The Neglected Queue

I've been thinking about my Netflix queue and the poor, neglected movies that slowly ride their way up the ladder, only to get bumped back down every time a new release catches my fancy.

Right now, for instance, I have at home Good Night and Good Luck, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Bride with White Hair.

The last movie is in there because someone recommended it to me last week, so I stuck it in there right at the top, jumping it well over long suffering films that thought they were moving closer to their goal. Good Night and Good Luck is up there because the other day I realized there was no reason it wasn't further up the line, except that it had been one of the aforementioned long-suffering films on the line ride. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, is of course, a new release.

After that I have thrown ahead of the line some movies for research purposes. I may be meeting with people someday in the near future, and I don't want to be a giant ignoramous about who's done what - I'm really bad at remembering directors - so I'm watching movies I know I should know about in case I get a good meeting. So they hopped up over everything else.

Then there was last month's string of female protagonist films, because I wanted to see how different stories handled women successfully. They jumped up over everything else, too. Those poor movies in the middle. They must think they'll never make it to my house.

I reorder my queue almost daily, due to boredom. But there are always movies that just sit there and never make my reordering list.

Like Timecrimes, which I keep forgetting what the hell it's about so I pass right by it every time I reorder my queue. That film is at 159 out of 187. I haven't touched it since it went into last place. Will I ever watch that movie? Hell, how long does it take a film to travel up the queue when it's that far down? A year? Eight months? I don't know. It makes me want to conduct some kind of experiment.

Actually I think I'll do that. I'll pick a movie I only vaguely want to watch, throw it in the queue, note the date, and watch it's progress. I'll make a note each time I reorder my queue as to where that film is, and never touch it's place, only the place of those films around it. I'm not sure what I'll learn from this, and I'll probably forget to do it after like two weeks, but right now it seems like a good idea.