Tuesday, October 21, 2008

On netflix surprises.

My friend Joe and I were recently discussing the notion of "netflix suprises". It's fun every now and then to treat yourself to a surprise by not looking at your netflix queue and then getting a random movie in the mail. "How could this happen, because people make their own queues?" you may ask. Well, netflix makes recommendations for every choice you make, so you often end up throwing movies on your queue that you've never really heard of but look decent.

Thing is, they are most often the antithesis of decent.

Case in point: Last week "December Boys" came in the mail. It's a film starring one Mr. Daniel Radcliffe as an Australian orphan who has three orphan best friends who were all born in December. Due to a generous donation, the four boys get to go on a holiday by the sea. They soon find out that a neighbor couple is considering adopting one of them, and tension ensues. High point: Frequently, throughout the movie, they all join hands and yell "DECEMBER BOOOOOOOOYS!"

Case in point 2: Joe describes his latest netflix surprise. "My last netflix surprise was "wilderness," a tale of juvenile delinquents in Ireland who bully each other in the work house resulting in one's suicide -- then said delinquents are taken to an 'uninhabited' island where they are set upon by a psychotic archer with trained flesh eating dogs... a bloody, gory teenage romp ensues. Yay netflix."

I'm going to layoff my neflix surprises for a while.

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