Ebert's Movie Review Archives
I love movies. After technology and computers, movies are probably my 2nd favorite hobby. Between the theater a few times a month, Netflix and my own collection of 500+ DVDs in my home theater, I watch more than my fair share of movies.
Quite a few years ago, I started watching a variety of movie reviews in order to better choose which movies to watch. I quickly came down to Roger Ebert and the various co-hosts he's had for his TV show. Now, I rarely bother with anyone else's opinion.
Now, that's not because I always agree with Ebert. Far from it. However, after all of these years, I can tell fairly accurately, based on Ebert's opinion and Roeper's counterpoint or agreement, whether I will like a movie or not. I've never been too concerned with their "thumbs" rating system, as it's mostly a gimmick to get you to read or watch the more in depth reviews.
That explanation of *why* they gave it a thumbs up or thumbs down is usually exactly what I need to determine whether I'm willing to see a movie or not. Heck, some of his most enthusiastic reviews have been for movies I absolutely hated, but I wasn't surprised when I hated them because of why he was enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, I'm often looking at a DVD on Netflix or in the store or on Amazon, wondering what his review was, 6 months or 2 years ago or whatever, when the movie was released. The current episodes of his TV show are great for deciding which movie to see in the theater this weekend, but don't help so much for a movie released last year that is for sale for $12 at Amazon.
That's why I think it's very cool that they've put up pretty much every one of those TV reviews since 1985 and a bunch of stuff that goes back as far as the beginning of that TV show, in 1975. With that archive, I can now pull up those older reviews easily.
Very cool and puts value on that huge repository of video footage that isn't easily monetized in any of the traditional ways. It's not like we're going to buy DVD box sets of 30+ years of movie reviews. Nor are we going to tune in for old re-runs of reviews from 1991. However, to look up a movie you've never heard of or to see if that DVD on the discount rack might be a hidden gem, it's definitely useful.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:52 am
[...] Knowing Your Filters' Bias 11:54am 6 August 2007 (20 seconds ago) General "…I can tell fairly accurately, based on Ebert's opinion and Roeper's counte… - Garrick Van [...]
August 8th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Another example of The Long Tail. I had heard, don't know if it is true, that Netflix biggest sellers are NOT the latest movies out on DVD, but, instead, oldies but goodies that one just doesn't get to see in the theaters since they left the scene.
So putting up these reviews is great content and fits in perfectly with what is happening in the market today.
500 DVD's in the home theater? Dude!
August 8th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Yep. Go take a look at the Netflix Top 100:
http://www.netflix.com/Top100
You'll be surprised at how old many of the movies on that list are. Most people just don't stay that close to the "new release" edge. I know that once I set up my home theater and the DVD release window shrank to the few months it is now, other than the few movies I *know* I want to see in the theater, it just doesn't matter to me when it was released anymore.
What's worse than the total size of the movie collection is that I've ripped about 125 of them to a home theater PC for instant, on-demand watching anytime. That's likely to double by the end of the year.
Of course, my collection is small compared to people like Kevin Smith (director of Clerks, Dogma, etc.). He's got something like 8,000.