Flickchart: Easily the Coolest Movie Site of the Year

by Scott Weinberg Jun 27th 2009 // 9:03PM

Filed under: Fandom, Film Blog Group Hug, Lists, Best/Worst


Dictionary.com defines "addiction" as "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice," and I offer the definition of such a basic word to illustrate a point: I am addicted to Flickchart.com. Tickled, fascinated, enamored, and addicted. It's a remarkably simple idea: You log in and you're offered two films. You pick which one you like more. (There's also a "haven't seen it" option, so be honest!) Then you repeat that process over and over for three hours until you realize it's 4am but you want to vote on just a few ... more ... pairs...

Flickchart is still in its beta mode, but it looks like the plan is to open the doors wide in mid-July. But what's coolest about the site is not the fun of picking your favorite movies ... it actually collates all your choices into one massive and mathematically unimpeachable list of YOUR favorite films. My advice is to pick the flick you like more, not the one you think is more reputable. Gone with the Wind is great, obviously, but Die Hard gets my vote. Also fun: You can post comments on specific matchups, as I did last night when greeted by a choice between Catwoman and Double Team. (Halle got the vote for being pretty.)

After the jump I've included a nifty little trailer that illustrates how Flickchart works (and a few cool notes), but of course you should visit the website and nose around a bit. Membership is currently accessible by invitation only, but it seems like they'll be opening the doors soon. Aw, what the heck? The Flickchart fellas say "Any friend of Cinematical is a friend of ours, so click right here to bypass the invitation process and log right in! Enjoy! (Add me as a Flickchart friend if you like: scottEweinberg. Just like on the Twitter.)






Flickchart co-founder Nathan Chase adds a few tidbits:

  • You can see, out of the movies you mark as "haven't seen," which ones are the highest ranked by Flickchart users, which gives you some great recommendations when you need a new movie to watch.
  • In addition to your main list, you can also see your top 1980's movies, top horror movies, or any other year, decade, or genre -- we'll be adding "by director" and "by actor" soon, too!
  • You can share your matchups on social networks - currently at FriendFeed (and soon on Twitter and Facebook).
  • We'll have Netflix queue integration hopefully before we launch, so you can auto-add movies you come across. Direct to your queue!
  • You can watch movie trailers as you rank to help remind you of the films and help you make your voting / watching decisions.
So I took a break from my voting (I had a tough one: Hamburger: The Motion Picture vs. Hot Dog: The Movie, and of course I've seen both) and asked Mr. Chase a few questions.

How are the films added to your database? Do you have a feed, or do you have a bunch of movie freaks who comb IMDb by year, franchise, genre, director, etc.?

Nathan: We're using a combination of public sources (like DBpedia and Freebase) and supplementing with some privately acquired data, and some manual entry of titles and information. We'll be adding more titles as we get closer to our public launch (right now we have about 10,000 in our database). Our initial goal is to have all U.S. theater-released films, and then we'll move on to foreign, anime, and other requested titles.

What are some of your favorite movie sites? (No, it doesn't have to be any specific blog.)

Nathan: We like...

Flickchart aims to cover both, and it does so rather efficiently, but if you had to pick one: Is it a great resource to find a few good movies -- OR -- is it a place for movie geeks to sit and chat?

Nathan: Our hope is that it's a great debate starter - for your own personal choices, and for you and your friends to discuss the films' merits against each other. The discovery of great movies is an excellent byproduct of our ranking method, and ultimately, we hope Flickchart can be known for our definitive lists. When you think of the "Best Movies Of All Time", we want Flickchart's to be the first place to look. That's probably not picking one over the other very well, is it? :)

(Final word: Big thanks to @BrianTruitt for throwing me the Flickchart invitation last night!)


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