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Gaming Netflix Ratings?
Nom du Keyboard writes "Not for the first time, I've noticed a new film that hasn't yet even reached the theaters, yet has hundreds of positive votes and/or reviews recorded on Netflix. This time the movie is Inkheart. For a movie that doesn't even hit the theaters until January 23, it already has 428 votes and a rating of 4.3 (out of 5) on Netflix. Seems more than a bit fraudulent to me. Also, it has a review that doesn't even review the movie, but instead says the books are great, therefore the movie should be too. Does the word 'shills' come to mind? With millions spent to promote a movie, are a few hundred of that going to phony voters? Or have that many people actually seen the film and just can't wait to rush home and log onto Netflix to vote? Just what is Netflix's responsibility here to provide honest ratings?"
Maybe not released yet in the US, but there is a world beyond the US borders and the film has been released places there. It's actually quite a good film based on an interesting idea.
kdawson is a drama queen.
Release:
Germany 11 December 2008
UK 12 December 2008
Brazil 25 December 2008
Iceland 26 December 2008
Not only this, but often times the makers of a film will show it to people before it is even finished. This could be anything from friends and business associates of the filmmakers (such screenings can number into the hundreds of people) to recruited audience test screenings (also often several hundred people). These people see the movie long before it comes out, and most likely not in its final form. Also, after a movie is completed it is sometimes sent around for audience reaction before it is picked up distribution. Of course, if the film plays at a film festival, that's hundreds or thousands of people watching it before it is released in theaters. So a few hundred people rating a movie before it's officially "out" isn't that strange.
And remember, a significant portion of the people who do watch the movie before it comes out are friends and family of the crew, who aren't exactly impartial. That may explain why the ratings skew high.
Inkheart is in the theatres here in Brasil for the last three weeks.
Maybe it just didn't hit the theatres in the OP's city/state/country??
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
five tenths of a point
Why not just say half a point?
I got in on something similar to this a few years ago, and after the movie ended, we were given tickets to see another pre-screening the next week. As long as we kept going, we got to see free movies every week before they came out (usually only a week or so ahead of time, though). Unfortunately, we didn't really want to see most of the movies they were showing, so we'd end up giving the tickets away, and eventually someone didn't go (or didn't give us the tickets for the next week).
On the other hand, it's not uncommon for people that work in the industry to have access to copies of the film, either, and it definitely gets out to their friends and family, even if they simply borrow it.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
That is the worst way to write dates. You can't tell 2010 and 1910 apart, and if you try to sort a bunch of files named by date, in your scheme the dates are all mixed up.
You want big-endian, and 4 digit years:
YYYY/MM/DD.
The ISO agrees
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
But it isn't rare for there to be advanced screenings of a movie a week or two in advance of the public release date.
I wonder if we'll ever see movie cinemas with terminals or similar at them that let you rate a movie as you walk out after seeing it.
I went to google.com
Typed in "inkheart screener"
The very first choice at the top is a bit-torrent search engine.
The page lists a number of different torrents of this movie already being available from screeners and cam rips, etc.
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I think it is safe to say that thousands of people have already seen it by now.
Really? You are honestly trying to claim that it isn't stupid to rate a movie as being good even when you have not seen it? Really?