Netflix. It's on the 360, it's on PS3, it's on the Wii, it's $8 a month, it doesn't require a disc, and it's now even in Canada (with a severely reduced selection). So. Unless you're really poor, a picky Canadian, a hater of the 7th art, or European, there's no excuse for not having it!

What movies has the streaming service allowed you to discover?

Because of the limited selection here in Canada, which denies us access to some of the more recent and popular movies on the service, I've been using Netflix to watch 2 different kinds of movies: terrible crap that I'd never make any effort or pay anything to see (The Happening, Teen Wolf Too), and highly respected and acclaimed foreign movies that for some reason I always put back on the shelf without renting when I'm at the video store.

So here's a recommendation for you:

Amores Perros - This movie received much acclaim, won many prizes, and I'm probably one of the last chumps to see it. But hey, maybe you haven't seen it either, so at least I'm better than you. From looking at the title, you may recognize the word "amores" (love) and get totally the wrong idea about the movie. You may also recognize "perros" (dog) and be completely befuddled. Basically, the movie contains three vignettes in which cruelty and, yes, love, are central themes.

For one third of the movie, you follow the story of a kid using his dog to participate in dog fights and win money so he can elope with his brother's wife. For the second part, you follow a couple's crumbling relationship and oh god you're getting totally the wrong idea again. Don't worry, it's totally interesting and plays out a bit like a thriller. Actually, watching it I felt like I was reading an Edgar Allan Poe short story, but maybe it's just because it features... sounds... coming out of the floorboard. The third story is about this vagrant who abandoned his family to become a guerillero, went to prison, and now takes on hitman jobs from the corrupt cop who arrested him.

The characters cross each others' paths a couple of time, so you could say it's a bit like Pulp Fiction in that way, except I found the stories and characters in this film infinitely more interesting. Heh.

I don't know what your experience with foreign movies is or what you think of them, all I can say is that this movie is absolutely not boring. From the first scene to the last, I was hooked.

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@Mr_Mustache

I didn't see this till it refreshed when I deleted it! lol bummer!

@Oldmanwinter I take offense to the Oklahoma comment. I'm from Kansas (not the city) and I find the show hilarious (and so do my friends).

Marsh said:

@Oldmanwinter I take offense to the Oklahoma comment. I'm from Kansas (not the city) and I find the show hilarious (and so do my friends).

Oklahoma is, no offense, the most God awful place outside of North Dakota (Grand Forks) I have ever lived. I lived in Oklahoma city last summer from the beginning of June to the beginning of October. It was over 100 degrees like 70 days, it got up to 120 on more than a couple occasions, there wasn't anything to do other than drink (which admittedly there are really cheap and good dive bars) and eat bbq. I gained fifteen pounds in four months, I'm just now getting back to a normal weight. Bricktown is about the only attraction and that was fun for two nights or so then I'd seen what there was to see. Club Cowboy was a good time but again that got old after my second visit.

The people were super nice though, no complaints there. The area though is just flat, hot and awful with very little in the way of fun stuff to do.

That being said my comment was in reference more to the fact the whole hipster culture isn't prevalent out there, thus people in Oklahoma probably wouldn't get what is being spoofed.

my friend has netflix... just saw the movie IP Man. Awesome.

My good god, Blackadder is on Netflix. Everyone who hasn't seen it should watch it. Great British historical comedy.

@Mr_Mustache Yes but I don't have normal TV, I watched the first season on Netflix. Mind you I could just pirate the new stuff but I dunno. Would rather wait till I can watch a lot at once. I'm trying not to pirate stuff, even if it is stuff that I could probably technically be watching on my TV if I'd stop being lazy and hook up the cable my aunt is paying for.

@Oldmanwinter Is "hipster" culture really that obscure? I'd think every urban (or even suburban) area would have some form of hipster culture going on. We had/have plenty in Chicago, that's for sure. But yeah I guess as far as a mass market TV show it's a bit niche.

@warerare British comedy, yes!!! I'll have to check that out.

@Zero

It stars Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder, each of the four seasons takes place in different periods of British history (15th century to the first world war) and he is in each a decendant of the same family line. It is an 80s TV series so it does look dated but the comedy is timeless.

Also if you are a fan of the IT Crowd then watch Black Books and Father Ted. Great shows by the same writer.

Also Mr Bean.

I already watched all of Black Books and Father Ted! Liked Black Books more. Father Ted was ok.

I agree and The IT Crowd is my favourite of the three. Its a shame he has said there will be no more episodes except the special they are working on. At least we have that coming though.

Starz content is to be pulled from Netflix at the end of tomorrow. Watch em while you can, here is a link to the list of titles being removed.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Extended Editions has just come out on Netflix. I think I'll just watch the extended versions before I watch the new Rooney Mara film.

I don't know if its on Netflix, but its OnDemand.

If you like to laugh, and gross stuff doesn't make you barf, you need to see Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.

You should probably watch an episode of the show first though to see if you can handle it.
1:15a EST, Adult Swim.

I'm watching the original Star Trek series. I never thought I would get into it (or any other Star Trek series), but some of the episodes are pretty good. Watching Balance of Terror right now, which is the first glimpse we get of the Romulans, and it's pretty kick-ass.

I'll probably watch the full thing, and then get back to The Next Generations, which I had started. But I felt there were too many references I was missing out on, hence my going back to the original series.

I never grew up with these shows. I never felt I had missed out on something, but maybe I had.

After the recent Star Trek movie came out Steph went on a tear of watching old Star Trek episodes. I always thought I preferred Next Gen, but after watching a few of those with her, I think I'm an Original Series guy, now. Even though I did grow up watching it, a lot of Next Gen stuff seems too talky and boring to me, now.

(Says the guy who watches classic Doctor Who.)

Well to be honest, I'm eager to get back to TNG even though I was still only in the first season, which by all accounts wasn't very good. The original series is fun and I probably shouldn't be so surprised to like it since I'm a big fan of 50s and 60s sci-fi, and a lot of great authors wrote episodes of that series. But I still find myself falling asleep to it constantly. The pace is incredibly slow.

I'm eager to revisit the recent movie: I'm finding out that a lot of that movie was more faithful to the original series than I had thought. The whole Zulu being into fencing thing, for instance.

Those clips of Portlandia are really funny.

Mtv produced a show about Austin years ago called Austin Stories. It was... shit. Unfunny, idiotic garbage. Looks like Portlandia is exactly the show Austin Stories should have been. I'll definitely have to check it out. (Very weird to me that Carrie Brownstein is starring in it. But in a good way.)

There's a lot of talky stuff in TNG but I prefer it over the original for the most part (probably because I watched more of it first). Seasons 3, 4, and 5 are all pretty awesome. There's an episode here and there in the first two seasons, but it's largely brought down by Tasha Yar and those tight uniforms. The show also looks like it was filmed in someone's basement or something. It's just so dark. I don't feel like the show truly gets 'fun' until Season 3.

I love all the different 'types' of Star Trek episodes. Including but not limited to:

- Someone inadvertently brings back something to the ship that starts messing with everyone's head and making them all crazy in some way. Everyone either starts hating each other, falls in love with each other, or acts creepy in some way.
- They find some sort of anomaly or creature floating in space. The crew has absolutely no idea how to avoid/defeat it (and then probably talks their way out of it somehow). This includes episodes like The Corbomite Manuever, where there's just a mystery 'thing' in space that acts as a riddle.
- They beam down to a planet and the culture is ass backwards in some ways - and this culture wants no help from the Enterprise. Then you find out that this culture is really being held back by someone who wants things to stay the way they are. The Enterprise usually sends one or two ambassadors to the planet, while the rest of the crew struggles with a problem out in space.
- A crew member of the Enterprise has gone undercover and risks being exposed by an alien race. I think this happens to Commander Riker at least twice, haha.
- Some sort of spatial anomaly plays with the Enterprise's systems, and the crew is caught in some sort of Catch 22 (if we do THIS we die, but if we do THIS we also die). Or, this anomaly plays with time, making the crew either repeat the same day over again, or miss big chunks of time they can't account for.
- A crew member takes some sort of vacation leave from the ship that turns out to be anything but a vacation. This inevitably ends with them returning to the ship, someone asking them how their vacation went, and the character saying something like "It's a long story..."

My least favorite episodes are usually when:
- Some really lame looking alien race comes to the ship and butts heads with how the crew deals with problems. Then someone is murdered for some political reason that no one really cares about.
- The crew has to go back in time for some sort of 'period' or 'genre' episode. I know this is probably blasphemy, but I just never really like when the crew goes back to the 1960s or the wild west or OUR near future or whatever. I don't count other time travel episodes like "All Good Things" or "Yesterday's Enterprise." I just don't like it when the crew conveniently pops up in old time periods for some reason.
- Mirror Universe episodes. I like them on the Original Series, but never get into the ones on DS9. They just feel so pointless to me. Then again, a lot of DS9 episodes feel kind of pointless to me.
- The Holodeck Malfunctions and the crew can't find a way out of it. Sometimes I can get into these episodes, but sometimes I just want to skip them.


Random, but I think one of my favorite TOS episodes is when they go down to this planet that is constantly at civil war. Instead of having actual warfare, the society just has a 'lottery' of people that are sent to die, because in their eyes, there are less casualties this way since war is inevitable.

Man. I love analyzing stories like that. Makes me remember how much I need to start writing again.

Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" is now on Netflix.

This guy is a smug prick who thinks way too highly of both himself and his writing however I love his show and begrudgingly have come to like the man. No Reservations has become one of my favorite shows, I love the insight he gives into the food and culture of different places around the world. By far the best thing The Travel Chanel has ever done.

I think I only watch the Travel Channel for shows about roller coasters. Are there any good roller coaster shows on Netflix?

PogueSquadron said:

I think I only watch the Travel Channel for shows about roller coasters. Are there any good roller coaster shows on Netflix?

You would get along so well with two friends of mine. They are both super into roller coasters. In fact, one of them did a live stream today about roller coasters on Ustream. Apparently, someone forgot to press the record button. Maybe next time.