This week I have scoured the internet for ten more notable film-related websites. Doing so, I hope to reveal particular points of interest with relation to the overall theme of observing the modern digital film industry. As a result it is my intent to provide a list of ten linkroll points of interest (located to the right) that one may find both resourceful and informative. While visiting the following links one must note the diversity in intent, voice, and design that film sites achieve across the internet. These informative gems touch upon anything from the marketing of motion pictures to the promotion of notable film screenings in the Los Angeles area. Once again, I have utilized guidelines found as judging criteria for The Webby Awards to consider the most important aspects of a film site's strengths and weaknesses. It is my hope that by bringing these sites to the reader's attention, one may recognize the limitless variations of subjects that movies offers web authors and surfers.A strong site for film trailers, TheMovieBox.Net is particularly special in that it organizes and archives thousands of movie trailers. Furthermore, it is the most consistently updated over all the movie trailer sites I have ever come across, becoming a recommended first stop for anyone interested in viewing the freshest trailers. For another view of the film marketing world, one should visit the IMP Awards website, where countless movie posters have been collected and categorized. Though the site's layout and interactivity are slightly difficult to navigate, the volume of images archived is invaluable for both old and contemporary movies. To find cheap and often free screenings in Los Angeles of both classic and brand new movies, one should visit both CampusCircle.com and the New Beverly Cinema. CampusCircle.com is an entity of the Los Angeles based college magazine Campus Circle and provides free screenings of recent movies before they come out. The New Beverly Cinema will book film-buff centric double features that for a small fee anyone may attend daily and throughout the year. For critical takes on motion pictures themselves, I would recommend visiting the Ebert and Roper Video Archives as well as Cinematheque Top 5 Project. The Ebert and Roper site has archived every movie review broadcasted on the popular ABC TV show At the Movies which was originally hosted by Siskel and Ebert (pictured above) and then changed to Ebert and Roper after Gene Siskel's untimely death in 1999. The site is really fun to visit and explore due to the over five thousand video reviews that have been collected. The Cinematheque Top 5 Project is a very interesting site that intends to compile the top five films of significant critics and scholars, ultimately determining the top movies of select categories and genres. To explore the musical aspect of film from a critical and artistic point of view, FilmSound.org is an incredible resource for learning the intricacies of a filmmaking aspect that is often times the most invisible to audiences. Though the layout and design lacks dynamic graphics and experience, the information provided with text, audio clips, and video content make up for such weaknesses. To turn one's film knowledge and box office prediction skills into competitive entertainment, I would recommend heading over to the Fantasy Moguls website. Similar to fantasy baseball, Fantasy Moguls puts one at the head of an imaginary studio in which he may select a slate of real upcoming movies and battle against his friends to see who selects the most popular, critically, and profitable films in a given season. The graphic layout and navigation of this site is top notch and makes it even more fun to play with numerous statistics and box office projections. Before playing Fantasy Moguls it may benefit a web surfer to check out two great movie news sites. Both Premiere.com and Variety.com provide limitless insight into the film industry. These two web pages are the digital archives and extensions of popular film magazines Premiere and Variety. What is significant in exploring both of these digital magazine sites is a wealth of information, as well as the high quality of experience and design. These two links are not only of the highest visual achievement for any movie news site I have visited; they are also the most reliable due to their connection to credible published material. While I could list interesting sites all day one should ultimately forge fourth amongst the aforementioned websites with the intent to explore new sides of movie content in a digital setting. If anything, the diversity of these sites, when compiled, illustrates the limitless capabilities of navigating information on the internet and the limitless possibilities of digital film resources.
1 comment:
Thank you! I finally have some websites other than IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes that I can go to for movie news and trailers. I never knew there were so many options out there, ranging from something with up to the minute news like Movie Box, to a "fantasy mogul" site. Sure, a fantasy mogul site seems a little ridiculous to me, but part of the beauty of the internet is that somewhere there is probably a whole group of people just itching to participate in such a game. The good thing about this post is that it provides a well rounded, heterogeneous set of links. There is something for everyone here, whether a casual movie goer, or film buff.
I think this is a successful post, because I truly feel more informed from reading. There are only a few shortcomings that came to mind immediately. The first thing is that there could be better use of commas. I know this is such a petty thing to point out, and you probably will skip over this part of the critique. But, I feel like commas are needed here to help break of the flow of the post. Otherwise it reads very long winded. My second criticism is with the fact that while you give a good list of sites, and adequately describe several of them, it seems like you only give cursory attention to others (e.g. The New Beverly Cinema).
Good luck with writing and directing. I hope it works out for you.
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