Comments on: The Movie Genome Project

The Movie Genome Project

reenum — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:29:34 -0800

Jinni is a movie and TV recommendation service that has apparently developed an algorithm similar to Pandora's Music Genome Project. Their algorithm is cleverly titled The Movie Genome Project.

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:54:03 -0800

people stranded on an island Good idea, but this search has no results for now. Please try another.

By: One Second Before Awakening

One Second Before Awakening — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:00:24 -0800

I checked to see what it'd recommend me if I liked Tarkovsky's "Stalker," and the first page of results featured "9" and "2012." Tarkovsky's other science fiction movie, "Solaris" was nowhere to be found. The service could probably use some work. At the very least, the film's director should be taken into account, in my opinion. I will say that recommending "Conspirators of Pleasure" for someone who likes "Fellini Satyricon" was pretty excellent, though.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:11:39 -0800

I checked to see what it'd recommend me if I liked Tarkovsky's "Stalker," and the first page of results featured "9" and "2012." Tarkovsky's other science fiction movie, "Solaris" was nowhere to be found. The service could probably use some work. Actually they do have that one, but I agree with you in general. I tried Jinni a few months back, and it was pretty much unusable because it only had metadata on the most obvious mainstream films, so pretty much all of the suggestions were films I had already heard of. I think Criticker is more useful, because it will generate a probably rating for Stalker based on your rating of other films, and more importantly you can check for other people who rated it highly and see how they rate other films.

By: joan cusack the second

joan cusack the second — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:15:26 -0800

I have had pretty good luck with movielens in the past, but I don't know if other recommendation sites/services have improved upon its methods in the years since I committed myself there. (I only want to rate my favorite movies so many times!) As a TV addict and snob, though, I'm encouraged by Jinni's inclusion of TV shows.

By: bjrn

bjrn — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:17:38 -0800

Similarly to Criticker there's MovieLens. And for people-generated recommendations there's Clerkdogs.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:20:09 -0800

Man, I wish I had a need for a service like this. I've currently got a backlog of about a hundred movies that I know are right up my alley, plus a similar number of books and a few dozen video games and TV shows. I've got enough content to last a lifetime, and they keep making more of it.

By: oinopaponton

oinopaponton — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:50:01 -0800

I put in The Wire and "compelling," and it recommended Law & Order: SVU. Cool idea, though.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:25:33 -0800

Any novel movie recommendation system needs to be able to import user ratings from other major sites—IMDB, Netflix, maybe one or two others I'm not thinking of. I like the idea of getting recommendations based on what I already like and don't like, but I've rated over 800 movies in IMDB and I'm not entering them one-by-one anywhere else. I did double entry in IMDB and the aforementioned Movielens for a while, and got some decent recommendations from the latter, but it got to be too much trouble to do both.

By: fuq

fuq — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:35:48 -0800

I've found Pandora to be like having a friend with a mediocre CD collection (wide, but not deep in any places) but who nonetheless thinks they know exactly what I want to listen to while not really understanding what I like about the music I picked. AIs are pretty bad at picking up on taste. This seems to be similar. "The Wire" + Sci-fi = Barb Wire but not Babylon 5, which according to jinni is completely unlike any other show ever and if I like it I shouldn't watch anything else. Also the interface is a real mess for me.

By: escabeche

escabeche — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:48:50 -0800

Is there a difference between Jinni and Clerkdogs?

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:40:41 -0800

What's with the hate? This thing is awesome. A search of "nonlinear avant garde" is now powering my netflix queue.

By: CarlRossi

CarlRossi — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:58:17 -0800

Similar to what I was going to say... If this thing was any good it would have won the Netflix contest.

By: sentient

sentient — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:46:29 -0800

...thinks they know exactly what I want to listen to while not really understanding what I like about the music I picked. Exactly. Just because I liked a futuristic-mysterious-hero-story does not mean that I would like others. Maybe I liked it because of some other element. Say, the cinematography, or the overall message. This can be so even if I appeared to like many other futuristic-mysterious-hero-stories as well. And maybe, in general, I *love* psychological-witty-alien-contact movies, but I've been disappointed by half of the ones I've seen because they weren't overall "well done" (I'll leave that without qualification since there are many ways that a movie can have a crappy component.) It would be wrong to conclude that the genre was the problem, but that's exactly what a lot of these recommenders seem to do.

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:50:37 -0800

What's with the hate? This thing is awesome Trying not to be snarky, but they're one of many trying to recommend movies/music, and they aren't bringing much new to the party. I'd love if someone really made a big leap forward in recommending, but there are lots of similar services and I can't find much that distinguishes them.