The countdown to our most popular post of the year continues.
IMDb Top 250 List, Distribution of Movies by Year
6. IMDb Top 250 Movies List Analysis, 3rd Edition
Lee, our resident chart-master, comes out swinging with an update to his earlier article about the IMDB 250. The conclusions?
Over the course of the last year, the median year of the IMDb Top 250 movies list increased by 4.5 years, which suggests that not only is the lists’ bias towards newer movies still present, it’s intensifying over time.
Though I’ve suggested on the podcast that movies are getting better, I meant technically, not as regards storytelling. 2010 was a dismal year—or maybe just a dismal holiday season—for the kind of blockbuster films that make it onto the list. (Seriously. Did anyone see The Tourist?) So the rising median year of movies probably indicates that the culture’s film illiteracy is growing. Great news!
5. Hate the “Avatar” Font? It Could Be Worse.
Lee came out swinging at the beginning of the year (not technically from 2010, but published so late that it may as well have been) with his scathing look at Avatar’s typography (and an SEO W1N for us). But, he reminds us, things could be worse.
Speaking of SEO W1N, google “Avatar Sucks.” No, wait, I’ll do it for you. Who’s #1? Us. We own it. Boom. (No, it’s not avatarsucks.com. That’s not a real website. Don’t believe me? Click on it. But run your anti-virus and take a shower after.)
Fenzel followed up his popular and controversial 5 Reasons Avatar Will Suck with this good-natured “toldja so”—the Avatars do indeed suck, as do mechas, cats with human boobs, Sam Worthington (though, Pete is careful to point out, that doesn’t mean he’s a bad actor), John Smith/Pocohantas stories, and (special bouns reason!) box office metrics. It’s true that the 3d movies are dealing with a stacked deck—the premium you pay to seem the in theaters skews the numbers so much that for 2010, a year that has seen nearly a 10% drop in theatre attendance, the take at the box office slipped only 2.5% or so.
3. How Much Does an Inception Cost?
Perich tackled the other, non-Avatar, blockbuster film event of 2010 with detailed analysis of what it would cost to commission your own Inception. The commenters help out with the economics—I had never even heard of “ROAA” before—and the most controversial element is the wisdom of purchasing a major airline. Overthinking at its best.
Belinkie, no stranger to obscure movies, writes in with this paen to simpler, less convenient days, when you had to beg, borrow, or steal to see a movie like Meet the Feebles or Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. In his own words:
Let me make it clear that this is a good thing. I love movies, and I love having them at my fingertips. But something has been lost. Part of being a movie geek is priding yourself on seeing the obscure stuff that lesser geeks and mere mortals don’t bother with. This used to be challenging. Today, a movie can have cult status because only a small group of people like it… but not because only a small group of people have access. Finding the movies is never a challenge (finding the time to watch them is another story).
1. The Female Character Flowchart
This was the big one—the article that broke all our records for daily traffic and crashed our server hourly for a week. It’s the third most popular article in the history of Overthinking It (#1 is 40 Inspirational Speeches and #2 is The Joker’s Magic Pencil).
It was featured all over the internet, from HuffPo to Jezebel to /Film, it’s available as a nifty poster (denuded of all the evil, copyright-violating pictures), it incited controversy across the identity-political spectrum, it made Overthinking It a household name. OK, not that last one.
That’s the year that was, Overthinkers! Did we get all your favorites? Anything we missed? We resume regular posting next week, but in the meantime, sound off in the comments.
Went back and looked at the cost of inception article, and while I still say the estimate is way off, it is still my favorite article of the year. It had never dawned on me to wonder how much the process costs and the fact that it sparked an interesting discussion in the comments thread was icing on the cake.