The Muriels: Best Film-Related Website
By Craig Kennedy - February 9th, 2009; 5:34 pm
Today’s Muriel is a brand new one for 2008 and it’s awarded to the voter’s favorite movie-related website. Individual websites of voters were inelligible, though group websites that included individual voters were allowed.
Click through to see the winner.
I voted:
1. Some Came Running (http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/)
2. Wonders in the Dark (http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/)
3. The Auteurs’ Notebook (http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts)
4. Motion/Captured (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured)
5. Fataculture (http://fataculture.wordpress.com/)
House Next Door is a strong winner, though. Very cool site.
Still, this was a tough category, because “film related” is kind of broad. imdb and rotten tomatoes (which both made the top 10) are good sources of information for credits and such, but how can you really compare them to critic sites that discuss and analyze film? They’re just totally different.
I agree Ari. If you look at the actual content of IMDb beyond the listings themselves, it’s one of the flimsiest sites on film there is, but I have endearing respect for it as a resource.
Glad to see The Screengrab, The Onion AV Club, and even House Next Door in there, even though I’ve maligned HND privately and publicly for some of the choices they’ve made in the last year, they still feature some great work.
But I have to give props to the three people that voted for Vern’s site. I love Vern.
Voting for IMDB is like voting for the phone book for Best Book. Yeah, I use it all the time, but it isn’t exactly a labor of love like most of the other sites that got votes.
LMAO, perfect analogy Jeff. Thank you so much.
I think the category was rather ill-defined, but I’m at peace with HND as the winner. There are a couple of contributors who annoy the bejesus outta me and I wish MZS was still running the show, but…
I’d say that the definition was somewhat lacking because this was the first year for the category. Perhaps next year we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking for from this. Still, I like this category better than Best DVD, which this replaced. Talk about ill-defined…
It’s a tough call because you have a mix of sites driven by money and passion. Direct comparisons between the two aren’t really fair, but it’s hard to separate them.
I like the category though. Much better than the hold DVD category.
Perhaps next year it can be changed to something more based in movie criticism.
That’s a great idea.
Good points all. I looked at this one really broadly, as in “What movie-related web sites do I visit to get the goods about movies?”. So yeah, I voted for IMDb and RT – and The Internet Movie Poster Awards! Fits the bill, doesn’t it?
This is not to say that HND isn’t a deserving winner. Just that, as Paul and Craig have said, it’s tough to break this down to info sites and critical sites. I’m sure Paul would appreciate this observation since he did the math – HND won the award with only 10 votes. Vertigo won with 32 votes, Rushmore with 22, and even The King of Comedy with 19. I suspect HND will have the lowest total number of votes for winners in all categories. My point being we were voting all over the place.
Daniel~~
Thanks for helping to clarify. And you’re right, votes were all over the place. By narrowing the category a bit (Best Web-Based Film Criticism, anyone?), we might narrow the field as well, but maybe not.
But you’re wrong about one thing- there’s one winner that wins with fewer than 10 votes. I wouldn’t dream of telling…