Lists

Not From Netflix

I’ve just gotten back into Netflix for its DVDs, not just its handy On Demand service. With so much snow on the ground at our new home in Bethany, casual trips to Best Video aren’t so casual just now. And there are still quite a few titles that I can’t get on the iPad.

I’ve been a Netflix customer since the service first began in 1999, and was struck, looking over my queue, by how many things on it are unavailable. Some have never been available. This is what’s currently on my “Saved Titles” list, the disks that Netflix can not currently provide. All list an availability date as “Unknown.”

• All the King’s Men (the Sean Penn one, from 2006)

• Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder, 1971)

• Cause Celebre (Helen Mirren and David Suchet, 1987)

• Chicago Filmmakers on the Chicago River (doc featuring Jon Landis, Haskell Wexler and others, 2004)

  • Coming Through (Kenneth Branagh and Helen Mirren TV movie, 1985
  • Cracker (the popular Robbie Coltrane crime series)
  • Hollywood Rivals Collection (2005 collection of film clips and other documents illustrating great film-star grudges)
  • House Arrest (divorcing couple Kevin Pollak and Jamie Lee Curtis are held captive by their own children in hopes that they will reconsider)

• Maid to Order (1987 Ally Sheedy/Beverly D’Angelo menial comedy)

• Notes from Underground (contemporary take on the dark Dostoevsky story, starring Henry Czerny, Sheryl Lee, Jon Favreau and Seth Green. 1995, directed by Gary Walkow)

• Popi (1969 Alan Arkin/Rita Moreno comedy. They both play Puerto Ricans.)

• Radioland Murders (1994 mystery comedy starring Brian Benben of Dream On, directed by actor Charles Martin Smith and co-writted and co-produced by George Lucas of Star Wars)

• Spring Forward (drama with Ned Beatty, Liev Shreiber, Campbell Scott and Bill Raymond)

• Super Duper Alice Cooper (the recent Alice Cooper documentary, available for $10 on Amazon but not rentable via Netflix?)

• Big Comfy Couch: Comfy & Joy/Jump for Joy (this demonstrates how long I’ve been a Netflix member. My kids are now 10 and 12, and were into this show—and the live stage versions of it that would visit the Shubert in New Haven—when they were like 2).

• The Fox and the Hound (the Disney film can be watched on demand on Netflix, but not on DVD)

• The Stupids (1996 Jon Landis adaptation of the incredible James Allard children’s book series, starring Tom Arnold. I’ve never seen this film, though I do own the tie-in novel)

• Very Best of America’s Funniest Comedians (2003, with early-career snippets of Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Norm MacDonald, Kelsey Grammer, Jim Carrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Tim Allen, Richard Belzer, Cheech Marin, Richard Lewis, Jason Alexander, Carrot Top, Paul Rodriguez, Jeff Foxworthy, Janeane Garofalo, Ellen DeGeneres and Drew Carey)

  • Times Square (the film that made Allan Moyle lose his hair, battling for integrity and style when producer Robert Stigwood merely wanted a Saturday Night Fever for punks)
  • Where the Rivers Flow North (1993 stubborn backwoods logger Rip Torn drama. Anything with Bill Raymond in a supporting role instantly goes on my queue.)
  • Xala (1975 social satire by one of my favorite filmmakers Ousmene Sembene)

I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why these films can’t be gotten: copyrights, song clearances, repackaging, forgetfulness. Some are viewable elsewhere (Cracker, for instance, is on the Acorn TV subscription channel). Maybe I’m the only person on earth who wants to see some of these. But it’s as broad and varied a list as my active Netflix queue, a list that has formed and grown organically, screaming “You can’t see us!”

Interestingly, a number of these ARE on the shelves at my local video store, Best Video. I continue to rely on both Netflix and Best.