Me
28 Days Later
L.I.E.
Spellbound (the spelling bee movie, although I love the Hitchcock classic, too)
The Dancer Upstairs
Hidden Agenda
8 Mile
Lumumba
Talk to Her
25th Hour
Y Tu Mama Tambien
American Movie
Our Song

OK, your go. What really good movies have you seen in the last six months? And, part two, what movies have you seen that you think I might like?

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