Friday, June 02, 2006

Essentials for a hollywood movie buff

I always wanted to share this list with someone who loves movies as much as I do. Out of the numerous sites dedicated to movies that I visit regularly, I finalized these:

1) www.rogerebert.com : Roger ebert is the only person who has ever won a Pultizer prize for writing movie reviews. I didn't knew this when I started reading his reviews but of 15 or so critic reviews that yahoo movies usually posts, I found his insights to be very clear. I read his review for every movie I see ( & wouldn't see) and most of the times his reviews are very convincing. If you have time to read books on movies, then dont miss Roger ebert's "Great Movies" and " I hated, hated , hated, hated this movie". His writings are so clear and so impartial that I hardly disagreed with his review in the course of last 4 years since I started visiting this site. I love to read his reviews for the bad ones, especially the ones with zero star ratings, they are so funny. Apart from the reviews, the "Answer-man" section where he responds to the visitors questions is informative and insightful. The "Movie glossary" section is hilarious and the "Great movies" section is the best.

2) www.rottentomatoes.com : For some unexplainable reasons I dont like imdb.com which is considered as the bible for movie buffs. imdb provides a chance for every movie buff to express his/her opinion and rates a movie based on the average of users rating. But rotten tomatoes does much better job in my opinion. You have all the reviews of the nation's top 150 or so critics, and the average of their ratings is given as a percentage. A movie with 60% or more rating is FRESH or else is ROTTEN.
Apart from the rating, you will have the info about the movie, pics, trailers and all the other usual stuff. The best part is the tomato picker where you can search for movies with a certain percentage of rating belonging to particular genre.

3) www.filmsite.org : As Roger ebert calls it, the site is a labor of love for movies. There is no other site on the web which would provide such a detail explanation on a shot to shot analysis for some great movies. On the whole, this site has the shot to shot analysis for 300 odd movies. But if you just want to know more about the great movies, this is the place to look for.

4) www.boxofficemojo.com : Not a great site in terms of content but very informative on the dollar figures. If you wish to broaden ur knowledge on the highest grossers of all time, movies with highest openings, movies with highest ROI etc.. this is your destination.

1 comment:

ravptor said...

Of all the reviews that I religiously read of Roger, the ones I really like are of movies which are based on published and acclaimed books and of film festivals.

Don't know much abt the other 3 cos I never needed to look past this guy when it came it sensible movie reviewing.