Obligatory Year End Posting

The first decade of the 3rd millenium (depending on how you count) is rapidly drawing to a close. We are on holiday, staying somewhere cold with the Spenser-in-laws. We will watch a few movies, but I will not be blogging them - I don't concentrate the same way if I'm watching socially, and my readers expect me to devote my full attention to the films I discuss.

But I do want to commemorate 2009. I don't think I'll do Best Movie of the Year (which is still Bringing Up Baby, like every year). I'm not sure I saw any movies that rocked my world. I saw some good movies, and enjoyed some bad ones. I drove down to LA for the Hollywood premier of Larry Blamire's A Dark and Stormy Night at the Egyptian (Larry, release this on DVD now!). I kept my resolution to keep over 400 movies in my Netflix queue.

It was a good year for Cool Bev.

Next year, I resolve to:

• Cut the Netflix queue down to 300. There's a lot of stuff we'll never watch, and if we decide to, we'll find them again.
• Watch Instantly more. In fact, I can use Watch Instantly to get movies out of my main queue.
  
• Rate movies more strictly in Netflix. I tend to give out 4 stars to anything I enjoy. I give 3 stars to pretty lame movies and 2 stars to bombs. From now on, a movie is going to have to be pretty good to get 4 stars, and "just OK" will be 3 stars. I hope it will improve Netflix recommendations for me when it finds out I'm not a pushover.
• Watch more movies (at least one) in a theater. Preferably a cult movie with the director and star taking questions afterwards.

And finally, watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended version, starting next week.

For now, I'll be chilling champagne and turning on the Three Stooges marathon. Happy New Year's!