The best of Netflix and streaming video

I don’t go to the movies that often, but I do watch a lot of them at home …

Mrs. Palin will be right back

February 5, 2012

OK, now Romney rules in Nevada too. I guess we saw that coming. But one thing that’s puzzled me about the GOP race is this: Whatever happened to Sarah Palin? I realize she long ago ruled out a run for president — a simple scheduling conflict — but I considered her incapable of keeping her [...]

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Netflix as a force for global understanding

February 1, 2012

One thing about having guests from Cuba when you don’t speak Spanish: You can quickly run out of things to talk about after dinner. Naturally, I turned to Netflix. Netflix has a modest catalog of Spanish films. I thought I did too, but it turns out nearly all my DVDs offer only French and English [...]

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A little too much magic

January 27, 2012

Sometimes you watch movies by yourself because you don’t want anyone else to know you’re watching these movies. I don’t mean porn. I’m talking about Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I recently reactivated the old Netflix DVD queue and for some reason stuck Part 1 on there, along with a few other recent titles [...]

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If you only see one silent film this year …

January 25, 2012

Expanding on yesterday’s post, we did go and see The Artist. Two thumbs up. While it’s hard to judge whether the movie’s appeal derives more from the gimmick ( a silent film in black and white) or the story (the inevitable arc of celebrity in Hollywood), maybe it’s best not to overthink it. What I [...]

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Limit the Oscar nominees to those I’ve seen

January 24, 2012

Of this year’s Oscar nominees, so far I’ve seen three: The Descendants, Moneyball and War Horse. Tonight, the wife and I may go see The Artist. Maybe we’ll get to some of the others too, but really: the nominees are no longer must-see cinema, are they? Were they ever? We just go for the same [...]

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Would you mind shutting the hell up?

January 23, 2012

Don’t you hate asking people behind you in a theater to keep quiet? I do. I always fret that it might escalate into something undignified, like a fistfight in the parking lot. Sometimes appeals to common courtesy hit people the wrong way. It’s like you flipped them the bird or keyed their Camaro. But I [...]

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The guns of New Year’s

January 1, 2012
war horse thumbnail

The New Year is happy so far: I am beginning it with no hangover. Last night we ushered out the old year by watching a lightly-attended showing of War Horse. Later at home we viewed brief snippets of the movies Charade and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. We opened a bottle of cheap bubbly but [...]

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Edward and Bella sittin’ in a tree …

November 18, 2011

You know, I’m almost tempted to go see this new Twilight movie “Breaking Wind Dawn.” The last one I saw was so bad that it was almost fun to watch. Almost, but not quite. From the reviews I’m seeing, this latest one could be a genuine laff riot for somebody like me, who likes to [...]

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With Democrats like these …

November 8, 2011
george clooney ryan gosling

These days, making films about evil Republicans is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I was pleased to see that The Ides of March didn’t take the easy route. Oh, the malevolent hand of the GOP still looms in the background — this is George Clooney’s film, after all — but he spares us [...]

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And the winner of the 2012 Emmies is …

October 11, 2011
bryan cranston in breaking bad

You’ll forgive me if I post a little more praise for Breaking Bad, AMC’s excellent series about the vagaries of the meth business in greater Albuquerque. We just watched the final episode of Season Four: Superb. TV doesn’t get better than this. Movies don’t either. This episode and this season are so good that the [...]

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