Rixster on Flixster, Pt. 3: Abba Dabba Honeymourn

I hit the ratings board on Flixster a-runnin' and a clickin', and before twenty minutes had passed, I had rated on their little five-star scale over 204 films. As Jen and I were heading out the door to see Knocked Up, I had to force myself to stop. But, striding out to the car, the thought hit me, "Why am I rating all these movies again?" As I have mentioned, I have my main list of ratings preserved in IMDB, and something else that I have not mentioned, I even provide a link to my list of over 4,100 ratings on the Pylon. For the interested few in my latest discoveries or changes, they can read them directly on the Pylon, as well. So, there is little real purpose in my doing this movie-rating thing once more. As we sped towards our Knocked Up showing, I reflected on my decision to start clicking furiously on film after film.

I also spent the time before the previews, and the time in the car on the way home (when we weren't discussing the merits and minor disappointments of the film in which we had just delighted) thinking about the Flixster quandary, as well. What I ultimately decided was that it was a helluva lot of fun doing it, so, like masturbation or one of the drugs with which my neighbors seem to always find themselves magically inundated, one finds oneself in the position of not wanting to stop. So, I returned to Flixster the next morning to begin rating anew. And guess what happened? Clicking on the their menu's QuickRate button that is designed to allow such activity as massive impromptu clicking, I received a photo of a monkey rifling through a torn-open bag of Lay's, and it was accompanied by the following notation:

"The monkeys that pick the movies for QuickRate are taking a quick break for potato chips... and to buy (dozens) more servers to keep everything here at Flixster up and humming nice and quick-like. They'll have this feature back up on the site just as soon as they can without it slowing things down too much. In the meantime, they suggest you go to the King Kong movie page and write a glowing review - they really love that movie. Thanks for your patience!" ~The Flixster Monkeys

So there it was... I was unable to rate movies in the same manner as I had just a mere 12 hours before. As a matter of fact, it is currently about five days later, and I am still unable to do so. I must point out, though, that I could, and can, still rate movies, but only by doing it movie by movie as I happened upon or searched for them, and then, and only then, when I popped open each movie's page. But this makes what should be a quickie an incredibly time-consuming effort. As a result of this interference, I stepped back and further considered the folly of entering thousands of movie ratings on yet another site; something which I had already stopped myself from doing on Netflix previously. Apart from fixing my aforementioned Pinocchio problem, I then made sure to update the "My Favorites" film page with each of the films listed in my profile, only about a quarter of which were picked up by Flixster automatically. (I had eliminated articles such as "and" and "the" in my listing to fit more films in initially, hence the i.d. problem.)

After a short respite, though, I was back to my initial rumination: apart from it's existence as a source of mostly mindless fun, what purpose could there be in doing this again? I had, by this point, decided not to go crazy in adding film rating after film rating to Flixster, opting instead to tap a film here and there as I casually encountered them. But, something else I had done with my downtime was to go into the profiles of a couple dozen random Flixster strangers and check out the variety of films, reviews and non-reviews listed there -- some well-reasoned, some snooty, some genuine, some patronizing, and the bulk of them asinine and unthinking in either their effusion or disdain for a particular film. And I hit upon my main use for Flixster: as an access portal to a wide cross-section of movie-goers and their equally wide variety of reactions to them. But, how and why am I to use this new resource? [To be continued at a date in the near future..]

[One further note regarding Flixster: Peter Lorre's wonderfully unhinged ultimate stalker flick Mad Love (you know, with Dr. Gogol and all that) was initially released in 1935, not 1949 as stated on Flixster. I haven't looked into finding out how one can get something fixed on the service, but perhaps in the future.]