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| The Internet Movie Database |
My son loses hours on YouTube. I lose hours on IMDb. I blame my sister for this, as she introduced me to the site! Launched in 1990 and bought by the evil Amazon (who suck money out of my pockets monthly!) in 1998, it is supposedly accessed by 44 million registered users, and many more unregistered ones.
So let me demonstrate how I lose these hours! Take a recently viewed film, the adaptation of EM Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread, which of course I had purchased a while ago from said evil Amazon corporation (probably one of those "suggestions" which always seem to be spot on. I am not hard to read).
I go to IMDb to find out when it was made (1991), how well it was rated (6.6- not so bad for an obscure period drama) and the names of all the actors.
Rupert Graves. Ooooh, I love him. What else has he been in? Click on his name. Hmmmm. Lots of stuff there for him to be my next Actor of the Week!
A Room With a View- Freddy Honeychurch
The Madness of King George- Robert Fulke Greville
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Huntingdon
Sweet Revenge (The Revenger's Comedies)- Oliver Knightly
The Forsyte Saga- Jolyon Forsyte Jr.
Death at a Funeral- Robert
Made in Dagenham- Peter Hopkins
Garrow's Law- Sir Arthur Hill
Sherlock- DI Lestrade
The White Queen as Lord Thomas Stanley...this is new...just filming?...what is this about? CLICK!
Tagline "Women caught up in the conflict for the throne of England". Well, that grabs my interest. A BBC television series? Who else does it star? Rebecca Ferguson as Queen Elizabeth? Never heard of her but she is very pretty. Swedish. Hmm. Her mother Rosemary is related to Sarah Ferguson? Mildly interesting.
Who else? Amanda Hale...she sounds familiar. Oh yes, Mary Musgrove from the latest Persuasion adaptation with Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones.
Who else? Backclick, backclick...Janet McTeer! I love her too! She was so awesome as Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility 2008, but I have seen her somewhere else recently.
Oh yes, she was Mrs. Satterthwaite in Parade's End, and Mrs. Daily in The Woman in Black and Hubert Page in Albert Nobbs. She has been busy lately! Oh, she also played Vita Sackville-West in Portrait of a Marriage. May have to check that one out. And she was in Into the Storm, playing the wife of Winston Churchill played by Brendan Gleeson.
So you see, a whole day can be spent in this manner. I hesitate to say wasted, as I always enjoy myself and usually find another topic for my blog. Look out for my next two Actors of the Week!
So that's my tribute to IMDb. I had better turn the computer off now before I fall down the rabbit hole again and disappear for hours.
Cheers!
Oh, I'm with you! I love to scroll down to the "Did You Know?" Trivia. It sometimes contains info on the costumes (regency movies mostly), while others have tidbits about casting, filming, etc. And the bios of the actors are sometimes very fun. They often have quotes from the actors as well. It can be interesting to "get to know" the actors better. I often find myself pausing a movie, only to run to the office and check out the imdb page on the movie and its actors. FUN!
ReplyDeleteOh, yes the trivia on IMDb is so much fun. Honestly, I just went to a random page on IMDb and learned that Gemma Arterton was born with polydactyly (extra fingers) and had them surgically removed. I bet she is thrilled that that tidbit is included on her page!
DeleteGreat post about IMDB and how addictive it can be ... especially when we're on the phone with each other and talking about movies/television series and can't remember an actor's name (which is happening more frequently, the older we get!). Especially handy with portable devices and WIFI (man, I've got to get a smartphone for myself ... or, "external memory drive" as I call them!). Glad to get the credit for introducing you to IMDB - can't believe there was a time when it didn't exist!
ReplyDeleteHappy Monday.
I am a google-a-holic. Guilty as charged, especially as I have crammed my head with too much information already. Interesting how many of my google searches come up with IMDb and Wiki pages as the top 2 choices! Thanks for getting me hooked on IMDb! Happy Monday a week later.
DeleteOne of my favorite features of IMDB is the Search of "Two People Working Together". I use it a lot! (http://www.imdb.com/search/common)
ReplyDeleteI loved your post, it did justice to the site!
Hi Stella! Thanks for the handy tip. They used to have that at the bottom of the page and I was wondering how to find that feature again. Just bookmarked it for future use!
DeleteUseful for the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game, or the game my sis and I play...the 2 degrees of Judi Dench. Any two period actors can be traced to Judi in 2 steps. It really works!
LOL That is exactly what I do on imdb! LOVE IT!!! What in the world did I do before that? I guess I just wondered a lot.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Stella (comment above), I didn't know about "Two People Working Together." COOL!!!!!
Hello Lisa. A fellow blogger who is an American in England says she leaves IMDb on her laptop as she is watching TV shows there. Then she can easily look actors up as she inevitably has to do. My husband is better at identifying actors who have been in other roles. For me, if you put a wig on them, they look familiar, but I can't place them! LOL!
DeleteI often use the imdb app on my phone to do the same thing!
DeleteThat's exactly how I use IMDb. =) I'm just supposed to check something up quickely, and all of a sudden I have lost a couple of hours... And of course I have the app on my smartphone. How else can I watch a film or a serie?//Jenny from Sweden.
ReplyDelete