

Show HN: CinemaBuff - Actor graphs using IMDB ratings - dl8
http://www.cinemabuff.net/

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udfalkso
Shameless Plug: If you enjoy CinemaBuff, you might also want to check out my
startup's movie section:
[http://iknow.io/browse/movies-1/](http://iknow.io/browse/movies-1/)

We offer fairly advanced movie data analysis capabilities, using data from
Freebase, Rotten Tomatoes and The-numbers.com.

You can do stuff like this: [http://iknow.io/insight/christopher-nolans-
movies-are-gettin...](http://iknow.io/insight/christopher-nolans-movies-are-
getting-longer-and-longer-415/)

And a lot more. We'd love feedback on how we can improve if you have any,
thanks!

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dl8
Very awesome

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udfalkso
Thanks!

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advisedwang
Clicking around a bit I think the only conclusion I draw is that variability
from one movie to the next is much greater than any overall trend of an
actor's career.

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chilgart
My favorite so far is Samuel L. Jackson

Highest rated film: Pulp Fiction (1994) - 9.0 Lowest rated film: Hail Caesar
(1994)- 2.9

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uses
Very cool. I did a similar thing a while back using the IMDB data files. It
has a few views.

Director ranking
[http://godsofluxury.com:5001/](http://godsofluxury.com:5001/)

Director detail
[http://godsofluxury.com:5001/person/263239](http://godsofluxury.com:5001/person/263239)
[http://godsofluxury.com:5001/person/56779](http://godsofluxury.com:5001/person/56779)

TV show by seasons
[http://godsofluxury.com:5001/tvshow/191909](http://godsofluxury.com:5001/tvshow/191909)

Hopefully that can give you some inspiration.

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dl8
Yeah I was planning to add very similar pages to those once I've cleaned up my
data. How did you do the popularity rankings, or were those somehow included
in IMDB's data dump and I overlooked?

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dl8
Or is that just a total # of votes for each movie combined?

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hfsktr
This is cool. I was hoping to write something to look at movies differently
(just something to get me working on something). I didn't even know IMDB let
you get data.

I don't know if it's possible but can you break games, shows, movies, etc out?
Video games got shown next to movies (and probably shows). I would like to
know if some actor does great on tv but flops games/movies etc. That and the
random kept giving me foreign actors. I suppose that means it really is
random...would be cool to see random by language or something.

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dl8
Yeah absolutely, I initially want to start it small and slowly expand it to
encompass a lot of those things with a variety of features.

When I initially had the random actor, a vast majority of the time I would
land up on someone who only had 1 movie, so basically a dot on the graph, so I
restricted the eligibility of the random page for the actor to have at least 3
films under their belt.

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dc_ploy
The thing with literal data, is that you don't get a comprehensive look on
their "best" work. For example, Tom Hanks. As a cinema buff, an actor's work
isn't rated based on his highest and lowest rating.
[http://i.imgur.com/MnVFiWF.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/MnVFiWF.png?1)

I wouldn't show the highest and lowest rated film, but rank on awards and
successful ($) hits. Also, showing an "average" is good, but can really hinder
a true value.

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wentkenko
Nice man I like the idea, its loading a bit slow for me just now but I recon
that's cause its reached front page.

I'm working on something using IMDB information as well right now, hope you
done mind If I share it. It's getting an overhaul right now and more features
are being implemented as we speak.

[http://filmfortonight.com/](http://filmfortonight.com/)

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krmmalik
My wife and I constantly have this problem. Glad someone's trying to solve it.
I wasn't able to make use of the site on my mobile device though.

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wentkenko
Yeah I'm sorry about that once the main website is finished a mobile app will
be getting build. Sorry :(

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RobinL
Nice, simple and fun.

There's a bug in an error message in the 'Compare' feature. If it can't find
one of the two actors, it always says it can't find the first one.

e.g.
[http://www.cinemabuff.net/comparison/?q1=Sam+Rockwell&q2=Jon...](http://www.cinemabuff.net/comparison/?q1=Sam+Rockwell&q2=Jony+Depp)

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dl8
Thanks, will fix it tonight.

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LandoCalrissian
Nicholas Cage has a shockingly even range...

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jmilloy
Fun. Fell a little flat when I found movies like "Craptastic" for Clint
Eastwood, which he wasn't really involved with. Does the data dump have
categories so you can restrict the list more appropriately?

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dl8
It's now fixed.

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jmilloy
Awesome, much better!

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tripplethrendo
Application Error An error occurred in the application and your page could not
be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

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dfrey
Why is it that some movies are missing from the results? For example, when I
searched "Daniel Day-Lewis", the movie "The Last of The Mohicans" was missing.

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dl8
I'm not sure, I'll look into it. I know I excluded many of the "Behind the
Scenes" and "Making of" movies, but I'm not sure why legit ones are missing,
thank you for reporting that specific example so I trace the problem.

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gcatalfamo
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon)

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zokier
Didn't RottenTomatoes have this kind of feature back in the days? I remember
being bit annoyed when they removed it.

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thingsdoer
Neat! Where did you get the data?

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dl8
IMDb has a data dump:
[http://www.imdb.com/interfaces](http://www.imdb.com/interfaces)

It's kinda a mess to parse through it and get the data in though.

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abeiz
That data dump is a mess! I used it for my soundtrack project:
[http://thesoundtrackdb.com](http://thesoundtrackdb.com)

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TsiCClawOfLight
Cool project! By the way, small correction: It should be _courtesy_ , not
_couretsy_.

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tmchow
Every actor I search for right now returns a "Not Found" message.

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dl8
It should be working again in a minute or two, sorry for the inconvenience.

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rotub
Really nice idea mate, well done.

