Instant Fix: Jackie’s Netflix Top 5

Caelyn was right, sometimes Netflix does take over my life.  And sometimes, it’s in a really good way:

5) Bill Cunningham New York

If you’ve ever perused the Style section of the New York Times, you may recognize the name Bill Cunningham from his “On the Street” column.  This documentary gives a peek into his fascinating life: he lives in Carnegie Hall (in an apartment without its own bathroom or kitchen), is tremendously frugal, and has incredibly strong convictions about how to do his work, which has allowed him to forge his own path in the fashion community and still be wildly adored by everyone.  Seriously, just watch this and then tell me you don’t find him completely endearing.

Do-overs.

“You will never watch a movie twice when you’re with me,” my boyfriend always says. I believe this is largely a ploy to get out of watching the weird assortment of movies that I am enthusiastically convinced are “classics” based on a single late-night viewing five years ago on my father’s satellite movie channels. However, I applaud him for sticking to his guns. “It’s just not as much fun if you’ve seen it before,” he protests.

As a serial re-watcher of television shows and movies, I have to say that I blatantly disregard this principle in my personal life.  I say this as I flip to Bring It On (2000) playing on the WE channel. I saw Bring It On in theaters, because I was then a Pee Wee cheerleader, and then later saw it many other times in 2000, with my fellow Pee Wee cheerleaders. Now it’s on the channel for middle-aged women who are too cool for Lifetime, and I will watch it again! Not only do I watch movies and TV shows more than once, I don’t even reserve this weird habit for really (or even sort of) good entertainment.

I re-watch for the same reason I have been putting off reading Pale Fire for several years even though I really, really want to read it. Because 75% of the time, I need a break from thinking about stuff. I want to kick back and mindlessly watch some Buffy. Let me remind you, I started watching Buffy in 1997. It went off the air in 2002. I have gotten to the point where I can ‘start watching’ Buffy on any episode after a long Buffy-less spell and know exactly what’s going on. And don’t get me started on Law & Order marathons, aka the entire A&E channel all the time. Sequence and overaching plot do not matter. It’s my ultimate hangover cure.

Many would feel that this is a colossal and mind-rotting waste of time. I, in fact, feel this way a lot of the time. But then I ask myself: would I honestly rather be watching 8-1/2 when my mind can clearly only process art at the level of a teen movie re-run? Ah, let me relax from my long day with some Italian art house cinema. I mean, really. I just started a new job and am learning a new software program every other day. Grocery shopping in my new neighborhood is still a grand and complicated adventure. Wouldn’t be a waste of time to try to force myself to experience something thought-provoking when my thoughts are already done being provoked? In my experience, every time I do this I end up hating whatever it was I tried to watch, even if it wasn’t all that bad for any objective or quantifiable reason. Like 8-1/2, which I tried to Netflix Instant a couple of years ago after being dumped. I didn’t even finish it–that how much of a chance I gave that one.

I’d pontificate about this more, but it’s getting late and those vampires aren’t going to slay themselves. Adios.