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How do you discover new movies and shows to watch?

posted 8 years ago by allypie (92)
26 replies | jump to latest

I'm curious how others find new movies and tv shows to watch. For me, I used to use IMDB's "related" section. It basically showed you 6 things related to what you were currently looking at. Now I obviously don't go back to IMDB, so I'm experimenting with other discovery methods. I find TasteKid can be pretty accurate - just type in a show you like and it gives you similar recommendations. Also just googling "xxxxx similar shows" sometimes works.

What do you do?

[–] TandyMan (11096) 8 years ago

I was a real film nut back in the day and I had the big Blockbuster movie book before there was an IMDb or even much of an internet. If you don't know or recall, they had this massive binder like a foot thick that was basically the IMDb printed out in it. I used to track down movies I liked by writer, director or actor and it just spirals out from there. Spent all the 90s tracking down rare movies and shows that way. It was brilliant. Then the internet came along and just streamlined all that crap and now facebook puts up twenty posts a day of movies and shows you may have missed. Used to be a struggle. Anyhow, research, is my short answer. You used to have to write a money order out and mail it to some weird address and hope they mailed a movie back to you. Now you just *click* and you're streaming away. These kids today don't know how good they got it!

[–] arvin g borkar (2854) 8 years ago

That is so old school, yet great. I mean you use to really have to go out of your way to earn the movie you wanted to watch. I kind of would like to witness, what it was like; rather than, have what we have today.

Where would this binder be located?

[–] GlenEllyn (21526) 8 years ago

This reminds me of the days when I worked for a music distributor in the 1970s. There was a similar book called a phonolog. It was an amazing resource. Packets of updated pages came in the mail every few days - sometimes just a few pages, sometimes as many as fifty - so it could take some time to remove old pages and insert the new ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolog (There's a picture here.)

[–] arvin g borkar (2854) 8 years ago

Was it like a magazine subscription to order these things or did they just come like junk mail?

[–] GlenEllyn (21526) 8 years ago

It worked like a magazine subscription - think trade magazine. If you were in the business you needed to have one. I don't know if a 'regular Joe' could get one and I don't know why he'd even want one. The distributor I worked for had five of its own stores; each store plus the warehouse where I worked had one. Most true record stores would have had one, but I doubt you'd find one in the music department of your local Target or Walmart since they mainly sold just the big sellers (Billboard magazine's Hot 100 was their guide).

[–] arvin g borkar (2854) 8 years ago

Oh I see. Well the 'regular Joe' would probably have to just listen to music on the radio and that would be the only way he could find good songs.

[–] GlenEllyn (21526) 8 years ago

Yep, that was back in the olden days...

[–] ElizabethBennet (28) 8 years ago

Read movie reviews. There are a lot of writers writing reviews online.

[–] mercator (31) 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MinaVladimir (4081) 8 years ago

I don't have a method per se. If it's something specific I'm looking for, like if I'm in the mood for a specific genre, or I'm looking for something similar to a movie/show I like, I'd just google that (and I used to go to IMDb's boards for similar suggestions).

Or I'd pick up things that sound interesting from all over, discussions, articles, etc. and I'll write them down for an eventual viewing.

Channel surfing as well. For example I've stumbled upon things like "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" and "A separation" on some cable channel I'd never think to go to (for film or otherwise).

[–] klownz (478) 8 years ago

I use lists on Letterboxed to find things in bulk for example I type in "Asian Horror" or "Japanese Horror" or something like that then I open up all the lists i like the looks of in new tabs then i click to hide all the films I have already seen & hide all the films already in my watchlist and then I go through what is left on the list adding good looking films into my watchlist.

Things like TV shows & popular films i don't put any effort into finding because they just turn up easy anyway like that IMDB "related" thing or i spot things whilst browsing streaming & torrent sites etc.

[–] allypie (92) 8 years ago

I just found this site: http://www.pickamovieforme.com/ that picks a random movie from a selected genre of your choice. Pretty cool.

[–] 9 (1235) 8 years ago

[–] Jesus Christ (38) 8 years ago

Back in the day, I discovered a lot of cool, obscure foreign movies through BBC4 and Film4. They used to show them in the early hours and I'd stay up to watch em. Discovered a lot of hidden gems like Mike Leigh's Naked, 5x2 and Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats. Maybe your TV package has similar channels?