Watching The Watchers

Ooooooh how the times have changed. In the past the major newspapers would expose things like the Pentagon Papers or the occasional Watergate break-in. Now they’re ripping the covers off… our DVD rental habits?

Seriously: in major city by major city, postal code by postal code, the New York Times tells the United States the top films it’s borrowing from Netflix .

Here’s how things break down in the 90026. With three of the top five unseen by Susan and me clearly our viewing tastes differ somewhat from our Netflixing neighbors (films in bold are discs we’ve spun):

  1. Rachel Getting Married
  2. The Wrestler
  3. Burn After Reading
  4. Twilight
  5. Vicki Cristina Barcelona
  6. Milk
  7. I Love You, Man
  8. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
  9. Pineapple Express
  10. Changeling

Without checking out our queue, I’m pretty sure the only film of the four unseen on our list is Rachel Getting Married, but I’d be surprised if its lurking anywhere higher in our Netflix purgatory than, say,  Syriana , Babel or Infamous. If there’s a “Hell No!” option Twilight would get it from me. As to the other two? Meh. If they show up streamable through my PS3 via my Netflix on-demand list I might give ’em a play — like we did the fascinating James Toback documentary about Mike Tyson last night.