Bruji

They are wrong in the sense that many of the voters either have little experience/knowledge of film or do not really care about film. If you look at the IMDB top 250 (http://www.imdb.com/chart/top), you will see what I mean. For example, is there anyone who has experience and knowledge of film who would consider The Shawshank Redemption the greatest film ever made? Or would consider The Good, The Bad and the Ugly the fourth greatest film made? Or Citizen Kane, which I believe many American film critics and writers might consider the best American film ever made, but IMDB voters put it at #33. For comparison, Fight Club is #16.

IMDB is not made up of serious film lovers. The voters are mostly male and young, IOW precisely the people who Hollywood studios make films like Dumb and Dumber for.

MikeB wrote:They are wrong in the sense that many of the voters either have little experience/knowledge of film or do not really care about film.

They are neither right nor wrong - they are just expressions of someone's opinion about a movie. I'm not sure what objective evidence you would find for your assertion that the voters 'have little experience' or that they 'do not really care about film'. They care enough to cast their vote and when hundreds of thousands of people all give a similar verdict, then that is a reliable indicator of how the general public rate the movie in question. I don't think there is some sort of 'elite movie-goer' who knows what is good for everyone and all the others who may disagree are 'wrong'.

MikeB wrote:If you look at the IMDB top 250 (http://www.imdb.com/chart/top), you will see what I mean. For example, is there anyone who has experience and knowledge of film who would consider The Shawshank Redemption the greatest film ever made? Or would consider The Good, The Bad and the Ugly the fourth greatest film made? Or Citizen Kane, which I believe many American film critics and writers might consider the best American film ever made, but IMDB voters put it at #33. For comparison, Fight Club is #16.

Well you may not like their verdict but it is their verdict nonetheless. Nobody is obliged in any way to agree or disagree, or even take any notice of the verdicts. Also, I have sat through some of the so-called 'greatest movies of all time' such as La Grande Illusion and Les Regles du Jeu and been more bored than I have ever been in my life. I suspect that some of these movies are the 'Greatest' and also the "Least Watched' movies of all time There can be no absolute of 'the greatest film ever made' and I don't think the top 250 is purporting to be that - it's simply the best movie as voted for by a few hundred thousand users of IMDb. It is certainly, to my mind, a very good movie. Whether it, or indeed any, movie can be called the 'best' is suspect as at the end of the day it is all personal opinion. Citizen Kane was a superlative movie in its day and it broke a lot of new ground and thus was influential on movies for years afterwards. But Fight Club is a better movie in many respects and is certainly more in tune with what people want today from their movies. I think it is a futile argument for anyone to suggest that a movie from 1940 and one from 60 years later can be directly compared anyway. They both have merits but are so different from each other than any compariosn is inevitably one of apples and oranges. I would also take a bet that a good number of those people who routinely say Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made have never seen it! One must also take genre into account. How can one compare 2001: A Space Odyssey (one of the top 10 movies of all time IMO) with, for example, The Godfather part I and II?

MikeB wrote:IMDB is not made up of serious film lovers. The voters are mostly male and young, IOW precisely the people who Hollywood studios make films like Dumb and Dumber for.

How can you say that the IMDb audience are not serious film lovers? What evidence is there for that? You say they are mostly male and young but that seems to imply that young males cannot also be good judges of movies. Also, your remark about Hollywood studios ignores all the movies made every year by Hollywood which are exceptionally good. All that the IMDb votes do is give a guide to what the audience of IMDb thinks about the movies. Nothing more nor less. Nobody is forced to use the data in any way if they choose not to. I personally find it a useful guide if the voting numbers are high - and I am a 64 year old male, so can hardly be typical of the IMDb users you mention

I much prefer to rely on Roger Ebert's reviews than the IMDb I agree - he is IMO the greatest living movie critic and I rarely find myself in serious disagreement with his judgements. FWIW he gives The Shawshank Redemption 3.5 out of 4 (as do his readers and as do I). He gives Fight Club just 2 out of 4 and his users give it 3.5. In this case, I'm with the users There's no right and wrong of enjoyment - all the IMDb ratings do is give a guide of what people are thinking. Of course, one of the nice things about DVDpedia is that you can hide all reference to IMDb ratings in your version of the program and never have to see them again! Best of all worlds

Kind regards,

Keith

It seems we agree more than we disagree. We both agree the votes should be a preference and we both agree that there are better sources of film rating than IMDB. Where we do not agree, you seem to feel that any opinion is valid, where I do not. When I look for information, I always look at the source of the information. If, for example, I want to take my wife to a nice dinner and I find a restaurant review site that gives McDonalds a high mark, then I do not consider this a good (or valid) source. If IMDB tells me that "Shawshank Redemption" is the best movie ever made, then I do not consider IMDB a good or valid source for film opinions.

I find that Metacritic is much better because it gives a number of opinions of professional film critics. I am not a big fan of current Hollywood films, so I look at mostly European films. I use sites in my country or my neighbour countries. For the old, "good" Hollywood films, I like this site: http://www.classicfilmguide.com/

IMDB is, I feel, getting worse. I looked up an old British television series and the cast information they gave was very inaccurate. It was even obvious the information was incorrect because, for example, they said an actor played in the series from 1996-1998. But, the page itself says (correctly) that the series ended in 1997!

MikeB wrote:It seems we agree more than we disagree. We both agree the votes should be a preference and we both agree that there are better sources of film rating than IMDB. Where we do not agree, you seem to feel that any opinion is valid, where I do not. When I look for information, I always look at the source of the information. If, for example, I want to take my wife to a nice dinner and I find a restaurant review site that gives McDonalds a high mark, then I do not consider this a good (or valid) source. If IMDB tells me that "Shawshank Redemption" is the best movie ever made, then I do not consider IMDB a good or valid source for film opinions.

I don't think the IMDb ratings are trying to tell us that The Shawshank Redemption is the 'best movie ever made'. It's just telling us that that movie is the one that most IMDb users prefer above all others. It's an odd choice, I agree, although it is a very good movie. The user reviews on IMDb are more informative - some of them are useless but equally many are very insightful and well considered.

MikeB wrote:I find that Metacritic is much better because it gives a number of opinions of professional film critics. I am not a big fan of current Hollywood films, so I look at mostly European films. I use sites in my country or my neighbour countries. For the old, "good" Hollywood films, I like this site: http://www.classicfilmguide.com/

Yes, I use Metacritic too from time to time but I am also wary of 'professional film critics' as they have their own axe to grind and just because they are critics doesn't necessarily mean they have some sort of divine insight. But yes, this can be a useful source of information. Someone once told me that the best way to use a film critic is to find one with whose reviews you generally agree and then use that critic above all others because you will be able to rely on him/her for future reviews. I find, for me, that Roger Ebert fills this role, but even there occasionally we disagree I've not seen that site so thanks for the link. I enjoy Hollywood movies - the variety is immense and when they are good they are very good. But I also enjoy World Cinema and have many foreign language movies in my collection too.

MikeB wrote:IMDB is, I feel, getting worse. I looked up an old British television series and the cast information they gave was very inaccurate. It was even obvious the information was incorrect because, for example, they said an actor played in the series from 1996-1998. But, the page itself says (correctly) that the series ended in 1997!

Interesting. I haven't found this personally, or maybe I haven't noticed it. I check my data from IMDb carefully every time I add a movie and usually I find cast and crew information seems to be correct. Where there are discrepancies is in things like Aspect Ratio, sound and other technical issues. It's still the best resource we have though and I would be lost without it. I have found many, many movies that I would never have heard of or considered without cross-referencing them on IMDb.

Good to exchange views with you!

Kind regards,

Keith

Yes, this has been an interesting discussion. I hope Connor did not get so bored that he forgot about our request to make the votes a preference.

So far, I have used Metacritic and chosen "limited release" and sort by score to get a list of interesting, non-Hollywood films. I have been happy with the ones I have seen from that list. However, the list includes only films that are shown in the US. For other films, I use the sites in my country or other countries. That works well too.

MikeB wrote:Yes, this has been an interesting discussion. I hope Connor did not get so bored that he forgot about our request to make the votes a preference.

I'm sure he won't.

MikeB wrote:So far, I have used Metacritic and chosen "limited release" and sort by score to get a list of interesting, non-Hollywood films. I have been happy with the ones I have seen from that list. However, the list includes only films that are shown in the US. For other films, I use the sites in my country or other countries. That works well too.

This is an interesting site too and you may find some useful stuff there: http://www.filmsite.org

Kind regards,

Keith

I hope Connor did not get so bored that he forgot about our request to make the votes a preference.

I'm sure he won't.

I haven't, but it's not on the top of the to do list (changes that require a UI or workflow change are a lot tougher to incorporate). And I am never bored, almost all information is interesting.