Encore is Comcastic

The Houston area cable market recently made the shift from Time Warner to Comcast. Two good things have happened since then: my monthly cable/internet bill is five dollars cheaper, and I now get the Encore movie channels included in my Digital Plus Bullshit Package.

The Encore movie channels are pretty much awesome, but they are wrecking my once rock-solid Netflix schedule. With the 'Flix I make a concerted effort to consume at least 3-4 movies a week, and when I'm running at full capacity I can do so. My problem now is that there is always something so terribly bad yet so terribly watchable on any one of the Encore channels at any given time that I have started cutting into my Netflix time to watch movies on cable.

Just in the last week, I've re-watched or seen for the first time all or part of the following movies (working from memory here, so I'll inevitably miss a few):

Chain Reaction, starring Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman
Commando, starring Ahnold and Rae Dawn Chong
The Serpent and the Rainbow, starring Bill Pullman
Opposing Force, starring Tom Skerritt and a very hot Lisa Eichhorn
Eraser, starring Ahnold and Sonny Corleone
P.S., starring Laura Linney and Topher Grace (and which should be renamed P.O.S.)
Say Anything, starring John Cusack and whatever that lame-ass chick's name is
Revenge of the Nerds, starring John Goodman and James Cromwell (er, I mean, Robert Carradine and a bunch of other typically 80's looking nerds and jocks)
Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions, starring Scott Bakula (I fucking love Scott Bakula)

As you can imagine, it's difficult to make it through 49 episodes of Gundam Wing - much less a 380 movie queue - with distractions like these. I'm going to have to start blocking these channels from myself until the weekends roll around.

Speaking of, Netflix's Online Movie Viewer is a fucking godsend for these slow days at work. Hooray, Netflix.