For those who want to know the math: 400 discs with approximately two hours of entertainment (a serious average, not including the extra features) that’s 48000 minutes of footage. That’s somewhere around 67 twelve hour days of constant DVD viewing. Whew! Over two months of couch-potatoism. I’m not saying we couldn’t do it (ha!) but truly how? If we watched three hours every night it would take us 267 nights, nearly two-thirds of a year. Wow. (By the way I hope, since I’m posting this to the world, that I did the math right!)

When people find out how long our queue is they ask how I hear about all the movies. JD often asks the same thing after we watch yet another Indie flick that wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. I find titles a few ways.

1. I watch the Oscars every year and keep a running list of what looks interesting, wins awards and/or has Hollywood buzzing.
2. I read entertainment news online and notice titles of films from Cannes (or other festivals) that garner much praise.
3. I pay attention online or in person when a friend or aquaintance mentions a good film.
4. I troll the Netflix site for “because you liked _______ you might like ______” type recommendations.
5. I see TV shows that look good but are either on channels we don’t get (HBO, Showtime) or the show has already been on for years and we are slow to come around to it (24 is a perfect example of that).

For us that’s pretty much how it works. It has ended up for some reason that I mostly post to the queue. JD has been encouraged many a time and does select some. He has also learned to bump up what he wants to see because the end of the list never seems to get to the top, because it keeps growing…

• Encounter at the end of the World
• The Garden
• The Betrayal
• Man on Wire
• Trouble the Water
• Pineapple Express
• The Reader
• Tropic Thunder
• Doubt
• Milk
• Seven Minutes
• Frost/Nixon
• Secret Life of Bees (I have to read the book first)
• Revolutionary Road
• Frozen River
• The Visitor
• Australia
• Ironman
• Defiance
• The Class
• Revanche

I’m not a huge Hugh Jackman fan so I wasn’t looking forward to his participation in the ceremony.  In fact when Will Smith joked during his presentations (all four of them) that Hugh Jackman was napping I thought to myself that I think I’d prefer Will Smith as a host.  That said, there wasn’t anything wrong with Jackman’s performance.  The opening was alright, but the shortcomings were not his fault.  I missed seeing Jack Nicholson in the front row with his sunglasses on.  Mickey Rourke was no Jack.  The top hat musical number with Beyonce (does she need to be listed as Beyonce Knowles? Don’t we all know who Beyonce is?!) was fabulous.  I absolutely LOVED it.  It was flashy, classy and pure Hollywood.  A funny side note to that is the drums.  During the show there was only one row of drums on the very top step.  The sound was HUGE (yes, I married a drummer, I’m a girl who loves rhythm I admit it) and as they cut to commercial 30 more drummers poured out from under and behind the stairs.  So funny!  I read in a USA today article (the best article, in my opinion) that stated there was a total of 50 USC drumline musicians. 

Dresses, dresses, dresses.  If I see another neutral off the shoulder gown I just might throw up.  Does anyone have imagination?  I’m not asking for goose feathers or anything, just something that isn’t exactly like what everyone else is wearing.  Gold was the safe color.  Kate Winslett and Virginia Madsen always get my compliments for their healthy curves. LOVE IT!  I really want to know how in the world Sarah Jessica Parker gets volumptuous breasts when she’s a size zero.  Truly.  How does that work?  My favorite gown was worn by Melissa Leo, nominated for Frozen River.  It was a bronze color with two shoulders, imagine that!  Other gals who looked great were Penelope Cruz, Beyonce, Natalie Portman, Evan Rachel Wood, Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey and Jennifer Aniston.  I thought Taraji Henson’s dress looked like a mummy.  And while I liked Sarah Jessica Parker’s dress for the most part, I could really do without the belt.  Marissa Tomei’s dress looked like a bunch of fighting fans and I do beleive I saw Jessica Biel wearing black shoes with a champagne colored dress, really!  Natalie Portman gets kudos for wearing a great shade of fushia, not red, not black, not gold, a real actual honest to goodness color.  Melissa George (Grey’s Anatomy) looked like she had on her slip and forgot her gown in the car.  Lingerie inspired is one thing, underwear is completely another.  Whoopi gets a shout just for wearing a dress and JD thought Goldie needed to be told that her dress needed to be a bigger size, oopsie.  My last two fashion comments are about make-up.  Who let Jildi Swentin out of the house without any-again?  And why don’t documentary makers know about hair and make-up?

I don’t follow Hollywood nearly as closely as I once did and frankly all the Brangelina hoopla makes me want to puke.  After seeing the two of them together last night I couldn’t help but notice that they don’t show any affection AT ALL.  Her hand didn’t touch his knee, they weren’t holding hands, they don’t look at each other, it’s creepy.  Something weird is going on there.  Not that we didn’t already know that, I’m just going on record as having noticed.

The intimacy created during the announcement of the acting categories was lovely.  I know the words were written by professional writers for the event specifically for the reason of drawing me in and I know they were reading from a teleprompter, but it was lovely.  It worked and I cried during each one.  If I were Sean Penn I’d have thosse words put on a poster and hung next to my Oscar. 

Of course I also cried when Heath Ledger’s parent’s accepted his Oscar, and I cried during the music nominations.  That’s one of the reasons I watch, not to cry, but to feel something from the art of film.  It can be educational, it can be entertaining and it can also be moving.  Film (media/art) is powerful… and I’ve got over 300 to watch so I’d best get a move on!

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Juno
• Atonement
• Michael Clayton
• The Savages
• Charlie Wilson’s War
• Enchanted (to screen to see if E would be allowed to watch it)
• Away From Her
• American Gangster
• August Rush
• No Country For Old Men
• There Will Be Blood
• 3:10 to Yuma
• Once
• The Diving Bell and Butterfly
• No End in Sight
• Operation Homecoming
• Sicko
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• War Dance
• Lars and the Real Girl
• The Valley of Ella
• Freeheld

And just so you know, we have over 200 DVDs in our Netflix queue.  Too much media, so little time.