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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-wrap dept.

Claiming they're "no longer providing a positive, useful experience" for the vast majority of its users, IMDB has announced that as of February 20, 2017, their message boards will be no more:

As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.

[...] Because IMDb's message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they'd like to keep for personal use. During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another). We regret any disappointment or frustration IMDb message board users may experience as a result of this decision.

Variety, BBC, TheWrap.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:52PM (#464637)

    As movies become more formulaic, more repetitive endless sequel or remake of a copy, less risky and innovative, and retreat into shoveling crap, there is probably less to talk about.

    Imagine what it would have been like to have a IMDB back when Star Wars was released in 77 or 78 or whatever it was. Or the Charles Bronson vigilante era movies. Or the era of Dirty Harry movies. Or the era of the great Western epics. Interesting stuff used to happen in Hollywood movies. Not so much in the last decade or two.

    This kind of talk annoys me to no end. There is a lot of repetitive endless sequels, but that's because that's what the customer wants. More to the point, there are countless innovative new movies coming out. Many of them even succeed. But nobody ever thinks of them.

    As one example which springs to mind, the Disney movie Frozen [wikipedia.org]. It is incredibly innovative and subversive (in the TVTropes connotation), especially for somebody as mainstream as Disney. A movie in which the man is a betraying gold-digger (not a prince charming), a literal witch hunt against the queen, and numerous other non-standard subversions of audience expectations.

    Or we have movies like American Sniper [wikipedia.org], Brokeback Mountain [wikipedia.org], Hacksaw Ridge [wikipedia.org], The Matrix [wikipedia.org], Avatar [wikipedia.org], and countless others which I'm too lazy to actually try to list. That's not counting the neigh-countless B-list, C-list, or independent films.

    You only hear about the "Rocky: Part 16" movies? Well, see previous statement about what sells. You can't really blame Hollywood for selling people what they want, can you? That the publicize the next blockbuster is not to say they that innovation doesn't exist, or movie studios don't try new things.

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:43PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:43PM (#464663) Journal

    Avatar is a perfect example of what we like to say “Give me the same thing… only different!”

    -- http://www.savethecat.com/beat-sheets/stc-beats-out-avatar [savethecat.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:36PM (#464777)

      I want to clarify that the list of movies I listed were each different in different ways. The Avatar example was one talking about technology, and how it was a pioneer in "good 3D." The story itself may have been lackluster. Much like how Frozen animation styles and techniques were fairly well established, and the characters were formulaic, but their interactions and the situation were innovative.

      As for the pithy sounding "Give me the same thing… only different!" ... What's that even supposed to mean? I think literally every story has been done before. See The Hero's Journey [wikipedia.org]... or TVTropes [tvtropes.org] if you prefer [tvtropes.org]. I defy you to name a single story written in the past 1000 years for which there is no predecessor it was "copying."