I’d played around a bit with IMDb’s My Movies feature, but, like a lot of things, you can’t really try it without an appropriate amount of data. I’ve got that now, so I can say with confidence that it’s a mixed bag.
The idea of My Movies is to allow you to make lists of movies in the IMDb for your own uses and to perform searches on those films. I’d rate it sub-par on both counts.
I have a lot of movies on disc and wanted to put them all in My Movies. There’s no automated way to do that, but I managed to roll my own. The URL to add a movie to a list can be used to add as many as you can fit in the URL (which can be 4k long). So if you have the tt numbers of all your titles, you can get the job done pretty quickly.
I still need to clean up my LD list which uses the old URL scheme, but my BDs and DVDs are mostly done. It would’ve been extraordinarily tedious to actually click on each of those to add them. Even more tedious than it was to get the tt numbers in the first place…
If you end up with duplicates, as I did when my first script screwed up, you have to delete them manually, or delete them all and start over. I requested the feature to delete duplicates automatically because that’s something a computer can do a lot faster than a human can. Clicking every other box down the list is tiring.
So now that I have them all in there (well all the ones the tt number is right for), what can I do with them?
You can search on your own My Movies, but it doesn’t work as well as searching the database as a whole.
If you look at the regular search box, one of the choices on the pulldown is “My Movies”. I expected that to behave like “All”, except limited to My Movies. Nope. Not even close. It only searches on the title fields. At least it searches on all those and not just the main title (what it shows to everyone else). That’s disappointing.
What about power search? Better, but it has the quirks of power search. Main one being you have to put the canonical name in to search for someone. So “Christopher Lee” is out, but “Christopher Lee (I)” works. Of course, power search is like that anyway (you get a Chinese one if you do a power search in general).
It also has the limitation of power search not being able to restrict a person to specific roles. And don’t even get me started on trying to find things by country because that trick never works, Bullwinkle.
It is nice, though, that I can search on not My Movies, so I can find anything related to Dario Argento that I don’t have, for example. Neat.
So I know you’re dying to try it, but that brings me to my second point- it’s called My Movies for a reason. You can’t search on my My Movies. Sorry. It’d be neat if you could, but the interface isn’t there. Best you can do is browse them by genre or main title.
Speaking of the list by title- doesn’t anyone know how to alphabetize anymore? I believe IMDb gave up on ignoring articles (A, An, The) in movie titles over internationalization issues, but it’s profoundly annoying. Not crazy about all the TV shows sorting out top due to quotes either- though it would make it (a little, maybe) easier to segregate them into another list.
So if you have an IMDb account (and why wouldn’t you?), My Movies might be worth your time, but it’s not as cool as it could be. And remember, it’s My Movies, Nacho Movies.
Best Buy has a special: buy Snow White and another Disney movie and get a $15 Best Buy gift card. Sure, you saw it in the paper. Bet you didn’t see this: Pinocchio on Blu-ray (and DVD) is $9.99! No kidding.
I went to the store and they didn’t have it marked that way, but they price-matched their website. If you don’t want confrontation, buy it on the website and pick it up at the store.
Good through Saturday, so if you’re looking for some Disney discs, scoop ‘em up. Both packages have both DVD and Blu-ray, so you don’t have to be Blu yet.
You’re welcome!
So I haven’t posted updates on the construction project lately. That’s because things ground to a halt and thinking about it was depressing.
But I got things going again. Well, for a while. Apparently the crew has had some emergencies to take care of, so there’s been little manpower over here.
We do have the projector up, though, and most of the speaker brackets. That really does mean we’re almost done up on three. Only big task is the floor, which they’ve been saving until all the other work is done so they don’t have to mark up my new floor.
Other thing is we need to finish the work on two and the back of the house so we can get the A/C working. That can’t wait too long- it’ll be an oven up there once it gets sunny out. That’s why no one lived up on three before…
I did see the SoBe ad before a 3-D movie the other day- in 2-D. Ugh. SomeBody’s missing the point of shooting an ad in 3-D…
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been pushing for green/violet anaglyph glasses for years. Turns out some people are using them now. About freaking time…
The recent DVD release of Journey to the Center of the Earth and the upcoming one of My Bloody Valentine both use these glasses. And they’re violet on the right, which is probably the better way to do it, though with the filters being much closer in density, it probably matters a lot less.
I’ll bet these work better than red/cyan or ColorCode glasses, but whether that’s enough to make up for the general problems of anaglyphs on video will take some more investigation.
I’ll soon run some tests here and see what I think. It’d be nice if something were good enough for home digital projection for now.
Of course, I have the option of LCD shutters for analog projection, so I’ll keep doing that if it’s not. If I could afford a second RS2, I’d go polarized at home, but that’ll have to wait for another decade, likely.
OK, I’ve watched the 3-D package a couple of times. The process looked dark and ugly, as anaglyphs tend to. It was hard to tell from the material how effective the process is. The ColorCode demos online were better, but they didn’t have to get filtered through an analog transmission to get to me.
But it was a good attempt. We’ll see how the viewers and critics weigh-in over the next few days.
I’ve got a couple things to chime in on though:
SoBe called it the first 3-D TV ad. Maybe, depending what you count. I’d have to count the Superbowl ad for Coke from, what 1990? It used the Pulfrich effect, so some people wouldn’t count it, but I think we should. Enough Pulfrich movies and videos have been marketed as 3-D- even ones that weren’t well done (like a shelf full I have from Thailand).
DreamWorks marketing tried to pitch it as the first “3-D trailer to premiere during the Superbowl” in the ads for their ad, which is true, I guess, although most 3-D movies have them these days, though only for theatrical display. Some did even in 1953. I’ve got some in my collection.
More interesting is that several 2-D movies have had 3-D trailers. One of Albert Brooks‘ movies did, for instance. So did one of the Star Trek movies. I’ve got those around here somewhere too.
I’d like to see the SoBe ad in a better process to get a good look at it. Maybe they’ll run it in theaters too.
I’m way behind on “Chuck”, so I might not watch it right away, but I’ll make a good recording for future review. The scenes looked pretty good.
Just got my Superbowl / Monsters vs. Aliens / “Chuck” / SoBe Life Water / Intel / InTru 3D / NBC / ColorCode 3-D glasses. Yes, they have more logos and URLs on them than a stock car, but the last one is worth a note: these are ColorCode glasses!
I don’t expect that to mean anything to you, but the short form is that if you’ve got glasses around the house from a comic book or DVD they aren’t the right kind. As far as I know, the only wide deployment of ColorCode was for the Japanese disc of Ghosts of the Abyss (the US one isn’t in 3-D).
Most anaglyphic glasses you’ve seen are red and cyan. ColorCode glasses are amber and blue. Proponents argue that this provides for better color fidelity and a less obnoxious image if you don’t have the glasses on (a feature for broadcast TV). That’s because you can’t see the amber image well- kind of like if you print something yellow on white paper with your printer.
Personally, I’ve always thought the problem with red/cyan glasses is that the red eye is much darker than the cyan one. The imbalance is about 70-30, which is a problem.
Glasses that were green and violet would be 59-41, which sounds better to me. Blue/amber is like 11-89, so that seems like a step in the wrong direction, but they’re right about not seeing the amber fringe, and the view through the amber eye is largely unobstructed.
But is it worth being blind in the other eye? Now that I’ve got a bunch of them, guess I’ll try it for myself and find out.
If you got to SoBe’s website, you can see a list of places to get the glasses. I got mine at Target from a sample guy.
OK, so I’m broke this month. It’s not the economy (directly at least), it’s eternal construction crossed with annual bills due (damn, I just remembered another one!) and Christmas gifts and travel. It all adds up to me being pretty well tapped out. There’s really nothing left in my main bank account.
So this morning I stop by my other bank to cash out my emergency money so I’ll have it for heading out of town. That officially leaves me with nothing in banks, but I get paid in a week, so I’ll make it.
Well, would’ve. But returning from a bathroom break, I noticed that somehow I had dropped my cash. I’d had it at lunch, so sometime and somewhere in between it managed to fall out of my pocket without me noticing.
How that could happen is beyond me. I literally walk a thousand miles a year, and I don’t drop anything. It’s just not something I do. And I keep pretty good track of things on the ground.
My best guess is I either lost it hustling across the street in the snow or in the bathroom and the next person scooped it up before I went back to look. Either way, I’m out nearly all of my current worth. Worse, my faith in my everyday routines is shaken.
I’ll make it through the week on money friends have loaned me (thanks, guys), but I was already overextended next month, so it’s going to hurt awhile. I’ll have to tighten the belt a bit more and get this damn construction finished.
Anyway, if you found a wad of cash in or between YONG and Fazoli’s, it was probably mine.
Got email from Negroponte yesterday telling us (that is, people who have an XO) to flash that thing around to promote the new round of G1G1. I sure will. It’d be nice to see some other machines in my neighborhood for once!
So if you’re in the Purdue area and want to “touch the irresistible green ears” as the man says, let me know. I’ll resume carrying it most everywhere. Maybe I’ll even get it working with the campus wireless network.