Waste Your Time on My Dime (part one)

I was thinking today about some of the magical things on the web that serve to distract me from doing productive things. This will be the movie edition of two other such posts to follow.

IMDB- If you love movies and don’t know about this site, then you should be ashamed of yourself. IMDB is the ultimate. You can search for movies by actor, director, writer, you name it! My favorite thing about IMDB is the trivia section that gives, well, trivia about the filming, script and behind the scenes factoids that movie nerds may be interested in. Dave Bertoglio loves the “goofs” section. It has rewards for the close watcher: continuity problems, on-screen set pieces, missing or mis-robed costume pieces (For example: When the Millennium Falcon is inside the worm and a tremor makes Princess Leia fall on Han Solo she says, "Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited", Han Solo is mouthing her line. The original trilogy is absolutely rife with mistakes.), etc.

Dark Horizons- A movie junkie’s haven. This site has information on new movies, deals, trailers, interviews, rumors, etc. The writing is clever and well done and the focus is on the art of film making rather than the “stars.” In other words, this isn’t Access Hollywood or ET.

Kids in Mind- For those of us fed up with the MPAA’s twisted and corrupt rating system, this site gives the reader a break down of the movies content in three categories: Sex, Violence and Language. Each of these categories receives a rating from zero to ten (zero for nothing, ten for a vast abundance of). Pirates of the Caribbean received a 3.7.2, for example, whereas Nacho Libre got a 3.4.3. Then, each and every potentially objectionable part of the movie is explained (sterilely) so that an educated decision can be made about the movies appropriateness for varying audiences.

Rotten Tomatoes- We love Rotten Tomatoes at our house! This is the end of the line when it comes to the movie critical mass. Basically, the idea here is the collection and distribution of professional critic’s opinions of a movie’s watchability. Is your time better spent, as my brother-in-law Brandon is known to say, staring at a blank wall? Each review is assigned a positive or a negative value and a percentage is tabulated based on those numbers. If the total percentage exceeds 60%, the movie is considered “fresh” if it is below that, the movie is, of course, “rotten.” Never waste your money on a crappy movie again!