I’m a big fan of Netflix’s recommendation algorithm, and have often used it for deciding on movies on TV as well. For years I have always clicked screen by screen on my DVR and entered the movie titles in to Netflix’s search box on my computer and used it’s predicted rating to help plan out my recordings. I’ve long wished there was some mash-up application that could make it easier, but was never really up on JSON and things like that to dig at Netflix’s site. Oh and something about it being against the Terms of Service. But I needed a change of gears the last few days and went to town.
This is just a proof of concept and certainly not the final UI. I was envisioning something Muine style with box art and such as well, but went for a quick and dirty Gtk.TreeView UI to test it out. The yellow stars are movies I’ve already rated, and the red stars represent Netflix’s predicted rating, or average rating of everyone’s vote if a prediction is not available. The heart denotes if it is a recommendation, and the arrows correlate to the predicted rating being higher or lower than the average rating. I’m also collecting if the movie is available on Netflix’s Watch Instantly service but I couldn’t find an icon I was happy with to throw it in the UI.
Behind the scenes I’m using Banshee’s excellent (in development) Hyena.Data assembly for managing an SQLite database. I was really impressed with how reusable it was, and it saved me a lot of time. I intend to dig into Hyena.Gui at some point as well. There is some cool stuff there, but it may be overkill for Heartflix.
I started with HDNet Movies since that was what I am most interested in, but I’ve tried to make the core classes generic enough that it will be easy to add other data sources. Right now I am comparing by title, year, and MPAA rating to ensure an exact match. Nice and simple. I looked at HBO’s site and unfortunately they do not appear to provide a year in their listings, but they do provide a director entry. So it looks like I may have to make it easy to match actors and directors as well.
Last night’s premiere of High School Musical 2 appears to have broken all kinds of ratings records. The most interesting of which is that it was watched by 17.2 million folks nationwide according to overnights. That would make it the highest rated basic cable showing ever. That still doesn’t even begin to compare to the series finale of Cheers or M*A*S*H and such on broadcast networks but still pretty darn impressive considering the number of options viewers have these days.
As to the content, I was rather disappointed. The setting doesn’t work at all. The songs, while fantastic, seemed overly optimized for radio play/soundtrack sales and worked into the story. The original was much more charming. You’ll no doubt get plenty of chances to see an encore over the coming months if you really do want to see it, but in hindsight I would have rather picked up the soundtrack and come up with my own setting/plot in my head.
The film list for the 2007 16th Annual Florida Film Festival finally went up this week, and there are some real gems I’m looking forward to seeing. I was hoping Hounddog would make a presence, but the top of the must see list for me is the anime film Paprika. If you haven’t heard about it, the film is directed by Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress) with an awesome music score by Susumu Hirasawa (they actually used Susumu’s music in the trailer! amazing!). The plot looks rather thin–based around a machine that can enter ones dreams–and certainly just an vehicle for Satoshi Kon’s typically amazing dream sequences. It’s the animation that shines here, as well as an all-star vocal cast.
Another must see for me is Snow Cake, a Marc Evans film starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.
Alex Hughes, recently freed from prison, begrudgingly picks up a vivacious 19-year-old hitchhiker, Vivienne, while driving through Ontario. When the car is hit by a truck on the outskirts of her home town, Vivienne dies instantly. Shocked and stranded in snowbound Wawa, Alex is drawn to seek out Vivienne’s mother, to talk to her in person about the fate of her daughter
Finally, I really want to see In the Shadow of the Moon. A documentary by David Signton that won the Audience Award at Sundance this year. It brings together the surviving crew members of the Apollo missions to tell their stories interweaved with some awesome archive footage.
Hopefully I have good luck getting in on some single tickets when they go on sale next Friday.
It’s been too long since my last post! Let’s see if I can make this an interesting recap…
- Shawn and I have become tenants in common on a 3 bedroom/2 bath/2 car garage condominium here in Orlando. Just 2.8 miles from Spaceship Earth. Still unpacking but pictures will follow.
- I finally have a “new” car. A silver 2001 Volkswagen New Beetle 1.8 Turbo. Her name is Dakota. I got her with just 28,000 miles and in beautiful shape. She was owned by some snowbirds and kept garaged. I forgot how fun driving can be! No pictures yet…
Ok so maybe not that exciting of a post. How about some cheerleading?
Check out the brand new Disney.com! Also, go see Walt Disney Pictures’ Bridge to Terabithia this Friday, starring the totally awesome AnnaSophia Robb.
The fact that Kirk’s Starfleet pin in the new DirecTV commercial is not straight drives me batty. Unless its supposed to be an homage to Star Trek VI I’m missing. The uniforms look rather cheaply done but they could at least get the pin straight!. Maybe Shatner did it on purpose just to get a rise out of people like me…