IMDb just turned 19. Yes, Techcrunch’s article reveals that the IMDb is actually older than the web browser. There’s a long ass explanation to that, which we’ll not be discussing here. But certainly, in these 19 years of web existence, IMDb is one of the most visited websites and also synonymous to the Wikipedia for movie lovers like me. We do have other ’superior’ movie rating systems such as Metacritic or Rottentomatoes, but IMDb totally belongs to the viewer’s rating and is not limited to critics. And hence, IMDb movie ratings are often considered to be closer to the taste of the audience.
The obvious utility of IMDb is that it is the largest compilation of movies and is not limited to just Hollywood or for that matter Bollywood. Every movie lover I know goes to IMDb first to check out if a movie is worth watching or not, or even to just have a look at initial reactions of audiences on a movie. So, for world cinema lovers, this is the one stop to gather information on movies. But other than the obvious use of viewing a movie’s ratings, what are the other ways that you use IMDb for? I have listed a couple of them below.
1. Homepage:
The Homepage has a lot to offer by itself. The headings on the homepage are:
Tops at the Box Office: List of Box Office top grossers
Opening this Week: The releases of the week
Coming Soon: The upcoming releases
New on DVD and Blu Ray
Other than these, the trivia section on the Homepage is a lovely addition. Movie/TV quote of the day, Born today and Did you know.
2: IMDb Top 250:
We all movie lovers consider this as the Holy Scroll of movie favourites. The list of the Top 250 movies of all time. I do remember when Dark Knight’s soaring popularity made it an instant hit and how fanboyism votes made it quickly rise to the no.1 spot and dethrone its predecessor GodFather. But it wasn’t for long there. As of now [ Oct 19, 2009 ], the Shawshank Redemption is at the no.1 spot with a total of 449,943 votes and a rating of 9.1, whereas the Dark Knight is at no.9 with 8.8 .
But did you know how the rating is calculated? Here’s the formula:
weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C
where:
- R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
- v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
- m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 1500)
- C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.8)
for the Top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered.
BTW, there’s also a Bottom 100 list.
3. Movie browsing by categories:
By Genre: Action, Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Drama, Comedy etc.
By Year/Decade:
4. Archives:
Award winners down the years.
All Time Box Office winners.
5. Movie details and People profiles:
Not only the movie rankings, but all related information. As in, who is the director of a particular movie. What other movies has he/she done. etc etc.
IMDb also has recorded information of Film personality profiles and a chronicling of their works.
Have I missed out on any other utility of IMDb that we use. Shout it out in the comments. Cheerio!
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Author: Sujoy
