esrosedotblog

1000

Let me explain. When I started subscribing to Netflix, we had no trouble finding films we wanted to see. We sat with Dave's list and took off from that. We followed the Netflix reccomendations until I realized that the algorithm did not fit somehow. There was no trouble until about the time we hit 100 films in the queue. Then what? I began to get into the video-store-meander mode. You know; where they don't have what you want and you don't have a back up and you start to look through the stacks and then you OD on titles and eventually leave in a state of Vid-shock.

At about this time I found the The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made in the New York Times. I am a sucker for lists. I looked it over. I realized that I had NOT seen many of these films and many that I had seen were way way in the past and I would really really like to see them again. So I started to work films from the list into my Netflix queue. For awhile I randomed them into the mix of other films we wanted to see. Soon, however, this strategy came up short as I was not really following a regimen. It allowed for taste and bias to slip in. So I took the bull by the horns and simply began at the beginning and determined to work my way through from A to Z.

The first surprise was that the list does not begin at 'a'; it begins with films that have numbers: 10; 12 ANGRY MEN, 1900, 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY; 32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLEN GOULD; THE 400 BLOWS and so on. Second surprise (well, not really): Not all the 1000 Best Films are on DVD or even on video tape. For example, one of the best films beginning with a number is 7UP/28UP; a documentary which follows the lives of a group of 7 year olds through to their 14th, 21st, qnd 28th birthdays. Happy to say, that Netflix has virtually ALL the 1000 that are in print.

Here is where we stand. From here forward, the queue will spit out all the available 1000BestFilms in alphabetic (and numeric) order. I have queued them up so that I now have about 400 films waiting (we are allowed 500--I will not make the record 14hundred something because they put a sock on it after the runup). It is of abiding interest to me how the arbitrariness of the queuing has created neat juxtapositions and contrasts. It has been a lot of fun. If and when films become available I will go back and fold them in as arbitrarily. This isn't too nutty or obsessive is it?