Fun with IMDb

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) should be a familiar destination for all movie fans, because they are the only place online where you can find out about nearly every movie ever made. Even Netflix doesn't do that.

You can go year-by-year to find the top movies by boxoffice or MOVIEMeter(tm) rating, which is how I look for movies to put in my Netlfix queue, sometimes.

IMDb maintains a constantly-updated list of the top 250 movies by MOVIEMeter(tm). I would like to brag about how many I've seen of them. How do I keep track? I use 250films.net. 250films.net is a well-made site where you can actually check off the films you've seen. Click on this button to see which ones I've seen:




Here is another cool site for looking at the IMDb Top 250, where you can see monthly snapshots of the list going back to 1997, as well as do month-to-month comparisons to see which titles have been added or moved up or down.

Criterion on Netflix

Criterion Cast, "The Podcast Dedicated To Important Classic And Contemporary Films," has posted a list of Criterion films available on Netflix, with links.

P.S. I've seen about half of the films.

Leonard Maltin's app on sale

The Leonard Maltin iPhone/iPod Touch app I posted about is on sale at the iTunes store for $2.99, down from $4.99. It's based on his paperback movie guide. I reckon the price drop is because of how slow the search feature is. Also, you can't find things by keyword. You have to know the exact title or name, or at least the beginning letters. If you search for movie titles containing the word "Henry", you'll get Henry V, but not The Private Life of Henry VIII.

Even with these problems, I still love and recommend the app. Get it while it's on sale, and you'll get free updates when they fix these problems.

Best Movie guide on the iPhone and iPod Touch

I am thrilled to learn from a comment left here by Ken, that Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide is now available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. I bought mine from the App Store for $4.99, which is a third of what the book costs.

The advantages of it over other applications is that you don't have to be connected to the Internet to look up movie details. You get plot summaries, star ratings, cast and director. You can search the database by title, cast, or director to get filmographies. I do this all the time when I'm out with friends. We'll be talking about movies and they ask me what other movies has an actor been in? What other movies has someone directed? They think I'm the movie expert, and I keep them impressed by using Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.

Another advantage is that you can create your own custom lists or add to Favorites or Movies to See which you can backup online. There's also a button to add movies to your Netflix queue (requires an Internet connection).

I've been waiting for this ever since I gave up my Palm T|X. A good movie guide was the only thing I missed about that Palm. I left a note on Leonard Maltin's Web site, asking that they make an app for the iPhone. I reckon I wasn't the only one who wanted it. Now my iPod Touch is complete.

If you don't have iTunes or an iPhone, check out the developer's Web site for screenshots and more info.

P.S. No one paid me or gave me anything to write this review.

Find Netflix Instant Watching titles faster with these tools

I found these on Lifehacker:

FlixWare searches title, actor, genre, year.

Netflix Instant Watch Tracker searches by title, actor, and genre

InstantWatcher.com is very versatile, with searches by title, actor, genre, new, expiring, best, worst, and random. Includes links to play or add to queue, if you're logged in. Includes pop-up title synopses. Free and no registration required.

Best family movies of 2008

Commonsense Media, which partners with Netflix to provide information for parents, has compiled a list of the Best Movies of 2008, and the ages of the children for which the movies are appropriate.


AGE 4+
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

AGE 5+
WALL-E

AGE 6+
Kung Fu Panda

AGE 13+
Iron Man
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

AGE 15+
American Teen
Slumdog Millionaire

Film personality test

Ben Tesch says:

It’s not strange to disagree about movies that are wildly different, and there are surely a few random movies that are very polarizing. What I find most interesting is which movie people consider the best movie from a particular director, as it is usually very telling and polarizing in a different way, so to this point I will propose a new personality test where you reblog your favorite movie from each of these directors:

1. Joel Coen: No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, etc
2. Wes Anderson: The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, etc
3. Hal Ashby: Being There, Shampoo, Harold and Maude, etc
4. Kevin Smith: Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Dogma, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Clerks, etc
5. Quentin Tarantino: Grindhouse, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, etc

My results:

Joel Coen: Raising Arizona
Wes Anderson: Darjeeling Limited (I haven't seen Bottle Rocket)
Hal Ashby: Being There
Kevin Smith: Chasing Amy
Quentin Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs

Via Listology

Dude has over a thousand Netflix friends!

I just made Robowriter a Fave, which means I'm a Fan, not a Friend, since he's a stranger to me. He has rated 13,132 titles on Netflix, written 486 reviews, made 148 lists, and he is 50% similar to me. His reviewer rank is an astonishingly low 14. My favorite thing about Fave Robowriter, is his exhaustive lists in which he categorizes movies very specifically. For example, he's making a list of all movies in which the Wilhelm Scream is used.

Every Movie Available From Netflix On Demand

Jon Dyer’s Blog has a list of Every Movie Available From Netflix On Demand which is very, very handy. It represents alot of work on the part of Jon Dyer. I hope he can keep it updated, but Netflix should make such a list available or at least make it possible to search for movies according to whether they are available on demand.

via Hacking Netflix

Mad queue disease

I've emptied my queue! Yes, I'm just kidding. My queue hasn't been empty since January 12, 2004. But in a way I have. At one point, I had maxed out my queue with 500 titles from the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Netflix has just sent me the last one.

According to my Netflix History, which I keep in Netflix Freak, Netflix has sent me 606 titles since I joined.

But an empty queue is the devil's playground, so I am madly refilling it with the 389 movies I haven't seen of the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made.

Progress report on the 1001 Movies

It's been three months since I last reported on my quest to see all of the titles in Stephen Jay Schneider's book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the 2002 edition. I started in 2004, having seen about 200 of them, and now I have seen 978.

Netflix sent me 595 of them.

Of the 23 remaining, eight are in my Netflix Queue. I have three from Netflix at home. I bought two on eBay. One I have to rent at the video store. One I have to watch at the UNC Chapel Hill library. The final eight are unavailable on home video, or if available, in a foreign language without English subtitles.

I'm going through the book in chronological order, and I just finished the decade of the Nineties.

If you're working on the same list, please let me know how far along you are. I haven't heard of anyone who has completed the list yet. You can track, share, and compare your progress on the fourth edition (2006) of the book at Lists of bests.

AFI 100 Years...100 Movies...10th Anniversary Edition

The American Film Institute has come out with an updated list of the greatest American movies of the last 100 years, for the tenth anniversary of the first list, and I've already seen all of them! It's a very good list, better than the one they did in 1996. I recommend it as a minimum for every Netflix member. Netflix has a link to the AFI list, but it's broken at the moment; perhaps because they are working on the new list. :)

UPDATE - the link is working again, and the Netflix site has been updated with the latest AFI 100 Great Movies. Four on the list are not available on DVD.

Listology is looking for a site-admin

One of my favorite Web sites in the WHOLE WORLD was created by a really nice guy who, after running it himself for a few years, wants to find "an active administrator, someone who will respond to feature requests, strive to keep the site up-to-date, give it a shiny new web 2.0 look, etc"

Listology is a repository of user-generated lists. Right now, the site is pretty plain-text, which is one of its appeals. It loads fast and is easy to update. It's also very Netflix-friendly. It's the home of the Netflix Tracker, where I keep track of all the movies I get from Netflix and what distribution center they come from. Listology is also where I share my Netflix Queue with the world. Listology is a great place to go if you are looking for ideas for your queue.