http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/features-finke.php

Apparently, discussions like this one were instrumental to the site's beginnings.

Lately, I've actually been using CinemaWeb a lot--more photos.

It's amazing the dependancy you can get to a resource so quickly. I often wonder how anyone wrote on film before Imdb. Maybe having a hefty copy of Halliwells on the shelf or Microsoft's old Cinemania software (which is still *excellent*) but it certainly would have made last minute proofing of film articles a much more stressful business!

Phil.

I had the "Blockbuster Guide to the Movies" software, which included MovieHound, I think. It wasn't bad, and had monthly updates.

www.mrqe.com

Can't live without it.

Any comments of the face lift at IMDB? (at least to the film and people pages, if not the startup page.)

I depend heavily on IMDb but what really bugs me is the poor control of quotes and trivia pages. Frequently on the pages of quotes people have submitted two similar versions of the same piece of dialogue. There ought to be some mechanism for someone else to say which (if either) is right, or to correct spelling errors, etc. Similarly, the trivia pages often have errors. I've given up flagging them up to IMDb because nothing ever gets changed. I guess I think some parts of it should be a wiki.

I frequently use the IMDB but I take everything I read there with a pinch of salt as they are overloaded with inaccurate information. You have to double-check everything. They have no quality control and the site is an absolute mess.

A resource I find extremely useful is the Movie Review Query Engine.

http://www.mrqe.com/lookup

The mrqe is a great site, but more of a kind with Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic than IMDb. When I need just the straight facts about a movie, IMDb or Wikipedia are the places I look.

Exactly. I rarely use MRQE because for me it's not an efficient way to find the kinds of reviews I need. It's a good site, but not what works for me. Rotten Tomatoes is slightly more useful to get a flavour of what various critics are saying without having to trawl through every review. Wikipedia is increasingly my reference site of choice because errors get picked up so quickly. I pay over $100 pa for IMDbPro and I should be able to expect accuracy throughout the site.

IMDB was absolutely a lifesaver when I did my undergrad film degree. Particularly useful were the links to trailers & posters, and the box office info. Although Variety was also fantastically useful in this respect before their free trial ran out (it lasted a couple of months, they've since cut this down substantially and it is far too expensive for the likes of a poor lowly stude type like myself).

Sure there are inaccuracies in some areas, such as the quotes, but i wouldn't ever go there for that sort of stuff. I'd obviously refer to the film if it was handy, but otherwise scriptorama is far better in this respect.

However, basic info, IMDB is irreplaceable. I'm also very grateful for the facelift as it was particularly difficult to spot links before - even when you knew they were there, for some reason they remained elusive. Not so anymore.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned since the recent IMDb face lift, is the change in some of the listings for upcoming movies. Some of these titles can now only be accessed through IMDb Pro. Last year, I looked up info on the soon to be produced film version of Norman McClean's book Young Men and Fire. IIRC, the IMDb announcement was limited, but had attached Door in the Floor director Tod Williams as Writer/Director. Now there is a page saying...


Is IMDb doing this only with films that have gone into limbo (director Tod Williams page no longer lists him as being attached to the film), or has anyone else tried searching for info on an upcoming film only to be redirected to a page saying you need to subscribe to IMDb Pro for access?

IMDb is apparently also making it more difficult to find films of a "graphic" nature. For the most part, this censorship targets out-and-out porn films like the ones that star e.g. Ron Jeremy, but if search for a more "legitimate" arthouse movie like "the brown bunny", the search engine turns up nothing useful -- but the movie's page is still there, even if you have to get to it through other avenues, such as Vincent Gallo's filmography.

I've noticed something new at IMDB - the list of keywords is now spoiler protected. You don't see them unless you roll over the warning or rate the film.