IMDB - a rant

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by oscar jubis
It's been quite difficult for years to separate films by country, because so many are co-produced by two or more countries. There's a debate in France right now as to whether A Very Long Engagement should be considered a French film (for the purpose of nominations and such). The Motorcycle Diaries is listed at IMDb as Country:USA/Germany/UK/Argentina/Chile/Peru. The Machinist is listed as exclusively Spanish (meaning from Spain of course). Hero depended largely on American money for its budget. I could go on.

Good point. Number of co-production have increased drastically in the last few years, especially in Europe for variety of reasons but primarily for cost certainty.

French court ruled against Long Engagement and thus it's not eligible for any subsidies/tax breaks from the French government. However, changes are being made in the overall structure to ensure the filmmakers who decide to follow the path of Mr. Jeunet.

[SinjinSB]

While I agree with most of the original rants, IMDB (IMO) is the best movie site around. Their database, while not perfect, has got to be the most complete around. I have been frequenting it since it began as an excellent source of information on movies, actors, etc.

I think most of your complaints can be explained by the quantity and average age of the IMDB raters and Message board users. You gotta figure it's the kids that dominate the site. FTR, I'm 34 and I'm sure that's well above average.

About the ratings, you definitely have to take them with a grain of salt. My theory is that most of the ratings are done by folks that haven't seen a lot of the best movies. So when they see a really good movie (like the LOTR trilogy), it's the best movie they've ever seen. I enjoyed the trilogy a lot, but of course they don't belong in the top 10 movies of all time.

As far as the message boards, there's is good with the bad. I've had some wonderful discussions. You learn to spot the threads that will quickly turn into flame wars. Some of the boards are better than others. Generally, the more popular the board, the higher the junk posts are. I frequent the Best/Worst board when I have the time, but it does get a little annoying sometimes. I also enjoy the classic board, the hitchcock board, the video board...and occasionally others.

So yes, I definitely understand your frustration, but at least for me, the good far out ways the bad. Hey, my favorite movie of all-time isn't on their Top 250 list ;-)

As one poster said, I think it was someone who saw my posts there that invited me to FilmWurld. I have enjoyed this site a lot and have been exposed to films and opinions that I probably wouldn't have found elsewhere (or would have had to dig deeper for).

I've been really busy in recent months and haven't done much posting anywhere and my movie watching has been less than normal too. But, when I have the time, I usually stop by here first before heading to the IMDB boards. Because there's less to go through here, and the average quality is much higher.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm not caught up on all the comments in this thread but I can see there are some good ones. True, IMDb has lots of faults. It's not rocket science.

SinjinSB's comment is quite right though. Something as big and popular and commerical as IMDb can't be sophisticated sounding as a whole, but can provide a great deal of useful information and a wonderful outlet for everybody.Whatever its faults, IMDb is still the basic online reference on film. What else is as complete and accessible?

You can take what you need and leave the rest. I've actually never even consulted their "ratings". The focus on such stuff seems to be on the rise, though. Now every viewer Comment is to have "ratings" attached to it. Such ratings are for the birds, though the metacritic numerical values for films are a good indicator of the critical reception of a film, aren't they?

FimWurld is a good antidote to IMDb, small, quiet, and quality stuff.