Four Word Film Review

Last updated

The Four Word Film Review (FWFR) is an interactive website founded in 1999 by Benj Clews. It is an online database of film summaries, all written in four words or fewer and submitted by site members. The database currently contains more than 275,000 reviews covering some 25,000 films. [1]

Contents

The Four Word Film Review was nominated in 2005 for a Webby Award [2] in the Humor category.

Reviews

Users of the site, or "FWFRers" (sometimes pronounced "fwiffers"), write the reviews and submit them for site publication. Submitted reviews are put on the FWFRer’s Pending Approval list. Clews and a team of anonymous volunteer editors (called "MERPs", an acronym for the site's Multiple Editor Review Processing system) to weed out submissions according to broadly defined selection guidelines. If the review passes the Pending Approval process, it is added to the site and other FWFRers have the opportunity to vote on it.

Exactly what constitutes an “acceptable” Four Word Film Review is often a source of heated debate on the site’s message board. The general rules are listed in the site's FAQ, although their interpretation is ever evolving, subject to both the decisions of the site’s creator/owner, and the interpretation of the MERPs. [3]

One common reason for the editors to decline a submitted review is that it is "too generic," meaning it doesn’t make specific enough reference to the film in question and may include fanboy statements. According to the site's FAQ, other reasons a review may be declined include exceeding the four-word limit, using a quotation from the film itself rather than written in the voice of the site user, similarity to one that is already posted, or being incomprehensible to MERPs. The reviewer is entitled to one appeal for a declined review, in which the user may explain the review and reasons why it should be accepted. Appeals are limited to 100 characters or fewer. All submissions and declines are ultimately at Clews' discretion except for the rule that all reviews must be four words or fewer. [4]

Every page of the website features a “What Film?” box, which randomly selects one of the many thousands of reviews. The "What Film?" box allows the visitor to guess which film to which it refers, then follow a link to the film to see if he or she was correct. The box reflects the site's philosophy that it must be possible to deduce a film from its review.

Examples of reviews

Quality reviews and voting

Members of FWFR are encouraged to vote for reviews that they particularly like or find humorous, the objective being to encourage contributors to write humorous, clever, or otherwise entertaining reviews. Over the years, a core group of users has developed, and this has led to many of the reviews incorporating inside jokes. Perhaps the most famous is the “Icy Dead People” review for the film Titanic . This review, referring to those who froze to death in the Atlantic following the sinking of the RMS Titanic, is an example of a “pop culture reference” review, as it is a pun on a famous quote from another film ( The Sixth Sense ). It quickly became one of the top vote-getters, and has spawned imitators throughout the site, all based on the same film quote. Reviews are also judged by how completely they summarize the film. Each FWFRer is allowed to vote on a given review only once.

The twenty reviews that receive the most votes each day are displayed in the "Top Reviews" section of the site. The Top Reviews section changes frequently to reflect votes cast during the preceding 24 hours.

All-time top reviews

The site's "All-time Top Reviews" pages display the five hundred reviews with the most votes. Currently[ when? ], long-time reviewer MguyX's review of Kramer vs. Kramer is the all-time highest vote getter ("I bet Kramer wins."), which only barely displaced the relatively less prolific pudking's review for Titanic ("Icy dead people.") at the number one spot. Other former number ones include Aardball's review of The Blair Witch Project ("Tense. Intense. In tents.") and noncentz's review of Breast Men ("Sale of two titties."). [5]

Accolades

FWFRers may collate movies with a common feature into groups, referred to on the site as "accolades". They are called "accolades" because a trophy, assigned to the accolade by its creator, is awarded to the reviewer once a review is written for every movie in the group. Any number of accolades may be created, and no guidelines have been set for their creation. However, accolades are expected to have some kind of purpose or theme, an accolade may contain, for example; all the films in a series or a franchise (the Star Wars films, The Terminator series, et al.), all the films featuring a certain actor or made by a particular director, films featuring a day of the week in the title, or films with a post-Apocalyptic theme etc. [6] An accolade can include any number of movies. [7]

Each FWFRer's personal page includes a "trophy cabinet," showing every accolade they have completed. To date, Randall, the most prolific completer of accolades, has more than 1800 in his trophy cabinet. [8]

There is no central or group review of accolades. The creation and maintenance of accolades is on an individual basis.

Four Word Film Reviews: The Book

After several years of expressed interest from founder Benj Clews to develop the website's content into book form, in 2008 site user Michael Onesi spearheaded a concerted pitch effort to assess publishers' interest. Within two weeks, interest was registered from several publishing agents, and ultimately Adams Media won the right to publish the book. Made up of reviews originally published on the website, the book was released on August 18, 2010. In mid-2010, a second website was established to promote the book. [9]

The Fourum

FWFR has a message board, called the Fourum, for discussion of any topic. The Fourum has several categories.

"FWFR related" [10] is a broad category in the Fourum. The sections include:

"Film Related" contains discussions of all things regarding film: [12]

Games and contests

"Games and contests" [13] is a busy section within the Fourum. The traditional games include:

Off-Topic

"Off-Topic" [14] contains discussions related to everything else outside of films.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kuro5hin</span> Technology-related discussion website

Kuro5hin was a collaborative discussion website founded by Rusty Foster in 1999, having been inspired by Slashdot. Articles were created and submitted by users and submitted to a queue for evaluation. Site members could vote for or against publishing an article and once the article had reached a certain number of votes, it was published to the site or deleted from the queue. The site has been described as "a free-for-all of news and opinion written by readers". Around 2005, its membership numbered in the tens of thousands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet forum</span> Online discussion site

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes publicly visible.

A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indicate its relative merit.

Plastic.com (2001–2011) was a general-interest internet forum running under the motto 'Recycling the Web in Real Time'.

<i>Your Sinclair</i> British computer magazine

Your Sinclair, or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FanFiction.Net</span> US fan fiction website

FanFiction.Net is an automated fan fiction archive site. It was founded on October 15, 1998, by Los Angeles computer programmer Xing Li, who also runs the site. It has over 12 million registered users and hosts stories in over 40 languages.

"The Contest" is the 51st episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. The eleventh episode of the fourth season, it aired on November 18, 1992. In the episode, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer hold a contest to determine who can go for the longest time without masturbating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IMDb</span> Online database of information related to films, television series, and video games

IMDb is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zug (website)</span> Defunct comedy website

Zug, or ZUG, was a comedy website that was founded in 1995 by Sir John Hargrave and Jay L Stevens.

Newsvine was a community-powered, collaborative journalism online newspaper which drew content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press. Users could write articles, "seed" links to external content, and discuss news items in an online forum. These news items were submitted by both users and professional journalists. Newsvine, the company, was not a news bureau and exercised no editorial voice, but provided social news platform for the online community which had grown around it. Members decided with their online actions what news articles stay on the site and what news is removed. Newsvine was named the Top News Site of 2006 and one of the 50 Best Websites of 2007 by Time magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiddish Wikipedia</span> Yiddish-language Wikipedia

The Yiddish Wikipedia is the Yiddish-language version of Wikipedia. It was founded on March 3, 2004, and the first article was written November 28 of that year.

A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets; and academic criticism by film scholars who are informed by film theory and are published in academic journals. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place in the history of its genre or in the whole of film history.

Encyclopedia Titanica is an online reference work containing extensive and constantly updated information on the RMS Titanic. The website, a nonprofit endeavor, is a database of passenger and crew biographies, deck plans, and articles submitted by historians or Titanic enthusiasts. In 1999, The New York Times noted that the site "may be the most comprehensive Titanic site", based on its content including passenger lists and ship plans. The Chicago Tribune called it "a marvelously detailed Internet site."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metal Storm (webzine)</span> Heavy metal website based in Estonia

Metal Storm is a webzine specializing in various forms of heavy metal music. It is based in Tallinn, Estonia, but caters to an international audience, symbolically recognized by the acquisition of an EU domain in 2008. As of June 2013, the website hosts 7,812 band profiles, 7,800 reviews, 553 interviews and 16,753 news items.

Habr is a Russian collaborative blog about IT, computer science and anything related to the Internet, owned by TechMedia. Habrahabr was founded in June 2006. The English section of Habr was launched in 2019.

Social spam is unwanted spam content appearing on social networking services, social bookmarking sites, and any website with user-generated content. It can be manifested in many ways, including bulk messages, profanity, insults, hate speech, malicious links, fraudulent reviews, fake friends, and personally identifiable information.

Clews is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SCP Foundation</span> Online collaborative writing project

The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative-writing wiki project of the same name. Within the website's shared universe, the Foundation is responsible for capturing, containing, and studying various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena unexplained by science, while also keeping their existence hidden from the rest of human society.

OpenCritic is a review aggregation website for video games. OpenCritic lists reviews from critics across multiple video game publications for the games listed on the site. The website then generates a numeric score by averaging all of the numeric reviews. Several other metrics are also available, such as the percentage of critics that recommend the game and its relative ranking across all games on OpenCritic.

References

  1. Four Word Film Review
  2. Webby Awards Archived 2009-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
  3. FWFR Frequently Asked Questions
  4. Appealing declines
  5. All Time Top Reviews
  6. Clews, Benj. "What is an accolade?" The Four Word Film Review. 9 December 2003. Access date: 22 October 2007.
  7. Accolade Guidelines
  8. Top Reviewers by Accolades Completed
  9. www.fourwordbook.com
  10. FWFR Related
  11. Accolade lists
  12. Film Related
  13. Games and contests
  14. Off-Topic