Re: [Marxism] Netflix

[c.courtenayquirk@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Netflix has been an addiction of mine for about a year now. And it's
precisely because of it's catalog that I love it. I can't tell you how
many times my wife and I went to blockbuster, spent an hour of valuable
times wandering the aisles, only to walk away either empty-handed or
with some garbage we ended up regretting. The only thing you could
count on was the new releases. Even movies that had only been out on
video for a year of so were often rare. We now have over 400 titles in
our queue.

Arna's Children is on my list--coming up in a few weeks (along with
Death in Gaza, Born into Brothels, and Lenny Bruce Without Tears...and
I'm generally not a big documentary guy). I'm glad it comes highly
recommended. It was one of those movies that came up recommended based
on our interests and ratings.

Recently we got Blazing Saddles. I had just put it on our queue mostly
for nostalgia's sake--I hadn't seen it since High School. Wow! What a
brilliant film! There are only a hand full of films that deal with race
and racism in as bold a fashion. A downside of knowing more about the
film now is that I find myself watching two different "Blazing Saddles"
at the same time: the actual one with Cleavon Little, and the one that
should have been with Richard Pryor. Little is wonderful, but I can't
help wondering if Pryor wouldn't have made the film even harsher,
edgier, and (therefore) better.

The downside of Netflix is the oft-written-about "throttling" issue. To
me, that is clearly more a violation of fairness and equal treatment
than ripping and burning DVDs. I find it hard to believe that they can
still get away with advertising "unlimited" rentals, even if their
policy is stated in the fine print. A minor injustice, true, but
annoying...

On Jun 8, 2006, at 9:53 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> On 6/7/06, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > A friend of mine has been recommending Netflix to me. Although I
> > eventually
> > plan to sign up, this article from the NY Times's business section
> > motivates me to do it sooner rather than later. It seems that if you
> > want
> > to avoid Blockbuster type mediocrity, you have to stay away from the
> > video
> > stores and patronize Netflix. It also explains why the same stupid
> > movies
> > keep showing up on HBO and all the other cable stations. God knows who
> > hasn't seen  "Pulp Fiction" or "Batman" already. Give me Ousmane
> > Sembene
> > any day of the week.
>
> I haven't used NetFlix myself yet, but I'm planning on it, too.  As I
> was editing a roundtable on the 67 war
> <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/imeu060606.html> the day before
> yesterday, I realized that you could get Arna's Children at NetFlix, a
> documentary one of the participants in the roundtable, Dr. Salim
> Tamari, highly recommends.
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
>
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