johnnyhongkong says…

Slate has a fun article by Sam Anderson about the Netflix friends feature which allows you to see your friends queues and vice versa.

I was reminded of my shopping list post. By being able to see what strangers (or your friends) might like to eat or need to buy at the market, you glean little bits of information not intended for you.

Same with Netflix. We add to our queue, move things around, rate movies without thinking that our friends might be passing judgment that we’ve just moved SpaceCamp or Benchwarmers up to the top of our queue while their recommendations languish at the bottom or that we even wanted to watch crap like that in the first place.

And what to make of the friend having Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story at home for 2 months.  Is he lazy? Or did he just love it that much? Or is he waiting to watch the commentary track?

How about the guy who boasts about reclaiming his cojones by sitting at home and watching football on Sunday and then turns around watches The Way We Were on Wednesday?

But who says that movie watching or grocery buying has to be internally consistent?

I think that Anderson’s “critical binaries” misses the big picture. I don’t care that my friends rate Harold and Kumar go to White Castle better than Citizen Kane; that’s like comparing cheeseburgers to oranges.

What I am interested in are the vast rating disparities, where my taste in films differ from my friends.   A quick look into my ratings show that I am about 70-80% consistent with my Netflix buddies which (and I am no mathematician) means that my friends and I have similar tastes in movies.  I want to know about the 20-30% where we totally disagree.
For example, my friends rate Saving Private Ryan from 3-4 stars while I gave it a 1. My friends rate The Rock 1 3/4 stars whereas in my book, it’s a 4-starer.

It’s about distinctions of taste; how cinematic palates differ, if you will.  Like, I want to know what’s up with Lee-Roy that he only gave Chungking Express 2 stars.
Anyway, when cinetrix turned down my invitation to be Netflix friend, she said that she’d first have to “clean up” her queue. I wonder what was on it. It couldn’t be any worse than what I have at home or have coming.

At Home:
1 Garden State
2 Final Destination 3
3 Inside Man

Next 10 coming:

Good Night, and Good Luck
The Benchwarmers
SpaceCamp
Undertow
A Decade Under the Influence
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
The Kid Stays in the Picture
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
Kalifornia
Jeremiah Johnson

And looking further down:
18. One from the Heart
19. Heaven’s Gate
30. Herbie: Fully Loaded (oooh, that might actually get the “Move to the Top of my Queue” treatment)