Movie library management

daveza

daveza

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Busy trying to organise my iTunes library and in danger of getting too pedantic.

The problem is sorting into genres, helpful if you dont want to wade through hundreds of movies to find a particular type of movie.

Some are simple - War, Western, Musical, Animated.... but a lot get categorised as Drama, which seems to be the dumping ground for anything where the genre is not obvious.

Action or Thriller.... well sometimes the action is thrilling so which category does it go to.

Sci-fi or Fantasy - a lot of overlap here.

I wanted a category for classic movies - does that mean they have to be old movies ?

Is a cult movie a classic ?

Is there a page somewhere that will actually define the genre options that iTunes or other library managers offer ?

How do others categorise without getting too particular?
 
IMDB gives a list of genres. http://www.imdb.com/genre/

You can search by movie and see what genres it is included under. The problem is that any one movie will most likely span several of these genres.

The easiest is to let Kodi handle it.
 
daveza said:
Busy trying to organise my iTunes library and in danger of getting too pedantic.

The problem is sorting into genres, helpful if you dont want to wade through hundreds of movies to find a particular type of movie.

Some are simple - War, Western, Musical, Animated.... but a lot get categorised as Drama, which seems to be the dumping ground for anything where the genre is not obvious.

Action or Thriller.... well sometimes the action is thrilling so which category does it go to.

Sci-fi or Fantasy - a lot of overlap here.

I wanted a category for classic movies - does that mean they have to be old movies ?

Is a cult movie a classic ?

Is there a page somewhere that will actually define the genre options that iTunes or other library managers offer ?

How do others categorise without getting too particular?
Click to expand...

Media Companion
 
I don't use those automated methods of filing mainly because of what you describe up there. For me to find something later, it has to have been filed away the way I categorise it, not the way some automated "categorisator" does it. It doesn't if the programmatic categorisation is more correct, it matters most that the movie is where I think it should be.
 
Neoprod said:
I don't use those automated methods of filing mainly because of what you describe up there. For me to find something later, it has to have been filed away the way I categorise it, not the way some automated "categorisator" does it. It doesn't if the programmatic categorisation is more correct, it matters most that the movie is where I think it should be.
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Ditto.

Some movies are categorised as Action and others Action AND adventure - I don't get the difference.

And no iTunes, Birdman and Blue Jasmine are not what I call Comedy and Interstellar ain't no Drama.
 
daveza said:
Ditto.

Some movies are categorised as Action and others Action AND adventure - I don't get the difference.

And no iTunes, Birdman and Blue Jasmine are not what I call Comedy and Interstellar ain't no Drama.
Click to expand...

You're well on your way to becoming a librarian. Simple answer, there is NO automated library application that can solve this for you. Go with your gut. For me a classic is anything made before 1985-ish. Cult movies are classics but if you'd rather label them 'cult movies' then go for it, if it helps sort it out in your mind.

Sci-fi and fantasy shouldn't overlap. Magic is fantasy, science is sci-fi. For instance, a talking tree in LoTR is explained as a magical creature, and a talking tree in GoTG is explained as an alien creature.
 
cerebus said:
You're well on your way to becoming a librarian. Simple answer, there is NO automated library application that can solve this for you. Go with your gut. For me a classic is anything made before 1985-ish. Cult movies are classics but if you'd rather label them 'cult movies' then go for it, if it helps sort it out in your mind.

Sci-fi and fantasy shouldn't overlap. Magic is fantasy, science is sci-fi. For instance, a talking tree in LoTR is explained as a magical creature, and a talking tree in GoTG is explained as an alien creature.
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I can go with that - almost.

Rocky Horror and Mad Max for example I would list as Cult movies, but Papillon and The Godfather are Classics even though they are all pre-1980's.

Or is Rocky Horror a Musical and The Godfather a Drama .....
 
daveza said:
I can go with that - almost.

Rocky Horror and Mad Max for example I would list as Cult movies, but Papillon and The Godfather are Classics even though they are all pre-1980's.

Or is Rocky Horror a Musical and The Godfather a Drama .....
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Well... look, to me cult movies have to be somewhat obscure. I'm talking The Last Dragon, Eraserhead, Tetsuo, Fire Walk With Me, Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes, Showgirls, as well as modern films like Mean Girls and Donnie Darko. Rocky Horror and Mad Max are slightly more on the mainstream side, but yeah, they qualify as cult films because they have a cult following. That's how your gut has to make the final call with these things. Godfather and Papillon are much more on the Oscar-winning, 9/10-star, all-time great movies list type of films.

To clarify more - a cult movie is one that received very little mainstream recognition and didn't make much money. It may not even be a very good movie (Rocky Horror, I'm looking at you). It only later hit a nerve with a niche audience and has endured because of fandom.
 
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cerebus said:
Well... look, to me cult movies have to be somewhat obscure. I'm talking The Last Dragon, Eraserhead, Tetsuo, Fire Walk With Me, Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes, Showgirls, as well as modern films like Mean Girls and Donnie Darko. Rocky Horror and Mad Max are slightly more on the mainstream side, but yeah, they qualify as cult films because they have a cult following. That's how your gut has to make the final call with these things. Godfather and Papillon are much more on the Oscar-winning, 9/10-star, all-time great movies list type of films.

To clarify more - a cult movie is one that received very little mainstream recognition and didn't make much money. It may not even be a very good movie (Rocky Horror, I'm looking at you). It only later hit a nerve with a niche audience and has endured because of fandom.
Click to expand...

Pop quiz, hotshot :) - A Clockwork Orange, mainstream, cult or classic?
 
Neoprod said:
Pop quiz, hotshot :) - A Clockwork Orange, mainstream or cult?
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Sho I'm being tested... It's a gut thing really. Personally if I'm going to make a movie collection I'll have a subsection of Classics for individual directors, and this would go in my Kubrick folder. It's not mainstream or cult, it's classics or cult, and CO is a work by a classic director.
 
cerebus said:
Sho I'm being tested... It's a gut thing really. Personally if I'm going to make a movie collection I'll have a subsection of Classics for individual directors, and this would go in my Kubrick folder. It's not mainstream or cult, it's classics or cult, and CO is a work by a classic director.
Click to expand...

I added a third option while you were replying but that's not the important bit...I would have filed it under sci-fi. We agree on the personal aspect of it...stuff has to be filed according to associations in your own head or you'd be stuck trying to find it again. Hopefully, everyone's thought processes are repeatable :o

@greg0205 - this is why iFlicks is not suitable.
 
Neoprod said:
I added a third option while you were replying but that's not the important bit...I would have filed it under sci-fi. We agree on the personal aspect of it...stuff has to be filed according to associations in your own head or you'd be stuck trying to find it again. Hopefully, everyone's thought processes are repeatable :o

@greg0205 - this is why iFlicks is not suitable.
Click to expand...
The other option would be to tag genres for movies so you get porous genres where films can belong to several at the same time. I guess you can't really do that in iTunes or any other media manager I can think of. It would be nice though.
 
cerebus said:
The other option would be to tag genres for movies so you get porous genres where films can belong to several at the same time. I guess you can't really do that in iTunes or any other media manager I can think of. It would be nice though.
Click to expand...
With plex you can tag a film with any genre you like.
 
just reading this gives me a headache, I'll go with copacetic on this one :D
 
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