August 2, 2003 · Dan Cederholm

Rushmore to the Rescue

I've learned an annoying flaw with the NetFlix system -- the hard way.

I've been looking forward to watching Gangs of New York for a little over a week. It's 2 discs. See where this is headed? Yup, I received two copies of "Disc 2". Great. Both sleeves were marked correctly, but had duplicate discs in each.

I imagine this happens a lot, because reporting the problem was extremely simple. It's just that the solution is to send them both back, put the movie in my cue again (at the top) and wait. If this had happened at the local video store, I could've high-tailed it back there and exchanged.

I guess this is the price you pay for the convienence of NetFlix -- a service which is amazingly great, otherwise. I highly recommend it, regardless of the occassional hiccup.

Luckily though, we had Rushmore as backup. One of my favorite films -- and the Criterion Collection has some great bonus stuff on it like extra film shorts from the Max Fischer Players, the usual making-of documentary and some pretty funny audition footage. The night was saved.