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First it was Siskel & Ebert, then it was Ebert & Roeper, and now it’s all three guys (and guest stars) in a video archive spanning over five thousand reviews, available at http://www.AtTheMoviesTV.com . The new review set is called “The Balcony Archive”.

Note that it is nowhere near complete. Siskel & Ebert started in 1975 and apparently many of the reviews were not kept. Instead, it looks like the majority of the reviews start around 1985. (The direct link for the video review archive is here.

Search is simple keyword; search results however are provided in three panes: movie titles, actors/actresses, and directors. Partial words are searched — a search for thin will find anything, etc. Click on the name of an actor or director and you’ll get a list of their films.

Watching the reviews is a matter of clicking on the table and waiting for the in-browser video player to load. There is a small commercial that plays before the review, but it’s not so long as to be annoying. While the review is playing, there’s a link to the right of the video that links to summary and cast information for the movie being reviewed. You can look at this information without bothering the video. Reviews seemed to be about five or six minutes long.

The videos themselves were mostly easy to watch. Sometimes in the older ones the sound is a little blurry. And of course in the movie clips themselves swear words are censored out. If I were better at movies I would like this more, but it was fun searching for favorite actors and seeing how far back I could go with finding old movies.

Sometimes I like to bring things to your attention because they represent parts of the Web that I’d never really thought about. I had no idea what a non-bird crow is. It’s an alternative commentary audio track for a DVD. I would have mentally filed this under “oh how interesting” except that the Sharecrow Web site, at http://www.sharecrow.com/ , links to over 500 of the blamed things.

You can do a keyword search for available crows, or browse them alphabetically. The movies and TV episodes which have been commentated tend to definitely be on the geeky side — I see several episodes of Buffy, Firefly, Lord of the Rings, etc. On the other hand, there are also commentaries for Caddyshack, Scrubs, etc.

The commentary comes from a variety of groups, from the Mike Nelson’s Rifftrax to Sofa Dogs to Mockworthy. Click on the name of the crow and you’ll go directly to the Web site for the crow. Some of them are free, while some of them (like Rifftrax) cost money.

So what does Sharecrow.com have to do with this, and how do you sync up these alternative commentaries to your DVDs? Sharecrow is actually a free DVD player that lets you play audio tracks in conjunction with the DVD. Looks like at the moment it’s available for Windows only…

Oh dear, I’m terrible at watching movies in this country, and now I’m going to try to cover a resource from Down Under. Here goes… Australian Screen, at http://australianscreen.com.au/ , covers Australia’s movie heritage. The site has over 1500 clips from other 500 films and television shows.

You can do a keyword search (by title or by full description) or click on the Titles in the nav bar to get a page of browsable information. Here you can browse moving pictures by genre or category (newsreels, ads, short features, documentaries, etc.) or you can go to a page with indigenous content links.

I know nothing about AU movies, so I started by browsing feature films. 103 titles were listed with a default alphabetical sorting (you can also sort them by year.) The listings have a screen capture, title, year of production, and small summary. The titles also have their own pages, which contain larger descriptions, curator’s notes, credits, and information on title availability. On the right of the title pages are video clips. The ones I looked at were generally a couple of minutes long. Each title has tags as well. Some of the pictures have location maps — Google Maps that show filming locations, etc.

The descriptions were interesting but I found the curator’s notes fascinating — they put each item into a historical perspective. The deconstruction of Crocodile Dundee — a movie I really didn’t want to mention because I didn’t want to look like I was picking on Australia — was fascinating. I had no idea this Saturday matinee I enjoyed over twenty years ago was actually such a complex — and controversial — cultural statement.

In addition to the film information, Australian Screen also has a Educational section, which groups all the films which have teachers’ notes (along with warnings about films with possibly-inappropriate content.) There’s also a timeline, and a directory of people involved in the Australian moving-picture industry. A great read.

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