By PETER SINCLAIR
Only the hardiest moviegoer ventures out weeknights at this time of year, unless it's some blockbuster you need to have an opinion about at Friday night drinks after work.
The Sleuth is indebted to reader Mark Turney, who reminded us in an e-mail to the Herald's new help and research facility, InBox in "your net" on Tuesdays, that the net comes into its own on cold nights like these.
"Any chance," he asked, "of your slipping me some of your favourite movie URLs to help in my assignment due Monday?"
Mark's future was hanging in the balance - flunk his degree, and he might be working at McDonald's for the rest of his life.
Most obviously, there was the Internet Movie Database, "the biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet," as it modestly identifies itself.
Also, these days, it's one of the most portalised and you stagger through the pages knee-deep in ads. But we've all got to live, and one should be grateful for its sheer completeness: click on Browse IMDb to get you started.
Not to mention two really useful and interesting new help columns, Ask a Director and Ask a Screenwriter, a great resource for students of the art and practice of dream-making, like Mark.
Then there's the venerable, venerated showbiz trade rag Variety, still going strong online, its language as idiosyncratic as in the days of its youth when D.W. Griffiths ("Move these 10,000 horses a trifle to the right, and that mob out there three feet forward) was still hand-cranking a camera: "B.O. GETS 'HAFT'; Actioner cool at $21 mil, but auds cop out."
You need a dictionary, really, and the magazine supplies one - click Slanguage.
The Internet boom has given the old girl a new lease of life. Just up and running is a box-office database "that will allow Variety.extra subscribers to see more than five years of weekly box-office charts: 11,000 original film reviews, some dating back to 1914."
Plus coverage of new entertainment-oriented Websites: "SHOCKWAVE PLAYS AMG NET TOONS; Site produces online projects with strong talent roster ...".
And let's not forget tiny Artisan Entertainment who, Time-Warner and Disney notwithstanding, hold the record for return on investment with The Blair Witch Project - they simply racked up a budget on their credit cards. Their success will surely inspire a fledgling deMille like Mark.
In the end, he gave me rather more sites than he got. Among them are: iFilm, which I found almost as good, if not quite as comprehensive, as IMDb; Entertaindom, featuring Mission: Imp, "the littlest spy spoof ever" along with other fun short films; and, most intriguing of all, start-up Pop.com.
It aims to be "immediate, raw and interactive, allowing viewers to interact both with the programming itself and other users across the site."
I have no doubt it will succeed in this, for it partners Imagine Entertainment with DreamWorks, and involves Internet/movie moguls like Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and, in the role of angel, Microsoft co-founder and member in good standing of the billionaire's club, Paul G. Allen.
If this is the company Mark plans on keeping, I think you can hold that Big Mac ...
Links:
Internet Movie Database
Variety
Shockwave
Artisan Entertainment
iFilm
Entertaindom
Pop.com
Peter Sinclair e-mail: petersinclair@email.com
Peter Sinclair: Movies on the Net
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