MetaChat - Over and over.

Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
William Gaddis' JR
several volumes of Alexandre Dumas
Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner's Clear and Simple as the Truth
Ramayana, AKA The Greatest Story Ever Told

That's off the top of my head, there are surely more.

posted by Hugh Janus 09 December | 13:44

"The Jewel In The Crown" and the books from which it was adapted, the Raj Quartet. I usually read/watch either the series or the books every year.

I also re-watch "The Office" (USA version) over and over.

posted by Senyar 09 December | 13:51

Spike TV has been playing the Star Wars movies over and over since... forever, it feels like. I will watch any of the three original ones whenever I notice they're on. As for the three new "prequels"... the less said about them the better.

posted by FishBike 09 December | 13:56

The musical Buffy episode.
A manga called Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad.

posted by DarkForest 09 December | 14:10

I've seen Fight club a few times in the years after it appeared.
And a long time ago I liked Brideshead Revisited to be honest. I think I still can do a decent impression of Jeremy Irons' voiceover.
Nothing recent though I'm afraid.

So what drove you to watch GF I & II 20 times in 6 months?
What deprived inclinations can you be referring to?
Can it be that you secretly admire a manly man like Sonny? A guy tripping on testosterone who knows how to keep his woman in line.
Ok. That was the most lurid explanation I could think of for you liking GF.
So, out with it, what is it?

posted by jouke 09 December | 14:18

Clearly JanetLand is planning to kill her brother.

posted by mullacc 09 December | 14:36

That must be it.

posted by jouke 09 December | 14:41

Lord of the Rings. Book and film versions. It's comfort food.

posted by wens 09 December | 14:44

Super Metroid on my SNES. I play it the same way, crack the same jokes to anyone nearby, and always free the little animals at the end. It'd be wrong if I didn't! Not to mention non-canonical.

posted by Monster_Zero 09 December | 14:48

Never as many as 20 times in one year, but maybe 3, 4, 5 times in fairly quick succession.

Apocalypse Now is one movie I did that with.

Also I'm more likely to rewatch certain scenes from a movie or re-read certain sections of a book than to watch/read the whole thing multiple times.

Lord of the Rings... I don't usually do it in quick succession, but I might re-read every few years and sometimes every year, or listen to all or parts of the radio dramatization. I watched the movies a few times when I first got them, but I seem to be satiated with them now.

posted by philipy 09 December | 14:53

I've never understood this. There's tons of music I've listened to over and over, but I can't think of a film that I revisit. I've rewatched movies, sure, but usually while showing it to someone who hasn't seen it. I re-read LotR as a kid and a teenager, and I've re-read The Magic Mountain, One Hundred Years of Solitude, some of Shakespeare's stuff, and Don Quixote because my first encounters with those works were cursory and I wanted a fuller engagement with the texts.

But the idea of regularly re-reading or re-watching something is kinda head-scratching to me. There's so much stuff I've yet to encounter; I'd rather do that first.

That said, I plan to re-read the Aubrey/Maturin novels, at least the first few, just for fun, and I can pretty much watch Caddyshack whenever it's on, though I would never select it as The Movie I'm Watching Tonight.

posted by BitterOldPunk 09 December | 14:55

jouke: Well, you know, Sonny does have those shoulders! In one scene he has just an undershirt on, and his shoulders take up a full three quarters of my tv screen.

And hey, I do have a brother, so he better watch out. . . .

posted by JanetLand 09 December | 14:55

This one is embarrassing to admit: I'll watch The American President whenever it's on TV, night or day.

posted by toastedbeagle 09 December | 15:07

I make wine. Espcially when I bottle, it's a multi-hour, pretty boring process, so I like to watch a movie while I do it. However, wine-making takes too much attention for me to focus on a movie, so I like to put on something familiar and entertaining. I bet I've watched Star Wars (the original) 100 times; hell, I watched it 25 or so times the first year it came out, at the theater. My list: Star Wars (IV, V, and VI, in descending order), Alien, American Werewolf in London, Blues Brothers, Three Amigos.

posted by mrmoonpie 09 December | 15:08

I'll watch Withail and I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising whenever I trip over them, but not enough to get my own copy, say. I also enjoy Super Troopers and used to watch it with guests a lot until I realized no one else liked it as much as I did.

posted by jessamyn 09 December | 15:12

I could watch The Big Lebowski every day and I would find something new to analyze each time.

posted by cheminatrix 09 December | 15:16

I watch Bad Santa at least once every winter. I watch Once Upon A Time In The West at least once a year. I can watch Mulholland Dr just about any time, and I've probably seen Eraserhead 25 or 30 times and never get tired of it.

posted by BoringPostcards 09 December | 15:22

There are certain movies that I'm almost certain to watch if I happen to come across them on TV.

And, embarrassing or not, The American President is one of them.

Demanding films don't usually make that list because they take energy and concentration. The times I find movies on TV are quite often not times when I'm in the mood for that.

posted by philipy 09 December | 15:25

I submit that Fargo is easily the most eminently re-watchable movie ever made. Goodfellas is a close second.
As for books, I've read both the LOTR and Hitchhiker's GT the Galaxy series more than three times apiece, and I'm sure I'll revisit them again at some point in the future. Also: Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, and the short stories of Robert Louis Stevenson.
TV shows: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Mr. Show. These pretty much never get old to me.

posted by Atom Eyes 09 December | 15:29

Another one is Tombstone. I can watch that any time it's on. So many good quotes there.

posted by cheminatrix 09 December | 15:29

Sonny does have those shoulders

Ah, you women, we're only objects for you to gaze at.

State troopers
I had to look that one up. You're truly a vermontian, aren't you?
If I had to name a local Dutch movie I'd say Paul Verhoevens early Soldier of Orange. But that one is hard to find in a subtitled version. Very enjoyable though; with a young very dashing Rutger Hauer.
Or Karakter. Which is Dutch in a more stern angular way. Bordewijks novel is a classic of Dutch literature. Again stern and angular in its style and language. Bordewijk had an idiosyncratic edgy language. But that is of no interest to anybody who doesn't speak Dutch.

Once upon a time in the west
Man. Claudia Cardinale. Great scott.
But then maybe I like The good, the bad and the ugly even better. How they move through this civil war front to end up in a mexican standoff in this cemetary.

posted by jouke 09 December | 15:46

I read To Kill A Mockingbird ten times in a row when I was in high school. I wanted to do really well on the test. I haven't been able to read it ever again.

posted by apoch 09 December | 15:48

Damn, jouke, it's like you're inside my brain. Soldier of Orange and Claudia Cardinale. Top of the tops. Gezondheid!

I have watched Strange Brew more than thirty times, most of them before I was of legal drinking age.

posted by Hugh Janus 09 December | 16:29

Movies I have watched again and again:

LOTR (extended version)
Titanic
Gladiator
The Fugitive
The Sixth Sense
Terminator I and II
Bladerunner (extended version)

Books I have read repeatedly:
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings -- too many times to count
To Kill a Mockingbird (sorry apoch, still not tired of it)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Huckleberry Finn
Grimm Fairy Tales
Stories of John Cheever
Rebecca

posted by bearwife 09 December | 16:39

Oh, and my husband and I never get tired of Coen brothers movies, especially Big Liebowski, Fargo, and Miller's Crossing.

posted by bearwife 09 December | 16:40

Well, I am the homunculus in your mind. It is true.
But what about the homunculus in my mind?

It's a strange idea though. An american, like you, watching old dutch university hijinks like the student corps hazing in the beginning of Soldier of Orange.

posted by jouke 09 December | 17:01

O Brother Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski are two movies that I have seen multiple times.

Also Arrested Development and Buffy. Can watch those episodes again and again.

Oh! And this is a bit embarrassing... I really like Love, Actually and have watched it a lot. hrm.

posted by gaspode 09 December | 17:04

I was recently stuck on watching lots of "How It's Made" on the Science Channel, which queues those fuckers up like lines of coke. The show isn't so much science; it's quick tours of small factories. Lots and lots of shots of machinery sorting and stirring and heating and freezing and wrapping and labeling. And occasional humans doing stuff the machines can't really do, like taking a rubber glove off a hand shaped form, turning it inside out, and putting it back on the form. A zillion times a day.

I guess that's not really a re-watch. I think the most recent thing I compulsively rewatched was "Prime Suspect", Brit policier with Helen Mirren, back in school. I had it playing in the background constantly, I probably saw any given part of it at least 20 times.

These days there's a constant backlog of stuff I want to read and see, so I think guilt stops me from revisiting the same thing over and over again, any more.

posted by fleacircus 09 December | 17:06

I can't even begin to make a complete list of films I've watched over an over again, because there are dozens of them. Sometimes, I'm re-watching them the way that I'd revisit a text or a piece of art, pondering the implications of the subtle details; sometimes I'm just re-watching them for the pleasure of re-watching them, of revisiting a piece of pop culture I enjoyed the first time.

Off the top of my head, I'd say my top repeat offenders are:
Casablanca
The Shining
Mulholland Dr.
The Spanish Prisoner
Alien
Peeping Tom

And then we get to directors whose works I watch again and again:
Billy Wilder's films, especially Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, and Stalag 17
the Coen Bros' films, especially Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing
Akira Kurosawa or Bergman (though I haven't yet watched my way through the complete works of either; that's a project in the works.)
Terry Gilliam (up to the turn of the century and Twelve Monkeys, anyway)
Hitchcock

We also have a little library of Shakespearean productions, but those feel like a separate category for me. I'm watching them as much for the text as for the acting and interpretation.

posted by Elsa 09 December | 17:09

M*A*S*H. Jon and I have the series on DVD and watch it most nights. It's our bedtime story. With eleven seasons worth of episodes, by the time we work through the collection, the early episodes are fresh again. We can say favorite lines before the characters say them (I know, geeky, but it's fun, and we're old and married). We've had similar obsessions with series like Homicide, Deadwood, and The Wire, though we don't tend to watch them over and over like M*A*S*H. Barney Miller's another one we've watched a lot. And for awhile, we were on a Kojak kick. (Who loves ya baby?)

Jon's a big Godfather fan, too. I tend to resist (I've seen I & II a million times), but then I get into it. We also love Goodfellas. And Rocky I & II.

Whenever they're on TV, I tend to go for Die Hard; Terminater 2; Total Recall; Independence Day (it was just on last Sunday) -- I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of -- but oddly I don't own them. Anything Star Trek I'll also tend to watch, too (except Star Trek V and not Deep Space 9 so much).

Some of my comfort favorites are Big Lebowski (I have it memorized), Bull Durham, Doc Hollywood, and Heaven Can Wait (I own these). If I'm in a scorched earth mood, Taxi Driver or Apocalypse Now.

posted by Pips 09 December | 19:45

I've seen everything by Stanley Kubrick too many times, especially 2001 and Dr. Strangelove. Just watched Barry Lyndon this week again, just amazing movie.

posted by octothorpe 09 December | 23:40

King Kong (The original. Not that horrid Peter Jackson remake) Total fun. And, I also watch the Godfather movies whenever they're on.

posted by Thorzdad 10 December | 09:07

I've watched A Christmas Carol (various versions) maybe 15 times since Halloween. I'm thisclose to picking this year's favorite.

I'm leaning toward the '38 version.

posted by punchtothehead 10 December | 09:52

I can rewatch Buffy, Angel and Firefly over and over. When I was in college my roommate and I would watch Waking Life, Fight Club, and The Boondock Saints almost nightly...

The Big Lebowski is always awesome.

posted by thankyouforyourconsideration 10 December | 11:49

Princess Bride and Kill Bill.

posted by lysdexic 11 December | 20:20

09 December 2010