Nerve Endings Firing Away

I am a big fan of Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. Rotten Tomatoes offers you an average rating of new releases based on weighted ratings by movie critics in the business. You can rest assured that any movie garnering less than 50% on the Tomatometer is not worth your time at least in the theater. IMDB on the other hand is more of a compendium of movies with user ratings and fun discussions in the forums. The Trivia and Goofs are my favorite topics in any movie page.

Both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB is heavily tilted toward Hollywood movies although the latter has records for all movies, including Bollywood. There are only a handful of Bollywood/Indian movie critics which is surprising given the number of movies we churn out and even among those critics, the reputable ones (like Roger Ebert kinds) are even rare ^[1]. I do my little movie review thing on this blog but it is merely a reflection of my uneducated personal taste. In spite of low number of movie critics, I have always felt that there is a demand for movie reviews aggregators which give you a quick snapshot of movie ratings. Coincidentally two such sites popped up at around the same time and both are impressive efforts.

Review-Schview

Designed and managed by Chugs, the resident web designer for Indian blogs (including DesiPundit) has created this ultra-simplistic reviews aggregator for latest releases. He collates ratings from 28 movie critics and averages their ratings. He uses a scale of 1- 100 and translates five-star ratings and descriptions to arrive at his score. The movie critics include ones from official newspapers and dedicated movie bloggers (WOGMA, Passion for Cinema, etc.).

As he tells us in his FAQ and disclaimer, he started this site for fun, is not comprehensive, and doesn’t use any weighting mechanism for reputable critics (says, he is bad at Math). An impressive effort that gives you a quick score of the movie reviews presented in a simple design inspired by Josef Müller Brockmann. Since it is a personal venture, I’m not sure how long it will last considering Chugs currently hosts it on a sub-domain of his personal design site instead of a dedicated domain. I understand that reading reviews every week and updating the site can get tiresome especially if he is plans to do it on his own but I hope this site lasts longer than I expect it to.

ReviewGang

ReviewGang also started as a fun project (most cool sites do) by Manu. Compared to Chug’s site, this meta-review site is more comprehensive and even uses weighting to adjust ratings by notable movie critics. In addition to presenting an aggregated score of movie critics on a 10-star scale, it also allows users to create profiles and rate (and review) movies displayed via a separate Viewer’s Rating. I exchanged couple of emails with Manu and he intends to create an Indian version of IMDB while promising to stay away from junk gossip content as seen on Zoom TV even if it costs him pageviews.

Currently, you can also see movie trailers of upcoming releases in addition to reading movie synopsis and reviews (direct links for full reviews are provided). ReviewGang presents movie reviewers in three distinct categories – Critics, Editors, and Users. If you run a movie blog and review movies regularly, you can be promoted from a user to an editor. As a user, you can also continue rating and reviewing movies on the site and accumulate points and be promoted to an Editor if you amass 250 points. I’m not sure if Editor ratings are included among the Critics ratings or the Viewers ratings.

The easy and quick access to movie reviews by critics, editors, and users is great. So is the access to movie trailers that we often have to Google for. The FAQ could be better with detailed explanation of the process and backend mechanisms for transparency sake. I wonder if enabling comments on user reviews would generate meaningful discussion or should a separate forum like on IMDB exist purely for throwing around random ideas about the movie (goofs, trivia, or maybe even gossip). As I have cautioned Manu via email, he better beware of ‘feature creep’ as he works toward making ReviewGang into an IMDB for India.

Both sites are impressive in terms of design and content. Although ReviewGang by admission seeks to be more comprehensive, I’m not sure Review-Schview intends to go down that path ever. Chugs and Manu could even collaborate and pool their resources toward a even better site. Or maybe the competition will keep both on their toes. As these sites get popular, they may have to guard against fraud, especially on ReviewGang since it incorporates a user feature. I hope to see both these sites maintain their dead-simple interface and yet offer more.

Footnotes:

1. Everyone will agree that Baradwaj Rangan is one of those rare movie critics who can boast of a solid reputation in the blogosphere [↩]