Asa, a loyal MR reader, asks:
you said you stopping doing Netflix because you felt that the waiting
Netflix discs sometimes felt like a burden to you. Have you changed
your mind on this? I use Netflix, but sometimes I feel compelled to
watch a disc I have at home just to get "the Queue flowing again" even
if I don't really feel like watching it at the moment. In reality I
should just send the disc back if I don't want to watch it anymore, but
somehow that seems like a waste. I'm wondering if you have more
thoughts on this.
My problem with movies is simple. I can read faster than some people, but I can't watch a movie faster than anyone. So the relative price of movie-watching for me is high (the marginal utility of books does not for me decline rapidly) and often I need the big screen to hold my interest. Nonetheless I read Essential Cinema and the new David Thomson book — both superb — and decided I wanted to see a chunk of movies. I've already blogged Satantango and Ruiz's Time Regained was a surprisingly good cinematic treatment of Proust (no jokes please). I'm looking forward to I Am Cuba, Cat People (the original), Peeping Tom, Bottle Rocket, Night Moves, The Letter, Pasolini's Salo, and about fifteen others. Probably then I'll quit again.
By the way, the movies I liked this year were Man on Wire, Let the Right One In, the first thirty minutes of Wall-E, Encounters at the End of the World, In Bruges, Burn After Reading, and Transporter 3. I haven't yet seen either Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) or Gran Torino but I expect to like both. I even enjoyed Vicki Cristina Barcelona, against all expectations.
Tonight, from this very good article, I read a very good sentence: "In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them."
Have you considered Blockbuster Online instead? If you don’t feel like watching what was mailed to you, you can exchange it in the store for something else.
Get the movie with subtitles, and then you CAN watch it faster.
Providing you have a good player that will play the subtitles smoothly at 2x.
(Idea lifted shamelessly from some book, it may have been “Microserfs” or “The first $50 million is always the hardest.”)
But I’ve found that you will want to slow down to normal for the fight/sex scenes.
but I can’t watch a movie faster than anyone.
teens can . Why do you think there is a fast forward bottom ?
A 6 hour movie with ” a glacial pace”? fast forward enough slow to read the subtitles.
Or as a teeen does jump to the interesating parts, like you do reading
A basic Netflix membership (about $9 per month) with a Roku is a very good deal.
I have found that much of the tv I watch is better watched with lots of fast forwarding. Reality shows like top chef/project runway can have an entertaining season long arc, but with fast forwarding each hour long show can easily be watched about 25 min without losing anything, and could probably be shortened to less than 15 min if it was actually edited down for efficiency.
Shows like Colbert Report can be watched in 5 min. Fast forward to each gag, if it isn’t funny skip to the next one. And then only watch the interview if you are grabbed by the 30 seconds or you have a previous interest in the interviewee.
Mediocre movies, if you want to watch them for some gimmick or because they are iconic, are also best watched this way. You can get through one in about 30 min.
It probably isn’t surprising that I like The Soup, which I’ve found is a good aggregator of funny media/pop culture I would not have otherwise encountered. With a tivo I watch a lot of tv in only about 4 hours a week.
If it helps your selection, “Bottle Rocket” has a handful of delightful scenes but overall feels longer than its runtime.
“Night Moves” gets better once it’s over. I think that’s a compliment.
“Salo”‘s legal in this country?
I also agree with the WALL-E appraisal, with the caveat that the dancing sequence is easily the highlight of the movie.
I am Cuba is highly suggested!!
The photography is superb. A very good film with high documentary value.
In case the reason you can’t watch movies faster is a lack of software, I recommend http://www.gomlab.com/eng/
You just press ‘c’ to make playback faster (audio too), ‘x’ to make it slower.
I watch many movies at 1.2x normal speed, and often much faster towards the end if the movie’s not holding my interest.
VKT has the most perceptive comment yet, including all of Tyler’s.
My wife likes the Transporter movies because Jason Statham takes his shirt off. I wonder what the appeal to Tyler is?
Bottle Rocket is a good movie. I hope you enjoy it.
Here’s a few other worth watching (if I do say so myself): There Will Be Blood, Seven Samurai and The Fall.
Look them up and read the reviews to see if you would like them. There Will Be Blood should have won best of the year. The Fall sounds silly but is, in fact, a very enjoyable film. Seven Samurai is an old black-and-white subtitled (Japanese) samurai movie. It is considered to be one of the best movies ever made. The American western The Magnificent Seven, as well as some other films, were based on Seven Samurai.
No mention for Slumdog Millionaire?
Michael F. Martin: I think you have a flawed premise. I don’t think it’s a general fact that people read faster than they listen. I think different people process at different speeds. The difference is that with written communication, each reader can take it at his own speed; whereas if you’re recording audio for mass consumption, you have to record it slow enough for most people to process.
Two examples: I’m in math grad school right now, and the lecturers talk fast enough that I think I’m getting information faster from them than I would if I read. But, of course, the population is pre-culled to consist of those who can keep up.
Second, consider this video, the first one. It’s a time-limited talk by a lawyer. Most of my friends thought he spoke so fast as to be nigh-on incomprehensible. I thought he was talking at just the right speed.
As a slightly older woman, I can’t stand most movies. Two hours of just sitting there watching most movies is time wasted, and I don’t have a lot of free time. And I’m reluctant to start a movie because it’s hard to leave it in the middle because: maybe it’ll get better, maybe there will be a point, I still want to know the end, and we paid good money to see the piece of crap. Most movies are predictable and trite. But I’ll watch 13th Warrior again and again.
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