Monday, March 3, 2014

Media roulette

I didn't watch the Oscars last night because, well, network television. Judging by my Netflix connection (why, yes, I'm still with Verizon right now) I wasn't the only person who decided to give the 86th Academy Awards a pass. These award shows are more or less like baseball anyway, in that although they take three hours to play out you can take in the essential action in five minutes, over the internet, afterwards. Although I might have enjoyed seeing John Travolta introduce Idel Dazeem live, if only to give my eyebrows a workout.

Girlfriend and I have a policy of not watching The Walking Dead immediately before bed because she has zombie dreams and if she hears me getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night she is liable to murder me with the heaviest thing she can find. As it happens this year we've mostly developed a policy of watching each Sunday's episode of TWD during the snow day the following Monday.

We ended up watching Moon, which means we watched Sam Rockwell Sam Rockwell Sam Rockwell for two hours. It was very good and very sad, and I had thought we had escaped watching an untrustworthy Kevin Spacey by ruling out House of Cards for the night but no.
How can you not trust that face?
There are two kinds of pain, Sam...
I don't want to give the impression that I'm spending all my time watching television instead of reading. I'm just still reading The Stand.

While I wasn't actually watching Netflix, I did spend some time on their site, rating movies. Because it's fun. Because it helps them help me. Because it's addictively distracting. Because it gave me ideas for what to watch (when it randomly threw out Moon, that's when I decided to watch it, though I watched it on Amazon). Because it's... interesting to see how it categorizes movies.

After you rate a movie, Netflix asks you how often you watch movies like the ones you just rated. As I went on, I got the distinct impression that Netflix was messing with me.

How often do you watch movies about marriage like American Beauty?

How often do you watch dysfunctional family movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

How often do you watch tortured genius movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

How often do you watch father-daughter movies like The Incredible Hulk?

How often do you watch movies about cool mustaches like O Brother, Where Art Thou?

How often do you watch holidays like Independence Day?
Posted by scribblinman at 10:19 AM
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2 comments :

  1. UnknownMarch 3, 2014 at 2:13 PM

    MOVIES ABOUT COOL MUSTACHES.

    Those are pretty hilarious frequency questions. Perhaps "about" isn't the word they wanted?

    p.s. Have you read this Atlantic article on Netflix's micro-categorizations? http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-netflix-reverse-engineered-hollywood/282679/

    p.p.s.: GRRR. Freaking Google made me upgrade my Blogger account to Google+ and then lost my comment.

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    1. scribblinmanMarch 3, 2014 at 3:58 PM

      I feel your pain. I have twice lost this reply by accidentally closing my tab.

      I adjusted Netflix's syntax on the questions, but I think it was too their advantage. The original line was more like: "How often do you watch COOL MUSTACHES like..."

      I have read the Atlantic article. When the Netflix database becomes self-aware, what will it want, I wonder? A reboot of Perry Mason?

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