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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Great Movie Blogs

Aside from the illustrious webpage you're gazing at now, there are quite a few great websites for film buffs. Here are some of my favorites:

IMDB is the go-to site for film information. It's almost always accurate and has great cross-referencing for the who-what-when-where's.

Rotten Tomatoes is a "meta-critic" style site that aggregates professional and amateur reviewers into a nice tidy score. They have some good features and it's a great place to compare professional critics' opinions.

VideoETA shows DVD release dates. It's super useful at my work and when you are holding your breath for the next season of Mad Men to come out.

The AV Club is the Onion's sister publication with game, music, TV, book and movie reviews. They have cool pop culture features like their weekly "inventory" where they come up with pop culture ephemera fitting a certain theme: i.e. "14 Cases of Actors Getting Cut Entirely From Notable Films." Cool stuff but beware: the AV Club has the worst comments board of any respectable website I know.

Sight and Sound is one of the better film magazines in the world. It's the British Film Institute's publication and it has a healthy focus on foreign and art films as well as a conscious respect for the importance of film critique. Unfortunately their website has a limited amount of what the print edition has to offer but there's still some tasty treats (like this awesome feature on filmmaker's favorite soundtracks).

Speaking of soundtracks, Sleazy Listening is a great source of less-noteworthy film scores. As the name suggests it has a focus on b-grade/grindhouse/eurotrash tunes that are often surprisingly good.

Dark Horizons has a good collection of trailers and industry news/gossip. It's really best for the trailers as it collects more than any other site I've found.

If you're into horror it's hard to beat Fangoria and Rue Morgue. Fangoria definitely has horror buff cred but I tend to like the coverage and tone of Rue Morgue a little better. Like other print magazines, their websites have limited features.

The Criterion Collection has a pretty website (as you would expect from their cover art) that's mostly up to sell their (very, very expensive) DVDs and BluRays. But it's fun to drool over and they have fun features where they ask filmmakers to talk about their favorite Criterion movies. It's also a good place to do some "impressive-artsy-party-talk" fact-finding to cover up the fact that I really only watch Hot Tub Machine and the Andy Griffith Show.

Flavorpill is a decent arts/culture website. I actually don't look at their site much but I get a daily email with links to cool sites about pop culture. It's called "Daily Dose" and it's one of the few companies whose newsletter I've ever signed up for and enjoyed.

IFC and Slashfilm are both pretty decent websites that cover the industry and art of film. They deserve a mention.

And as far as critics go, I only regularly read Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle and Charlie Meyers in the North Coast Journal. But I also enjoy reading Kenneth Turan (LA Times) and A.O. Scott (NY Times).

I'm sure there are dozens (if not more) of other websites with great content, and I'd love to hear about them. When you get into blogs about specific types of movies/actors/music you start to find some obsessively awesome collections of lore and ephemera. Enjoy!