Comments on: Ebert is now fat AND obsolete.

Ebert is now fat AND obsolete.

AVandalay — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:09:34 -0800

What to Rent Computers now recommending movie rentals to people.

By: howa2396

howa2396 — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:20:55 -0800

"Question 7: If someone said- "Lets go see a great new independent foreign movie with English subtitiles that has some powerful yet difficult to handle scenes", you would think: If someone said that, I'm likely to punch the person in the face. I like the concept of this site though, and I'm going to give it a fair chance. Nice link!

By: abcde

abcde — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:21:35 -0800

By: TimeFactor

TimeFactor — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:31:54 -0800

or movielens.

By: adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:44:47 -0800

dang sliders don't work in safari. punk-ass bastids.

By: kindall

kindall — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:02:49 -0800

This thing only tells you what movies you'd like. It doesn't tell you whether they're any good or not. Hence, movie critics are not obsolete.

By: AVandalay

AVandalay — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:09:09 -0800

Do movie critics serve any purpose other than to guide people in what movies to watch?

By: whatzit

whatzit — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:23:10 -0800

Yes, they do. Movie critics often write reviews that are better than the movies themselves.

By: AVandalay

AVandalay — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:35:21 -0800

I'll give props to that based on the ultimate crtic:The Filthy Critic

By: bonzo

bonzo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:58:13 -0800

I've heard about this site in this news. I heard that they were thinking of adopting it's matching algorithms to replace the current system used to match applicants to medical schools/internships in the US.

By: biffa

biffa — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 13:08:25 -0800

'One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' is now a popcorn movie that probably won't impact me deeply? They spotted my desensitisation in around 20 questions?

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 13:37:40 -0800

I used to work on a site that did this as of ... oh, five or six YEARS ago... ForMovies.com

By: AVandalay

AVandalay — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 13:43:26 -0800

Too bad (ForMovies.com) is commercialized swag. Its movie recommendation wizard just told me where my nearest blockbuster is. I already knew it was next to Kroger.

By: themadjuggler

themadjuggler — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 14:16:11 -0800

About the first 10 recommendations were already in my collection... either my tastes are very predictable, or this site does its job well.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 14:27:40 -0800

I remember a company doing this sort of thing years ago called Firefly that went out of business, (wired article). I've never found any of these recommendation sites all that useful.

By: costas

costas — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 18:06:02 -0800

Explicitly gathering recommendations is a pain and the vast majority of users don't bother. That's why the most successful recommendation systems are implicit ones (Amazon, Netflix). I've been looking for something similar for internet radio (last.fm is close, audioscrobbler closer, but I'd like something more integrated with a media player). And of course, I think memigo's pretty good (self-plug) at doing the same for news...

By: stonerose

stonerose — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 18:58:16 -0800

Hmm. Using Safari, the slider icon is treated like an image, and can be dragged anywhere on the desktop. When released, it returns to its original position. Nice.

By: skallas

skallas — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 19:38:03 -0800

I must be old fashioned, I just visit Rotten Tomatoes, read the reviewers I like, and check out the splat-o-meter or whatever they call it. Seems to work, but I watch a lot less movies that I used to and take the 'wait for the video release' suggestion a lot more seriously.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 19:49:05 -0800

It couldn't come up with a single movie I haven't seen.... Movie critics often write reviews that are better than the movies themselves. I couldn't agree more! Criticism is an art, and I often obtain more pleasure from the review than from the movie.

By: crazy finger

crazy finger — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:40:48 -0800

I think this is phony. I tried the service twice with wildly different entries and got very similar results. Since I have the most recent results up now, here they are: Secretary, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ,The Man Who Wasn't There, Trainspotting, Amadeus, City of God, American Psycho, Full Metal Jacket, Boogie Nights, Y Tu Mama Tambien, In the Bedroom, The Hustler Anybody get similar predictions? How about Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, Chasing Amy, Run Lola Run, A Clockwork Orange, Clerks, Punch Drunk Love

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:54:16 -0800

Avan - Yeah, interface change that I had no part in whatsoever, happened after I got laid off. Once you get to one of the store's sites it'll run you through a good guide process... and from then on, all of the interfaces will work the way they should.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:00:19 -0800

(Wish I could edit to say -- Hit MovieWizard from www.formovies.com ... and then put in your zip code and select one of the store websites. Then select MovieWizard AGAIN and it'll actually get you into the guide.)

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:28:00 -0800

I put in ratings for close to two thousand films at netflix.com and so far their recommendations are running about fifty fifty. Meaning that a flip of the coin is just as useful. The above links don't look much better than netflix. They got a long way to go with computers before they'll replace Roger Ebert.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 23:00:18 -0800

I'm a little suspicious; it recommended Secretary to me, too. I've seen it, and it isn't really that good, although it does seem to be a DVD-market hit (proving once again that Americans prefer their porn at home). Maybe it's just being secretly rented by just about everybody that rents anything interesting. But I was most surprised at the personality survey question, What is your feeling about the current involvement in Iraq? (A 2-4 sentence reply is good enough for our algorithm.) Did everyone get this, or just me? Given MeFi, I'd imagine an immediate peg of WhatToRent as a Homeland Security front, and much fun had with the idea already. Frankly, though, I get plenty of satisfaction from Amazon's The Page You Made feature, notwithstanding its separate recommendations system. It's very useful for some ad-hoc exploration outside of your self-defined universe of film. For my mother's church group movie night, for instance, I entered the last three family-themed, religious-overtoned films seen (e.g. Amistad & Finding Forrester, not talking Jesus here), and got some good challenging choices such as Antwone Fisher. They're watching Chocolat Wednesday despite my salutary efforts, but then again I don't have to be there.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 06:53:13 -0800

Just another collaborative filtering engine. This technology is a commodity right now (it drives all the "since you have X in your shopping cart, you might check out Y" functionality), so I'm not sure what the big deal here is, unless they've come across some real leap in that technology.

By: rudyfink

rudyfink — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 02:35:37 -0800

I gave up after it gave me 30 movies in a row I'd already seen.