Rewatcher

John is not the sort of person who rereads a lot of books. Once he’s finished it, he’s finished. With some exceptions. Same for movies–if he’s seen it, unless it’s been quite awhile or it’s a movie he really likes, that’s that.

I, on the other hand, am a rereader/rewatcher. There are very few books in my bookcase I haven’t read multiple times. I read them completely the first time, and after that, skim them in a “good parts version” where I skip boring parts but read most of the book. It’s something I’ve always done. So long as I still enjoy the story. More for my money, I suppose.

Something in “real life” will remind me of a passage from a book, and I tend to go and reread the book. If it’s part of a series, I tend to get sucked in and reread the whole thing. If I’m rereading, I can get through about 300 pages in 2-3 hours. It helps when you skip parts, I suppose.

I’m the same with movies. Not necessarily all of them, by any means. There’s some movies I’ll only watch once. Castaway, for example, or American Beauty–for some reason, now that I know the ending, I’ll never view the rest the same, so there’s no reason to rewatch it. However, with a lot of movies, I’m all about rewatching.

My favorite movies are ones I can watch over and over and over again. Maybe not back-to-back, but within a fairly short span of time. Of course, with John around, this hardly ever happens. But when he works late or on the weekend, and I’m not working or doing something else, I tend to rewatch a movie that he has no interest in watching.

Often, these fall into one of two categories. The first is just my all-time favorites. I love many things about these movies, and can watch them just about any time. In no particular order, those that come to me are:

• Ocean’s Eleven (new one–I keep meaning to watch the old)
• The Italian Job (ditto)
• Princess Bride (ahh, true wuv)
• Whole Nine Yards
• Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, though the other two are good)
• A Town Like Alice (this is a ridiculously long movie, something like 5 hours, but it’s so good–it’s my sick day movie for when I’m home all day in bed feeling gross but unable to sleep)
• Night at the Roxbury
• The Thomas Crown Affair
• Usual Suspects

On a side note, it occurs to me that a lot of the above movies are about, among other things, revenge. Not physical, beat-’em-up, but more mind-games-revenge. I think what appeals to me is trying to figure out how they did whatever trick they pulled in the movie. Maybe. But maybe it’s just the revenge? Naw. I don’t think of myself as a particularly vengeful person. Verbally, to John, I probably am fairly vindictive about things that annoy me, but I’d never, for the most part, do anything about it. Maybe I have secret fantasies to, though? Hrm.

The second category is more movies I do love, but they also serve a purpose to me at times:

• Emma
• 10 Things I Hate About You
• The Wedding Date
• Sleepless in Seattle/You’ve Got Mail
• When Harry Met Sally

With these movies, I tend to watch them when I’m feeling in one of two particular moods. The first is if I feel like I just sort of need to cry, to be a bit emotional and let it all out. Not necessarily that something in my life is making me sad and teary, but it can be cleansing in many ways to just have a good cry. You girls out there know what I’m talking about, right? And most of these movies are guaranteed to make me cry at some point. (I should point out, I’m a cryer at movies. Always have been. Always will be. No apologies.) The second is if I’m feeling a bit low and just need to feel good about something, with the “something” generally just being a happy ending.

John will generally watch most of the movies in the first category with me, if it’s been awhile. The second category, though, is where he draws the line. Poor boy. I try not to torture him, though.

Anyways, we recently discovered we could pay for an Xbox Live subscription and instantly stream movies from Netflix. Wonderful technology, that! Especially as John uses our Netflix subscription to get/watch all sorts of TV shows when he’s holding down the fort at
work and staying late. Now I can add movies and instantly watch them instead of never getting anything I want to watch on our queue. Voila! Wonderful!

Anyways, last night I randomly watched You’ve Got Mail. Not because I needed particularly to feel better or to cry, but mostly because I hadn’t watched it in a long time, and he worked late so it was the perfect opportunity. It made for a lovely little evening of “me time”.

And now, today, we got a little red envelope with Night at the Roxbury in it. Fun times! Especially because it means he was nice enough to not get his movie so I could get mine. He’s good to me, you know? And for me, too.