Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Clerk Dogs - movie recommendations

Clerk Dogs is a site, currently in beta, that aims to solve the problem of movie recommendations.

Other services like Amazon make recommendations based on buying patterns - people who bought this also bought this - but that's not very good at recommending obscure or less mainstream stuff.

Clerk Dogs has asked a team of experts - mainly people who used to work in US video stores (hence the name) - to rate lots of movies based on a number of criteria, to produce what they call a DNA for each movie.



So - does it work? Here is a comparison with Amazon, using totally random selections:

Wall-E - Clerk Dogs recommends ET, Amazon recommends Kung Fu Panda
Annie Hall - Clerk Dogs recommends Manhattan, Amazon recommends The Graduate
Apocalypse Now - Clerk Dogs recommends Agurre, Wrath of God, Amazon recommends Platoon
Super Size Me - Clerk Dogs recommends Fast Food Nation, Amazon recommends Sicko
Titanic - Clerk Dogs recommends Pearl Harbour, Amazon also recommends Pearl Harbour

Pretty interesting! In some cases the recommendations are a bit obvious (a search for a Woody Allen seems to bring up another Woody Allen, a search for Spinal Tap brought up a pretty poor sequel), but in general they are more inspiring than Amazon's.

So far it's only in beta, and there are lots of films I like with no results, but It's definitely worth following.

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