Avoiding your Netflix rentals?

Arr, Mateys! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I'll get down to serious business.

Earlier this week I read something about people who get out movies from Netflix and then put off watching them - sometimes for months. It seems to me that there was a term for people like this, but I can't remember it. I Googled it, and I searched the Boston Globe, but I can't find any reference to it.

Anyway, the point was that the movies we put off watching are the ones that we get out because we think we ought to watch them. Usually they're serious movies, the ones we know are going to deal with "heavy" subjects. Hotel Rwanda comes to mind. I feel as if I ought to want to watch it, but it hasn't even made it to my queue. In 2007, I received The Last King of Scotland on the same day I received Wild Hogs. Guess which one I watched first? Guess which one sat on my desk for a couple of weeks?

But my personal failure was The Queen. I sat on The Queen for a month, then returned it unwatched. (Ooh, she sat on the Queen!) Helen Mirren, an actress I admire, won an Oscar for it, and I thought I ought to watch it. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was never a fan of Lady Diana, whose title was never Princess Diana, incidentally, even though everybody called her that. Queen Elizabeth II herself doesn't interest me especially. The thought of sitting through a movie dealing with the Queen's reaction to Diana's death just doesn't appeal to me.

A couple of weeks ago, Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) arrived. Somebody somewhere said something (I'm so vague...) that made me feel I ought to watch it. I liked the book, last time I read it, which was probably 35 years ago, but it isn't one of my favorites. So I sat on it. (The movie, not the book.) Finally, last night, I made myself watch it. Lightweight all the way through. Quite a contrast to the usual kind of movie I avoid. It was cute. (My sons always pick on me - if I say a movie is "cute", it means I didn't like it.)

No Country for Old Men arrived earlier this week. I ought to want to watch it, right? It won the Oscar for Best Picture this year. What's not to like? I don't know. I wonder how long I'll avoid watching it...