movie review

The 404 685: Where we get the Fflick outta here (podcast)

Our guest on this morning's episode of The 404 Podcast is Ron Gorodetzky, CTO of Fflick.com, a new site that uses Twitter to aggregate public opinion on popular movies. We're anxious to talk to Ron about the new site, but first Wilson grills him about his former position as Systems Engineering Manager at Digg.

Ron is certainly not a newcomer to the world of start-up Web sites. Back in 2004, he was asked by Kevin Rose to be part of a small social news site you might have heard floating around the Internet: Digg. After helping build Digg into the ubiquitous powerhouse it is now, Ron left and joined up with three other former Digg employees to found Fflick.com, a new online tool that uses Twitter to show you instant movie reviews from your online social circle.

Here's how Fflick works: the first step is to log into your Twitter account on the Fflick home page that also shows all the newest movies in theaters and opening soon, and a small percentage rating that represents the public's general sentiment about the film.

If you see a particular title of interest, you can click through to see public tweets and even filter through your friends' posts as well as positive tweets, negative tweets, interesting tweets, and the latest tweets. There's also a convenient menu on top that routes you to information on show times, ticket purchasing, Netflix queuing, and more.

Ron tells us about the team of engineers who work in the background to ensure the site stays populated with opinions, including the learning machine that scans for keywords to help Fflick recognize a title within a tweet and quality it for the site. Not to worry though, as much as it sounds like Skynet, Ron assures us we're safe...for now.

Ron also gives us a quick preview of the long-term road map for Fflick, and while the site focuses only on movie reviews for now, the engine behind Fflick can theoretically be used for scanning the public sentiment for a variety of issues, including political opinions, music reviews, and more. There are lots of exciting things in the works for a company that's been around for less than two months, so start Fflicking and be sure to tell your friends you heard about it on The 404 first!

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Twitter redesigns itself

  Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded: New Twitter is coming "Social Network" reviews are in HP webOS slate confirmed Google fired engineer over privacy breach

The 404 433: Where we're a bit slow on the uptake

Jeff has the day off today, so you know what that means: TOTAL CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION! Well, not exactly...Wilson has a little trouble getting the show started, but eventually we get off the ground and welcome our guest on today's show, Mr. Tim Geisenheimer. However, we only get to chat with Tim 1-on-1 for a second before Natali Del Conte pops in to help us out too, making it an all-star lineup!

So after a quick Seinfeld moment about the woes of moving Ikea furniture, we break into a story about a real life "Gaydar" developed by two MIT students which uses social networking data to determine the sexuality of a user. Our major issue with this "study" is that the computer program takes statistical analysis way too seriously. It assumes that if you have a high volume of gay friends, then you must also be gay yourself...interesting jump there. Subscribing to a "birds of a feather, flock together" adage, the two students trained their "Gaydar" to be "very accurate" on men, but not so great on bisexuals or women.

Speaking of women, apparently a group of 3,000 female participants voted the SHOWER RADIO the worst gadget ever invented. It's unclear whether or not they forced the women to choose overtly female-target gadgets (which tend to be cheesy anyway), but Natali has a few things to say about the other gadgets on the "worst ever" list, which include electric fluff removers at #8, egg slicers at #10, and the electric can opener at #18. Although I think we're all starting to doubt Natali's sanity after she tells us all the infomercial junk she's bought over the years...can you say...SLAP CHOP?

Have you heard about CNET TV's newest show called CNET Conversations? To kick off the first episode, CNET's Molly Wood and Ina Fried will sit down with Steve Balmer at the Microsoft offices in Redmond, Washington, and they're bringing questions from viewers. If you have a question for Balmer, head over to the CNET Conversations blog and ask it in a comment!

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The 404 384: Where we're not spastic, we're just passionate

We have an especially fun episode for y'all today, with a comparison between Transformers 2 and GI Joe, a brief rundown of old video game movies, the decade's biggest tech flops, and OF COURSE: The 404 Semi-Weekly Audio Draft Sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.FM, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and CNET News and Reviews 5000!

Man, the preshow this morning got HEATED! In a joking way, of course. You really have to be there for Friday morning preshows in the live chatroom. The buzz this morning was about Jeff seeing "Bruno," and actually LIKING IT! This is, of course, in contrast to Wilson totally despising the flick, blaming the overuse of phallic objects used only to make the audience feel uncomfortable. If you saw that movie and have an opinion, leave a comment on here and help us settle this argument!

That conversation in the preshow leads us to talk about the latest from AintitCool News, who claim that "GI Joe" is a better movie than "Transformers 2"! This is actually pretty surprising to us because we saw the trailer for "GI Joe," and it seriously looked awful, although it'd be hard to make a worse movie than "Transformers 2." I guess it's a "lesser of two evils" sort of thing. Early reviews coming in claim that the "GI Joe" movie should be taken with a large grain of salt, since the tone is similar to that of the original "Street Fighter" movie.

After talking about video game movies for awhile, we finally get to our favorite segment, the OFFICIAL 404 Semi-Weekly Audio Draft Sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.FM, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and CNET News and Reviews 5000! Today's pick is Mayer Hawthorne, a 29-year-old music junkie from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who makes retro-sounding soul music in the vein of such artists as Isaac Hayes, Leroy Hudson, and Barry White. His music tips its hat to the old Motown days between 1966 and 1974, when scratchy instruments and smooth falsettos dominated the waves. Hawthorne definitely draws inspiration from those artists, but also layers his own style into the mix with breakbeat production and a gallery of horn instruments that every generation can get into. He's currently on the popular hip-hop label Stones Throw and has a few singles out, but his new album, "A Strange Arrangement," is due out in the fall. For now, check out his page and today's track, "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out," and let us know what you think!

EPISODE 384 Download today's podcast Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

'The New York Times' offers up movie reviews API

The New York Times announced that it has launched a movie reviews API that will make it easier for visitors to access the publication's library of 22,000 movie reviews dating back to 1924.

Realizing that it's sitting on a vast library of movie reviews and its current RSS feed only displays the latest 65 articles, the Times decided that it needed to give its readers access to its entire library of reviews to complement its current offering and make it easier for visitors to find all the film information they're looking for.

So far, the Times … Read more