Originally a suggestion by TonythePony, the newest enhancement at Criticker is Featured Reviews. Apart from just the films which you’ve scored the highest, you can now choose which of your mini-reviews are to be highlighted on your profile page.
You can bring attention to overlooked films which you loved, or clever mini-reviews which you’re proud of. Or whatever else! Your list of Featured Films is stored as a collection, and you have control over it just like any other collection. Any film can belong to your Featured Films collection, but in order for it to show up on your Profile, you have to have ranked it and written a mini-review.
And you can feature any number of films. 10 will be chosen at random for display on your profile.
So what are you waiting for?! You’ll see the link “Feature on Your Profile” on the film information page of any movie you’ve written a mini-review for.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed a lot of little changes we’ve been making to Criticker in 2010, designed to make the site more attractive and easier to use.
The latest page to get a revamp is the User Profile page (when you’re on other users’ pages, not your own). It’s changed a lot, for the better.
Here’s a quick rundown of the changes:
1) Expanded, cleaner information & bio area
2) No more ugly “dropdown” boxes
3) Dynamic film list, with multiple choices
4) New Enhancement: Featured Reviews – basically implementing the suggestion proposed here. We’ll be writing more about this later.
We hope you like these changes as much as we do, and agree that they greatly improve the functionality and appearance of the page. The personal User Profile page will be updated soon, too, in a similar fashion.
This morning, we introduced new changes to Criticker’s navigation scheme. So far, there haven’t been too many exasperated emails demanding that we change it back, so… I think that counts a success!
Here are some of the highlights:
1. Live Updating # Films – When you rank a new film, or delete a ranking, the number of rankings is automatically updated.
2. Forum/Blog Highlights – We’ve replaced the (ugly) link bubbles with the latest topics being discussed at the blog and forums.
3. Improved Submenu – Drop down menus is so 2008! Criticker is so 2010! The new menu layout is a huge step up… the options stay active even when not hovered upon, and don’t get in the way of other content.
4. Overall Style – Cleaner and sleeker. This is the first of many stylistic improvements we plan on making in the new year — others will be less noticeable, but we’re going to be constantly making changes to improve the way Criticker feels and works.
Here they are, folks, your top ten movies of 2009! It’s a great list, containing a great variety of films. Science fiction, animation, comedy, Cameron, Cohen, Clooney, Yanks, Brits and Germans.
The number one might surprise, but the Criticker Community has exquisite taste. What a year 2009 was! We wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2010!
If you missed the first half of our top 20, you can get to it here.
“District 9 is the most propitiously first-rate and encouragingly sensible and prosperous sci-fi film of the summer. Not only is it a perspicacious commentary on humanity and other such global themes, but on its own as a regular and standard film it is unstoppable. The imagery is vibrant and energetically glowing in quality, and the acting is top-notch. The biggest sleeper triumph ever, and hopefully it brings overwhelming exposure to Blomkamp. He has all the talent in the world loaded into him.” – Jeb
“I’m continuously impressed by British cinema of late. The Damned United is a fine, sophisticated, and very entertaining biopic. And that comes from someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about soccer. Big part of the film’s success is lively, charismatic acting of Michael Sheen. His character is a bit similar to his previous role in Frost/Nixon, and his acting is even better.” – chemical404
“Really great minimalistic sci-fi debut; although the theme is not that complex, its exposition is spun out with great craft, allowing us to share the doubts of the main character while occupying an omniscient point of view. Humour is used well to alleviate the mood. At each plot point, the film seems to make exactly the right decision, and it’s a pleasure to just sit back and be hand-held though to the end. The continuous “why?”s are all answered satisfactorily and with impeccable timing.” – astrakhan
“What a fun movie. I never figured Anderson’s dry and witty humor would translate so perfectly into a children’s movie. All of the voice actors did terrific jobs making these “wild animals” seem not so wild. The story was fresh and entertaining, and the vintage style stop motion was absolutely beautiful.” – caiman
“DAMN YOU JAMES CAMERON! So here I was, getting comfy in my IMAX seat, putting my 3D-Glasses on, going over my assorted vocabulary of expletives to shred asunder what I fully expected to be yet another phony, pompous popcorn-flick (Hello Transformers 2!), just to be greeted with? A pretty decent movie! Yes, the story is shallow (gun-toting Cowboys, err, Marines battle the indigenous Indians, err, Aliens for their land), but done well. Take note Michael Bay! This is how you spend a AAAA-Budget!” – chiefg
“Burn After Reading painted its subjects’ lack of knowledge as tragicomic character defects; A Serious Man sees it as the defining human condition, though no less tragicomic. The workings of the world and God are inscrutable — God’s proponents’ remedies for the resulting existential crisis are optimism, indifference and Jefferson Airplane, respectively — but acknowledgement of one’s ignorance (“Accept the mystery”) is no defense against the swirling vortex of chaos, literalized at film’s end.” – theficionado
“In my opinion this is the best movie that Pixar has yet to put out. The animation is awesome, but the storyline is even better. The interaction between the Carl and Russell provides lots of laughs (especially when you then throw in a dog and some sort of crazy bird). My date went through an entire box of tissues, so if you cry come prepared. But besides all the laughs and tears (that Pixar films usually have) this really had a deep story to it. That’s what I liked best about it. Love Dog” – gtown1479
“Tarantino’s best film since Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds is a relentless, and at times disgusting film with some snappy dialogue, and some incredibly hilarious moments. Brad Pitt and the Basterds are easily the funniest part of the movie, but one unforgettable thing about this film is the performance by Christoph Waltz. With Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino crosses the line, but he does it in a way where you are not questioning why, but simply accepting.” – Farzan
“This film is a thoughtful examination of the value of human connections. The entire cast is excellent, and contribute to this luxuriously well developed comedy, but Clooney is particularly wonderful, and captures his characters comfortably bleak mindset with stunning charisma and depth. The film is beautifully shot, and has a really unique perspective that is both artistic, and works within the narrative. I love how Reitman uses comedy to enhance rather than distract from the drama in his films.” – thaklos
“This film isn’t answering questions, it’s asking them. The life, and especially the handling and punishment of children in a small community in a village in north germany stands for what is happening the next decades in germany. And thanks to a great director and an extraordinary cast it does it in a very impressive way.” – Charlie
For a long time, we’ve had a feature called the “Criticker Shop”. Until now, it’s not shown anything else than popular Amazon DVDs. Kind of worthless, to be honest, and no one ever used it… it was always a sort of place-holder, until we had something better.
So now we’re pleased to introduce the renovated and improved Criticker Shop. There are currently about 100 products, which we’ve hand-selected from various retailers. These are things we think are funny, unusual or awesome — hopefully all three!
If you’re stuck for a gift idea for the cinephiles on your list, check it out! ‘Tis the season for egregious online shopping.
This is something we’ve been promising a long time, and have finally made a reality — the ability to ignore users.
Ignoring a user will remove him from your TCI list, prevent him from contributing to any of your PSIs, hide him in a film’s list of reviews and remove him from the front page of recommendations. It will prevent that user from sending you personal messages (and vice-versa).
You can do this for users whom you find offensive or aggressive, users who you don’t want showing up in your recommendations, or those people who you just don’t like. The ignored user will not be aware that he’s been ignored.
If you find other areas where the ignored user appears, please let us know and we’ll extend the functionality.
Since we unveiled Lists, over 400 have been created on an incredible variety of topics. Lists was meant to be a fun time-waster, and has proven to be pretty addictive.
There’s no restriction in what kind of lists can be made, and we could never have predicted how creative users would turn out to be. It’s a lot of fun to browse through and rank the lists. We’re going to start highlighting some of the more popular ones on the blog, starting with one that is connected to Criticker’s higher purpose — movies.
Vote for me, or I will kill you.
Ytadel created a number of lists about Lord of the Rings characters, and his third is Villains. Simply put these baddies in order of your most favorite to least, and see who you agree with. You can also see how you compare with the general consensus. (Hey, shlebede, you and I are at 96%!)
Check it out, and if you have fun with it, make sure to tell your kumpels.
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