ResearchBuzz

This has apparently been around for a while, but I just recently learned about it. SubZin, at http://www.subzin.com/, lets you search for quotes in movies and TV series. Keen!

You can do a simple phrase search or you can use the advanced search that lets you specify title, genre, etc. I stuck with the regular search and looked for “size of a buick”.

I got four results — three movies and one TV episode –, starting with 1977’s Annie Hall (“There’s a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick”), and continuing with movies from 2002 and 2006 and a TV show from 2006. Each search result has a thumbnail of the movie cover when available (with a link to the movie/episodes on the Internet Movie DataBase) as well as the exact time of the quote and the full quote. Icons allow you to e-mail the quote to a friend, show it on social networks, or see the quote in context with other dialogue.

I’m sure you could use this site for reference but I had some fun chasing down cultural references. Did you ever see Jaws? “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I found that same phrase in eight other movies, starting in 1994 with Clerks. According to Subzin’s blog, there are over fifteen million phrases here from over 15,000 movies, so if you get started with one phrase you’ll find plenty to explore.

Ahhhhh. I think 2010 is going to be a great year for cheap online entertainment. A new entry in the races to keep up with all the media available online is Movie Monitor, at http://moviemonitor.com/. This site tracks tens of thousands of movies that are available to watch online, either for free or for pay.

The front page dives right in with thumbnails of posters for recently-added movies, acclaimed movies, and the most recently-added movies. Hold your mouse over the to find how much it costs to buy or rent these movies. You can also browse lists of new movies, free movies, etc.

Movies are provided in lists of 20, with details about the actors and director and sometimes a plot summary. To the right of the summary information is a list of providers, with how much it costs to buy/rent the movie at each location. I was impressed at the number of providers the site covers, including NetFlix, Hulu, Vudu, Fancast, Blockbuster, and Amazon.

Of course, there are a lot of movies to go through (the “Free” browsable list boasts 475 titles) so there are many ways you can narrow that down a bit. You can specify different genres (comedy, action, kids) and which providers you want to include on the list. You can also choose to sort the list by how old the movie is, by title, or when it was added to the list.

Looking for comedies only from all providers, and choosing to list by the oldest movies first, I found 73 listings. They started with a 1941 Barbara Stanwyck / Gary Cooper movie (Ball of Fire) and continued with movies from a variety of folks including Richard Pryor, Johnny Depp, Robin Williams, and Peter Sellers.

You’re going to see more and more of these kind of sites, helping you sift through and figure out what kinds of media are available online. I like the way this one is organized, with quick ways to narrow down search results. Looks useful. It’ll be even MORE useful when the RSS feed feature is developed…

This has been sitting in my queue for a while and I’m glad I’m finally getting to it! M-Net launched the African Film Library in late September. The site has a feature films, shorts, and documentaries from the last 50 years and is available at http://www.africanfilmlibrary.com. It’s in beta. Unfortunately I think I may still be reviewing it a bit too early.

You can browse the site by a variety of factors or you can search by keyword. When I browsed for everything alphabetically I got 12 pages of results that could hold nine listings at a time, so I would guess something over 100 films are available here.

I browsed the films by the highest rated. The first page included the films Camp De Thiaroye (“During WW2, a group of black soldiers fight on the side of France”), La Vie Sur Terre (“Sissako, a Mauritanian filmmaker living in France, returns to Sokolo, a small and remote village in Mali to visit his Father. The arrival of the 21st century is hardly noticed by these people, who are still struggling so hard to merely enter the 20th century”) and Nothing But the Truth (“An impassioned and compelling debut feature film from award winning South African actor and writer John Kani. This gripping story is a forthright indictment on the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-Apartheid South Africa, yet also serves as a poignant memoir of a fractured family trying to come to terms with the past and present.”)

Click on the title and you’ll get details about the film, including a synopsis, length, date it was produced, and language (most of the films I saw were not in English, of course, but every film I saw had at least English subtitles.) Each film I looked at also had material from the film either in the form of a trailer or just an excerpt.

And the material is very well done … it’s just enough to get you interested, darn it. I reviewed the trailer for a film called Ta Dona, directed by Mamadou Kaba. I had a bunch of questions after watching it (Why did the guy set the fire? Was the kid going to be okay?) but when I clicked the Rent button next to the detail page I got the following message: “Thank you for your interest in renting this film. The film rental service is not currently available but will be launching soon.” GAH!

The idea is that you’ll be able to buy credits with your credit card, then rent/stream the videos to your computer. I love the content here (I want to see Ta Dona! I want to watch Ouaga Saga!) and while of course there are some details lacking (how much, exactly, is it going to cost to watch a film?) I’m looking forward to African Film Library getting out of beta and launching its video rental service.