Documented

If you know me then you probably are aware of the fact that I do not believe in renting movies. Yet when my friends talk about their NetFlix accounts I get really into it: I love recommending movies; I love hearing what other people say about movies; and I love Web and mail-based crap in general. So when they say to me, "You should join NetFlix" I quickly respond, "Yes, it sounds fun. But do I have watch the movies?"

My vendetta against renting movies (let alone owning them) is two-fold: first of all, I go to see virtually every film that comes out that I want to see. Living in Manhattan, nary a film comes out that I don't have access to if I want to. So if I really want to see it, I'll spend the $10.50 to see it on the big screen.

The other part -- and perhaps the bigger issue -- is that I just find watching movies at home very unsatisfying. Admittedly I don't live in some palace with a huge screening room and high-tech surround-sound Dolby stereo components (my "big screen" TV is 16 inches, so I'm not really sure if any of that stuff I just said even makes sense), but I really don't think that's my issue. It's just not the same when you watch a film at home. Watching a movie at the theater is part of the whole dark-auditorium/captive-audience/big-screen experience. The minute you don't feel compelled to pay attention, I find it horribly easy not to. There's the computer sitting there. There's the Sunday papers you haven't finished. There is unopened mail to look at. Piles of fun unread magazines. The phone might ring. You might make a trip to the bathroom, or worse -- the kitchen.

But this weekend the so-called blizzard hit New York, so Michael and I decided to catch up on two best-documentary Oscar nominees that we probably should have seen when they were in theaters. First we watched "March of the Penguins" and later that night we saw "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." They were all right. I'd heard great things about both, which may have contributed to the letdown we experienced after each of them. But I think the real reason we didn't fully enjoy them was that we didn't watch them in the proper venue: the good old-fashioned cinema.