Project # 3: Hypertext Essay & Redesign proposal
I’ve always thought that movie critic websites must have one of the largest audiences in cyberspace. Usually when I see an online movie review it’s either when I’m online shopping for movie tickets or when I’m online reading the local newspaper’s movie link on the Entertainment section. Many moviegoers do determine whether to watch a movie or not based on the reviews it receives from big name critics, therefore the group or audience in this instance would be surfers looking for movie reviews. I chose the sites www.critic.com and www.mrqe.com for my third project for two reasons; 1.) because it was the first time I used the sites, therefore I knew my evaluation was going to be similar to an evaluation of visitor new to the site, and 2.) because the summer is almost here and I wanted to make sure I go out and watch the right movies and soon as schools lets out.
The site www.critic.com has reviews on many various movies, from 1998 to the present. The web page’s appearance has an advertisement at the very top of the page, and under that a links bar that runs from left to right with the links: Current, A to Z, Boon/Bane, Help, Comments?, and at the far left of the link bar it has a mini search engine. The reason I say its a mini search engine, is because the site is only useful when looking for a movie, movie review, or movie critic. This is not the kind of search engine you log on to for information on University of Houston.
The first link, Current, is set to the opening page of the site. The opening page, just under the links bar, has another thin blue bar with the date on it. Obviously the designers of the site want the audience to realize that the site is up to date. The page it self is divided into three columns going from top to bottom. At the top of the first column there’s and an advertisement, advertising “Do you have any idea what kids are watching?”. If you click on the advertisement it forwards you to www.kids-in-mind.com , which is also a movie review website, but it specializes in determining what movies are appropriate for children and what age groups should be allowed to watch other movies. Under the advertisement, the column has a box titled Box Office , this box has the current movies numbered from 1-10 and their place in the box is determined by the amount of money each movie grosses in. There are also stars next to the movie titles. When doing a movie review, every movie critic writes his review and gives the movie anywhere from 1 to 4 stars. The site www.critic.com determines how many stars to put next to the movie title in the Box Office box by averaging the number of stars given to the movie from 15 different critics. Below the box titled Box Office there’s another box titled Current Releases by Rating. On both boxes the title of the movie serves as a link to a list of all the movie reviews the movie has received. The movie review is presented by giving the name of the critic and the newspaper or magazine he/she works for. The review is highlighted and serves as a link to the online version of the actual review. In my opinion the page should also have a link to all the critics that are featured on the site. For example, Roger Ebert is a critic on just about every single movie featured on the site, it would be a good idea for the site to add to its links bar a link that reads “critics” and from there the visitor could just click on another link that reads Roger Ebert which would forward the visitor to Roger Ebert’s web page www.suntimes.com/index/ebert.html. The middle column has boxes, one-titled New Releases and the other Recent Releases. Both boxes show a picture of the main character next to the movie title link, and the number of stars it has received on the other side of the link. The third column has two small boxes. The first box is titled Showtimes/Tickets, which has a box in which to enter a zip code, and forwards the user to www.movietickets.com. The intent is to make ticket accessibility easier for visitors that have decided to watch the movie after reading the reviews on the site. The second box on the third column is titled DVD Reviews and has 10 different links to reviews on DVD’s presently on sale.
The second link, A to Z, works in a very simple way. Once you click on the link it gives you an alphabetized list of all the movie titles that have been reviewed. All the moviegoer has to do is alphabetically look for the movie title, click on it, and he/she has 15 reviews on the movie. The Boon/Bane link works very similar, the difference is that the list is in order from best to worst (from 4 stars to ½ a star). The Help link takes the moviegoer to a summary that explains how to use the site. The Comments? link, is just a simple link for sending email.
The www.mrqe.com (also known as the Movie Review Query Engine) works different than www.critics.com. This site has a search button titled Find Review; for the search to work the user has to enter the exact correct title of the movie he/she wants to find reviews on. I’ve seen online directories (also a search engine) that have the options of choosing: Begins with, Includes, or Exact name, when entering the name of a person. This web page would be easier to use if this change was added to the Find Review button. Beneath this there’s a selection “GO” menu. This menu contains a lot of different categories: Recent and upcoming releases in the U.S., U.S. video releases, AFI’s America’s 100 Greatest and Funniest Movies, Most Popular and Reviewed Titles, Cannes Film Festivals, Academy Awards, 1990’s in Review, Stanley Kubrick, John Siskel, Pauline Kael. In my opinion this search seems focused to a more informed audience. If I were going to come out on “Who wants to be a Millionaire” it would be a good idea to study the section of Academy Award winners. Then again, someone who was looking for a top of the class movie might check this section as well, simply to make sure they’re watching a good movie.
Using the Find Reviews search button does have its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the www.critic.com site. The critics page only gives the 15 reviews and the menus only include selected movies since 1998. The Movie Review Query Engine feeds back all the reviews written on the movie, and the site’s visitor is able to look up any movie without year restrictions. In the Movie Review Query Engine page lacks a link to www.movietickets.com, it would be useful if this page were similar to the critics site on the issue of appealing to moviegoers. MRQE does have links connected to www.amazon.com and the www.wbonlineshop.com to help surfers buy DVDs online, but both sites don’t have any links to a regular movie rental store. If I were the owner or designer of either web page I would have www.blockbuster.com on as a link on my page. It would not only help my page financially because Blockbuster would pay me for the advertisement but also it would help my audience while they’re surfing. Obviously because of their content the MRQE search engine is a lot more useful than the one from Critics.
If I was looking for online movie reviews, and being a constant moviegoer I usually am, I would use these two sites. I do have suggestions of improvements of my own for both sites, but after seeing and evaluating both sites I will make my switch from the Houston Chronicle’s reviews to the use of these two sites.