Movie Website Reviews for Weekend of November 2, 2007

November 3, 2007

Just like at the box office, we have two movie sites in a close battle it out for first place. But in this case it is Bee Movie - Official Site that takes the top prize while the movie will likely have to settle for second place at the box office.

American Gangster - Official Site
The site starts out will all of the usual features, but the extras are broken down in to groups. The first group is the videos and they include five clips from the movie, a behind-the-scenes features, and another featurette on the New York premiere. The other main extra is the heart of the site, two semi-interactive sections on the two main characters. There's very little branching, but a lot of audio clips and even some video clips. It sets up the movie very well and should sell the film to its target audience. However, it isn't quite up to the level of an award-winning site.

Bee Movie - Official Site
Great site with all of the usual features like the synopsis, cast & crew bios, image gallery, and trailers. It also has a tone of extras including text based extras like characters bios, as well as video based extras like the ten video clips from the movie, three featurettes, and a music video, (interviews are still marked coming soon. There are also several games including New Hive City, which is one of the best games I've played on a website so far. It a small scale 4X game, (eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, and eXterminate), where you have to build up your bee hive, hire workers & pollen jocks, find flowers, and eventual get a queen bee and colonize another hive. Very fun and the winner of the sticky Weekly Website Award.

The Bodybuilder and I - Official Site
Just the minimum for a documentary site with not enough style. However, the trailer does sell the movie well.

Darfur Now - Official Site
There are in fact two sites: the production company's site and MySpace. I prefer the production company's site, as the MySpace page seems way too chaotic. However, neither site really wowed me.

Diva - No Official Site
No official site.

Fat Girls - Official Site
Just the usual features. Also, the site feels smaller than it is.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten - Official Site
All the usual features for a documentary site with an emphasis on the music with clips from more than a dozen songs, and other bits), for background music. There is some additional background information as well as information on Strummerville foundation. Overall it is effective, but it doesn't really stand out.

Love and Honor - No Official Site
No site for the North American release, but there is a Japanese release.

The Martian Child - Official Site
Only the basics in terms of features, but every section starts with an audio quote. It's not enough to lift it above the crowd.

Park - Official Site
A good site with all of the usual features, (synopsis, cast & crew bios, image gallery, and trailer). There are also sections for awards & reviews, clips, and finally an interview. There's enough sound and animation throughout the site to not seem boring, but not enough to truly stand out.

Surviving My Mother - No Official Site
Sadly, there's no official site.

The Tracey Fragments - Official Site
An interesting site with all the usual features plus the entire movie you can download, or at least all the footage that was edited into the movie. If you have the time, you can download all 20 gigs and recut the movie as you see fit. There's also a link to the blog and the comic version of the story, but there's not enough sound or animation for my liking.


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Filed under: Bee Movie, Martian Child, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, Surviving My Mother, Darfur Now, Bushi no ichibun, The Tracey Fragments, Fat Girls, Park, The Bodybuilder and I, American Gangster