P.S. I'm at work and have only a half hour left, thank god, but the last two hours have been torture and my back hurts and it's nice out and I can't wait to get home to my husband and a cold beer and yeah, Shrek II on TV.

I'm getting ready to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin, coming on at the top of the hour on USA Network, and I've already seen it a million times. Some movies are like comfort food, I guess.

Plus, it's nice to be able to watch familiar movies because you don't really "miss" anything if you're away from the TV for awhile.

Ugh, I watched 40 Year Old Virgin twice on the way back from Vegas on the planes. I missed the end BOTH TIMES. Talk about blue balls.

I can't watch movies on TV because of all the commercials and the editing/dubbing. Drives me crazy.

I'm with octo. No movies on TV.

Thirded. We'll stop watching the broadcast and put in the DVD.

I forgot to bitch about the little animated logo things on the bottom of the screen during the movie advertising some other show.

I don't do that, probably because we don't have any broadcast TV at home, only DVDs and Hulu. When I'm staying someplace with cable (e.g., catsitting at Mom's), there's something enticing about flipping through and finding something I like but can't watch at home (Alton Brown's show is a good example) or something TOTALLY UNLIKE ME to watch, like a crappy movie or TV show that I would never think to pick up on DVD.

I love the serendipity of channel-flipping. The night that I watched "Phone Booth" has passed into family legend: I kept hooting with uncontrollable laughter, so loudly and convulsively that The Fella (who was watching a ball game in the other room) kept calling out "Are you okay? Really?" and at one point had to come in and see for himself. Gawd, I LOVE a bad movie.

I notice that The Fella is like you: he'll flip through until he finds a movie or TV show that he likes enough to own on DVD, and he'll settle on that channel... even though we can just as easily watch the DVD when we get home, without cuts or bleeps or commercials.

It's not so bad when the films are on the BBC as there's no commercials. As for dubbing, I *think* we have a lot less than there is in the States. I know Specklet was really surprised at the language and nudity we have on TV in the UK.

Yeah, the BBC has no commercials, and there's lots of boobies and swearing!

Oh, I'm totally like that, Specklet. Even with the commercials... it's nice to just have something that I don't have to follow so closely on, so I can watch it as I tidy, or putter around the apartment.

Ditto with the radio (when I listened to it). I would always stop and listen actively to songs that I already owned.

I am totally like that too. I find it annoying, but I can't help myself. I usually put it down to a throwback reaction from the days when tv was the only way to see anything, and recording was impossible, but gaspode's excellent point about the radio kind of kills that theory.

I do this too. When it is TCM (no commercials) I don't feel as guilty as I do when it is commercial-interrupted TV and I'm sitting RIGHT NEXT to my collection of movies. I get annoyed by its editing for TV (exception: There's one point in the Blues Brothers where they substitute "bamboozlin'" for "bullshitting") and it takes a film editing massacre to get over my annoyance enough to turn it off (see: the mutilated The Big Lebowski). Of course, I usually am multi-tasking and my attention is split, which makes it easier to put up with them.

I do this too! And when a song I like is on the radio, it feels like a little present, even if I have the song on the ipod sitting inches away from the radio.

Yeah, too many ads on TV to want to watch a movie. I make a point of not watching movies on TV, because it kind if ruins them for watching in DVD later. Although we have the ads, movies in general are not edited or bleeped at all - the time-slot is sometimes adjusted if it's particularly rough, though. From watching US shows, my impression is that you are all a bunch of prudes who are scared to show a nipple in case it offends someone.

I wonder what US TV viewers would make of late-night SBS, with the full nudity and the sex scenes - basically soft-core porn movies on free-to-air, government funded TV. It's OK, though, because none of them are in English, so it's culture, not porn ;-)

I'll watch a movie I've seen a billion times before even if I own it if I'm lazy or if it's something I would never watch otherwise, but I barely use the TV ofr actual TV-watching anymore so this rarely comes up.

(Exceptions - Hudsucker Proxy, Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?, Little Shop Of Horrors. If these come on I have to - any I *must* watch them regardless of where in the movie they are)

From watching US shows, my impression is that you are all a bunch of prudes who are scared to show a nipple in case it offends someone.

In case it offends someone?! It's dead certainty that a nipple on broadcast TV in the US will cause great furious frothing outrage. Janet Jackson's nipple caused 540,000 Americans to complain the FCC, was on top of the news for weeks and spawned hundreds of law suits.