It's been well documented that TV is a time-suck. One reason: the repeat showings of movies, some of which, even if you've already seen them a hundred times (and you might even own on DVD), you will stick with for the duration, through commercials, bad cable edits and all. (Speaking of cable edits, was I the only one who didn’t know about that pubic hair on the pizza scene in She’s All That?!?) We asked an assortment of folks which movies never fail to suck them in.

Kurt Andersen

Pretty much the only time I mindlessly flip TV channels these days is when I'm traveling alone and staying [...]

First, the bad news:

Life as a couch potato could be deadly. For every two hours of daily television time, the risk of diabetes increases by 20 percent over 8½ years, the risk of heart disease rises by 15 percent over a decade, and the chances of dying from any cause jump 13 percent over 7 years. That's according to a new analysis of eight major studies (including more than 200,000 people) from the Harvard School of Public Health, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But there is a bright spot!

New York City has negotiated a deal with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision where the cable companies will have to pay if appointments aren't kept, with the refunds equaling up to the cost of a month's bill until 2012, when Verizon FiOS (and its way superior on-demand offerings — hello, Come Dine With Me!) arrive in the city. (At that point the refund maximum drops to $25.) I suspect that there will be more than a few people who are just bored/underemployed/cheap enough to serial scheduling service appointments in hopes of catching this windfall — stopwatches at the ready, praying for a traffic jam or some other [...]