Movie Website Reviews for Weekend of November 14, 2008

November 16, 2008

It's a lopsided week for movie websites with one top-notch site and a list full of mostly average sites. Granted, the one top-notch site is, Quantum of Solace's Official Site, and it more than makes up for the average sites.

Antarctica - Official Site
Has all of the usual features, but not a lot of flash. Also, the image gallery is a slideshow that you can't control.

The Beautiful Truth - Official Site
All the usual features for a documentary site, with the usual level of style as well. There's nothing here that makes it stand out, nothing good or bad.

A Christmas Tale - No Official Site
No official site, but you check out the original French site here.

Dostana - Official Site
The widest limited release of the week, and it has the best site out of the limited releases. It has all of the usual features, and additionally there's an emphasis on the music with seven songs and four 60-second clips from the movie.

The Dukes - Official Site
All the usual features are here, but nothing extra. On the other hand, the trailer has a certain charm to it, but I'm a sucker for heist movies.

Eden - Official Site
I don't like the format of this site. Clicking on the content creates new windows, sort of, and clicking on new content doesn't close the old window, so it is possible to open up multiple copies of the trailer, which slows the site down so much it takes a long time just to close one of the windows. Additionally, most of the normal text based features have to be downloaded as part of the press kit. I shouldn't have to download the synopsis.

Faded Memories - Official Site
This site as all of the usual features and a few extras, but these are all off site. In fact, much of the regular features are found on AnneSophieFilms.com. There's plenty to check out, but it lacks polish.

Familiar Strangers - Official Site
Not a whole lot of information here. There's more to be found on the studio's site.

Quantum of Solace - Official Site
Wow. This is a huge site, but that is to be expected, as this is a huge movie (one of the most expensive movies ever made). All of the usual features are here, somewhere. Quite frankly, the synopsis and cast & crew bios get lost in the sea of other information. The image gallery is nice, extensive, but again is buried by the rest of the features on the site. The first feature that is truly impressive is the section for the videos. There are 30 of them. There are two trailers for the movie, two trailers for the video game, music video, featurette on the music from the movie, and the rest are behind-the-scenes / interview featurettes. I expect all of these to be included on the DVD / Blu-ray release in one form or another. Next up are five games, including two strategy games, a trivia game, and two action games. Any one of these games would be more than 90% of the sites have, and having five is simply amazing. Finally, there is a dossier on James Bond that has more than enough information on the famous spy, so much so that I doubt most people will listen to it all. Overall, this is easily the best site on this week's list, but there's no surprise there. The site has everyone one could expect from an award-worthy site, and there's no other competition for the exorbitant Weekly Website Award.

Slumdog Millionaire - Official Site
Typical Fox Searchlight site. Plenty of information, but it looks too much like too many other Fox Searchlight sites.

Vaaranam Aayiram - Official Site
All the usual features, mostly. (There's a cast & crew list, but no bios.) There's also an emphasis on music, which is common for sites for films from India.


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Filed under: Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, Dostana, Un conte de Noël, Antarctica