We've been pretty happy with AT&T's U-verse cable TV service. We subscribe to one of the lower levels of service, and pay extra to get a few movie channels. Over the holiday weekend, AT&T ran a special promotion where we had access to all the big movie channels. We surfed madly through the channel guide, hunting down movies that we wanted to see, and added ten or so to the DVR. (At the rate we see movies, this should last us until spring.)
We finally had a chance to see Juno. I should mention that one of my mothers-in-law (yes, I have more than one) loved it, and had insisted that we see it. We don't get out much, and if we line up a babysitter, we probably wouldn't spend the time sitting in a theater. My mother-in-law even went so far as to offer to babysit expressly so that we could see the movie. We never got around to it. Well, now that we've finally seen it, I can say that we enjoyed it, although I spent much of the time wondering why my mother-in-law was so enamored by the movie. Was it the young men in running shorts? Shuddering ensues.
I mentioned this at work, where most of my co-workers expressed their appreciation for the movie as well. Except for one, who liked the movie... at first. Then he was bothered by the shallowness of the storyline, and the fact that the boy responsible for Juno's condition is largely absent from the movie. The list went on, and all of his complaints were well thought out. I hadn't put a lot of thought into the movie, but I thought it was good for a light-hearted study of the main character, even if she seemed a little too poised and precious to be taken seriously. The movie doesn't have a lot of depth, and maybe it's formulaic in its quirky shallowness.
It's tough to know how you might react to a movie, which might explain Netflix's million-dollar challenge to improve its movie recommendation system. Considering the challenges they face - trying to understand individual tastes, factoring in TV shows that may have good and bad seasons, and understanding polarizing movies like Napoleon Dynamite (BTW: hated it). I used to subscribe to Netflix, but let the subscription lapse when I realized how few movies I actually got around to watching. (And there was the guilt of having Hotel Rwanda sit idly for two months.) But one of the things I valued most was the recommendation system, which turned me on to movies I might never have known existed. As I recall, popular movies would often appear as recommendations just because of the volume of people who had seen them, but even this could be tweaked. Something that Amazon could learn from, or attempt to patent.
In college, I took a few literary criticism classes, which essentially teach people how to talk about literature. It's difficult to pull off without sounding like a complete wanker. It can be entertaining if used to irritate people, like if you're talking about leitmotif in Rambo IV. For me, the only lingering effects of those classes is that I question both the value of my opinions on movies, books or music, and if anyone is rolling their eyes as I voice them.
Still, if my mother-in-law wants to talk about Juno, I'm game. But if she mentions "pork swords," I'd likely faint in horror.