There’s great news in store for film lovers and geeks everywhere: new web app Letterboxd (still at the beta-testing stage) purports to offer an alternative to IMDb and the many shortcomings it’s developed over the years due to… well, non-development on its part.
Letterboxd have taken the concept of the movie database and blended in successful elements of social media. The result is promising, and “very pretty” in the words of my sister.
Appstorm offer a straightforward and informative overview of the website, so here are just some comments and observations of my own.
By no means am I tech geek. I’m computer literate enough that I can tell the main interface is user-friendly and immediately draws attention to the possibilities generated by the website’s contents. However delving a bit deeper into said contents makes you realise that certain basic functions are a bit difficult to locate. The easiest way to get an overview of the site is to have a look round your own profile and navigate your way from there.
The primary interest, however, being to explore film rather than just build up another online profile, you’ll quickly want to make your way towards the “Films” tab and explore what other users have recently watched or reviewed. You may spot the poster image of a film you’d like to review yourself, or you may decide to search for specific films.
If you’re tempted, as I was on first arrival, to draw a list of every single film you’ve ever seen as remembered off the top of your head – and this can be a challenge when they run in the hundreds – there’s an option to “make this list private” until you’ve tidied up a bit and are ready to share with other users.
I couldn’t find a few of the more obscure films I searched for, particularly those falling under the bracket of world cinema; but Letterboxd plans on merging with IMDb and Delicious Library, allowing users to import films and associated information.
One fantastic aspect to the site which is really facilitated and put forward by its concept is discovering films recommended by people whom you know share the same taste due to common likes and ratings. One very easy way to do this is by exploring their themed lists – and there are plenty of creatively-devised ones to choose from:
Of the other predominant features of the site, the reviews I’ve read so far have been a treat. Popular ones include the one-liner about M. Night Shyamalan’s 2008 The Happening:
“Mark Wahlberg gets out acted by a plant.”
If this sort of tongue in cheek remark is not to your taste (and if like me you happen to think there is lot more to Mr Shyamalan’s films than meets the general public’s eye), there are plenty of thoughtful and wordy reviews from Werner Herzog and Al Pacino fans alike.
If nothing else, the ridiculous amount of time I’ve devoted to the website over the past few days should bear testimony to its potential and what it has to offer.
And speaking of offer, I’ve got 3 beta invitations to hand out so leave a comment below if you would like to snatch one up for yourself. First come first serve.
filmwatch.org 
Thanks for the write-up, much appreciated! To clarify regarding IMDb importing — while we support importing of lists and ratings from IMDb, we still match each entry against our own data source (The Movie DB, a crowd-sourced alternative to IMDb), meaning if a film isn’t in TMDb, we won’t successfully create a match for it. The quality of TMDb’s data is improving all the time, but is not as complete as IMDb’s by any measure.
Thanks for clarifying! Will there be a possibility in future to upload new data, or will this have to be taken up with TMDb?
TMDb’s API doesn’t support creation or editing of their records. If/when it does, we’ll consider adding that ourselves.