Great for film fans (imdb.com)

Member Name: jennikitten

Product:	imdb.com
Date:	02/11/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of information

Disadvantages: See review

IMDB is a great website for film fans. The initials stand for 'Internet Movie Database', and once you remember that it's easy to remember the website address (imdb.com), rather than 'imbd', which is what I always used to type in!

The website has a white background and a small header, and loads reasonably quickly for me. It's not pretty, it's not particularly exciting, but that's okay because it's the content that's important. Also, it has such a wide user base that I think they'd have trouble styling it anyway!

Down the left hand side of the homepage are groups of links such as 'Opening this week' and 'Coming soon', which is often fairly useless for us UKers, but can be interesting to see what to expect in the coming week/months/years! Down the right hand side is a column I tend to ignore, with random pictures and generally useless filler.

For me, the most important part is the site's search engine, and I tend to skip the top navigation and the news on the homepage in favour of this. Just type the name of a film or TV programme in the top and hit 'Go' to find out tons of information about it.

There's an overall user rating, which is often useful when deciding what to see at the cinema or rent online. I tend to open my local cinema listings and imdb alongside each other because they work well together. The site also shows you how popular the film/tv show is this week and why, and lists the cast, director, notable quotes, a synopsis and even technical information, goofs and trivia.

At the bottom of the page you can find a number of user reviews. To rate or review the movie or programme, you have to sign up for an account for full access.

IMDB also works well with moviemistakes.com; they share a bit of the same information, but open up films more for more interesting viewing.

You can also look up cast members, for example if you know you've seen them before but can't remember where, or want to see what else they've been involved in.

IMDB only has a few minor flaws in my opinion. Firstly, there are so many films and programmes that come up when you search (though this is an advantage as well, obviously!) that it can take a while to sift through them, particularly if you aren't completely sure of the name or it's got common keywords.

Secondly, it can be quite slow-loading sometimes despite being bland - possibly because of the pictures or code they use to display everything consistently.

Thirdly, English (and foreign) films have far fewer ratings, and often less information about them. For example Dorian Grey hasn't been released in America, and things like St Trinian's are far behind as well. So I'd like to see more ratings and reviews from UK people!

But these are only minor points, and overall the site is a great resource, with better links to what you're looking for than wikipedia.

Summary: Good site to dip in and out of