the joys of imdb. . . blogging is so much fun!!! i mean it is like livejournal, except i don't have to think about things in my own life to write about. that is why i don't post in livejournal much because nothing interesting ever happens to me. i guess i could use livejournal to rant about things that interest me, but it makes it extra fun when you have a blog with a general message and everything. i think everybody should have one. it is therapeutic.

anyways, back to film.

megan and john and i have been bantering back and forth with one another about the joys of imdb so i decided to write more about it. i think i first started messing around with it in college, but i definitely have gotten more into it in the past couple years. honestly, sometimes i think it actually makes watching movies more fun. it is probably my favorite webpage.

first of all, it is SO helpful for when you see someone in a movie (like amy adams from junebug) and you are like I KNOW I HAVE SEEN YOU IN SOMETHING ELSE BUT WHAT IS IT. so you go into imdb and you look and bingo you are like OH you are that slut from drop dead gorgeous. it saves you a lot of time wracking your brain.

secondly, there is a trivia section for most movies and tv shows and sometimes there is trivia for the actors under the bio section. it is really fun to read, especially about movies you really like. old movies like the wizard of oz or gone with the wind might have pages and pages of trivia. john and i always read the trivia every time we watch a movie. you can also see the rewards a movie or actor won which is cool if you are into that.

third, and i just discovered this relatively recently. if you go into the showtimes section for a movie, it will tell you the theaters in your city where it is playing (like moviefone) BUT if it isn't playing in your city you can click and it will show you a map of where the movie is playing. like john and i wanted to watch grizzly man but we waited for weeks and it never came to tucson. on imdb i saw that it was playing in a theater in scottsdale so we drove there to see it. if you want to watch a specific movie go to imdb rather than moviefone.

but by far the best thing about imdb, like megan said in her comment to my last post, is that you can learn more about what kind of movies you like to see. what i mean is that rather than knowing what genre of movies you like or even what actors you like to see, if you use imdb you can learn about the writers, directors, producers and/or movie studios that interest you. for example, lately i have been getting really into todd solondz and lars von trier movies. i go to imdb and look for project they have been involved in that i haven't seen yet. it would be a lot more difficult to follow a particular filmmaker if there wasn't a database like this.

anyways, it is fun but it is also really helpful, so if you don't use it you should:)

and i agree with you too megan that it pisses me off when actors don't have pictures, because sometimes i am bad with movie characters names (like in memoirs of a geisha everyone has asian sounding names) and i am like i want to know more about the actor that played the evil girl but i can't remember her character's name so it takes me forever to figure out whose profile to read. actors i think only pay to put their pictures up if they are looking for work. so a lot of like middle range actors don't have photos posted because they aren't paying to do it themselves and nobody else has thought to add it.  ¶ 1/22/2006 07:42:00 PM