Word: speaking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...voracious consumer of movies and TV shows old and new, the Netflix mail-order rental service is both useful and annoying. It is also addictive. I speak as a four-at-a-time subscriber who carefully manages and updates his queue of titles, closely monitors their return to the Netflix depot and waits anxiously for the postman to bring the next stash. Here, based on five months of obsessive use, of pleasure and frustration in roughly equal amounts, are five ways to improve the effectiveness of America's favorite online movie provider. (Read Richard's final analysis: "Why Netflix Stinks...
...Perk up your algorithms. The success of any online retail service depends in part on steering customers to products similar to the ones they've bought - guided browsing, so to speak. How does a company read your mind? Through computer algorithms, which sift through the universe of possibilities to determine that B, C and D would attract the interest of people who bought A. Amazon.com's algorithms result in some astute suggestions; Netflix's suck. If, on the search line, you type in the documentary Joe Louis: For All Time, you'll be directed to the French omnibus film Paris...
...released a statement calling Estemirova's killing "monstrous.") She was well aware that her work jeopardized her safety. "In Chechnya, the government creates an atmosphere of fear and mistrust," Estemirova said in 2007 as she accepted a human-rights award. "Those who witness abuse keep silent, for if they speak, they can soon become a victim." By silencing this woman who spoke, her killers have victimized everyone...
...folks: zombiemania will never last. It may be as urgent as the Birther movement, but it has no more validity. Don't fall for a fad; stick with a quality monster, which has a rich history in literature and cinema, and which keeps producing attractive variations. I speak of the vampire, as exemplified by Park Chan-wook's terrific new South Korean film, Thirst. (See TIME's Video: 10 Questions For Stephenie Meyer...
...Zombies are what we feel like at our worst: slogging through a winter workday, standing in a long line at airport security, waking up with a hangover. Vampires speak to the romantic in us, to our need for human contact, teeth to neck. They embody everything erotic about the predatory impulse. Vampires glide through the night and, instead of breaking down your door like an angry zombie mob, they glide into your bedroom for a late-night tryst. They don't rip a victim's limbs off; they leave two decorous little puncture marks on the neck or breast...