AMC’s Best Picture Showcase

2008 was the rare year in which I missed every Oscar Best Picture nominee. Pretty depressing for a (former?) film buff. Fortunately, AMC’s hooked me up with a ticket to their all-day Best Picture Showcase being held Saturday (2/21). I may have neglected to mention to their rep that I’d planned to attend anyhow – … Read more

Oscar Screeners & P2P Sharing

Every year Andy Baio does a very cool thing, he tracks how quickly Oscar-nominated films are leaked online to P2P networks. It’s interesting for a number of reasons, but primarily for demonstrating how unreliable the actual Academy members themselves are in keeping Hollywood’s goods off the Internet. The annual results are relatively similar: usually within … Read more

Your Movie Wish Is Jinni’s Command

For those of you still not satisfied with the current crop of movie recommendation services, you’ll soon have another option available to you. Jinni’s new interactive movie rating website is trying to do for movies, what Pandora has done for music. Although the site doesn’t stream any of the films that they recommend, but provides convenient links to places where you can find the films online (Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu, etc.) Apparently, the company has been live for a few months now, but I just discovered them after catching a review of the service on Read Write Web. Last week, I signed up for the private Jinni beta and have been pretty impressed so far.

Jinni includes reviews, photos and even trailers for each film in their database, but their movie filtering software is the real bread and butter. Most of the content you’ll find on their movie description pages is pretty much available on any of the other movie sites, but their “movie genome” information is exclusive. Through a process of human and computer intervention, they’ve categorized every film in their library using information from the movie’s plot, mood, genre, time period, critic reviews, story type, and attitudes. Viewers are then able to filter their search results by using these definitions.

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Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: 2008 HDTV Year in Review There’s been a whole lot of HDTV activity this year, and with only a few days left in 2008, I think it’s a good time to take a look back. All in all, it was a big year for HDTV. … Read more

Off Topic: Skywalker Ranch & Lightsabers

A highlight of my San Francisco vacation was the stop at Skywalker Ranch earlier this week. Of course, they don’t let just anybody in, but my peeps got connections.  ;) While a lot of the production work for Lucas Films happens at the Presidio, the ranch is home to a major sound studio for the … Read more

Any Worthwhile Netflix Watch Now Movies?

Anyone else notice how rare it is to find decent movies are added to the Netflix Watch Now selection?  There are good ones there, but they’re far and few between. I most often find gems like Toxie’s Triple Terror: Deadly Daphne’s Revenge come through the Netflix Watch Now RSS feed. Or possibly another exciting title … Read more

Joss Whedon Answers My Prayer!

One year ago I wrote about MGM’s trial release of the movie A Dog’s Breakfast on iTunes and put in a prayer that Joss Whedon would follow the straight-to-download distribution model. Apparently someone heard me over in Whedonverse. If you’re a fan (Buffy, Angel, Firefly…), you’ve likely already heard about Dr. Horrible‘s Sing-Along Blog, the … Read more

Hulu Days of Summer

Whether or not you believe Hulu can “kick YouTube’s ass,” the folks behind the Web video venture are certainly doing more than a few things right. I got hooked on Hulu when it was still in beta, checking out a few 30 Rock episodes and some of the Scrubs shows I’d missed. But I admit … Read more