Before this website was started, we used Letterboxd to track the movies we were watching. We still use the site every day, tracking all the movies we watch, rewatch and review. Late last year we started doing full text reviews here for movies seen in theaters, but a shorter review still appears on Letterboxd.
We’re still looking for something like Letterboxd that does TV shows. Have a suggestion? Let us know in the comments. We post all TV show reviews here currently and a list (in progress, updated periodically) is available here: TV Series Reviews.
Theaters: April 16, 2021
Since there are movie and TV tie-in videgames, including Mortal Kombat which comes out in 2021 (and looks pretty good from the trailers), we also cover videogames here. However, there are way more videogames that have nothing to do with movies and TV shows. We wanted to use something like Letterboxd, and maybe you do too, hence this post, to track our videogaming.
Enter Backloggd. Completely FREE to use — just like Letterboxd — for all the features you need including game journals, logging, reviews, lists (!) and more. The one feature I don’t see available is any way to export the data you’ve created like Letterboxd. I’m hoping this is available somewhere, somehow (it’s not as of this writing, but is on their site roadmap wishlist here), because if you spend a bunch of time adding and tracking games you own and/or play and the site goes belly up, you should be able to export your data and take it elsewhere. To your own site, another site, whatever. Letterboxd has that feature and it remains one of the reasons we keep using it. We’re essentially future-proofed if the site decides to do something like this:
vpinball.com shut down around April 1, 2021 and it doesn’t appear to be an April Fool’s joke
Anyway, one list I’m assembling are for the AtGames Legends Ultimate (ALU) v1.1 arcade (see: Arcade and Console Videogaming Heaven – Legends Ultimate Arcade). There are 300+ licensed games included, some of which I played a long, long time ago, some played in arcades, some on various console systems through the years and most I’ve never played. Wanted to add more detail on the games discovered for the first time, played, including notes for personal strategies developed and possibly even reviews of the games I play more extensively. Not really interested in the reviews part yet, but rather just to have some place to record notes on the games played, as well as the time spent playing these games. This will help me better develop a favorites list and be able to talk about these games with others interested in buying the ALU.
For other customers of these systems, this makes it easy to explore these games in greater detail, as the systems don’t tell you very much about the games themselves. You can simply click on the titles and play, but where do you record your personal notes, strategies, gaming tips, etc? You can use tools like Excel Spreadsheets or Google Docs or, well, Backloggd. This way if you’re friends ask what videogames you’re playing, you just point them to your Backloggd page.
Backloggd doesn’t do everything it could and should yet, however.
I’ve noticed one (glaring, really) weakness for Backloggd is that it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of video pinball represented in the database. This means I won’t be able to make a list for our most recent purchase: the AtGames Legends Pinball (ALP). I’m sure there is a way like Letterboxd to add games that aren’t in the database, so I fully plan to investigate that feature in the future. They seem to use IGDB.com as a source and I do see how to add games there, so that might be the ticket. Anybody who knows more detail about this process, please feel free to educate and inform us in the comments below.
Will coverage for videogames expand at this site? Probably, yes. I see how movies and TV shows have become important properties for videogames, so it seems only natural to explore that path in greater depth. Also, playing videogames is a more active hobby than watching movies and TV. It’s healthy and good to stay more active. This doesn’t mean that movies will take a backseat to videogames, here, but it does mean the site will become a little broader. Maybe 😉
My original Letterboxd profile page a year ago on Letterboxd … for historical purposes, you know
Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/) will always have a place in my heart. Love what that site does for being able to efficiently track movies you’ve watched, rewatched and write short (or long, if you desire) reviews, sharing, and to mark if there are spoilers in your review. If you ever want to take what you’ve done with you, they have an excellent export user data function. They are good eggs in the movie-related world.
I have the app installed on my phone, but don’t use that very often. Prefer to type a review on a bigger screen — laptop, computer, even a tablet is better than a small phone screen.
Not saying I haven’t typed a short movie review on my phone (I have) but it isn’t as satisfying for me. I’m over 50 years old, my eyes suck worse every day, so smaller screens and my bigger, clumsy fingers just aren’t as functional on a phone. If you love the app experience, more power to you. Use what you like and don’t let anybody else sway you away.
Also, maybe more importantly to readers here, the use of Letterboxd prompted starting this blog. We still regularly link to our movie reviews over there and, only recently, started posting full text new movie in theater reviews here. Someday, we will post all movie reviews here, but for now, just our TV reviews and movies in theaters are posted here first and in full text. The vast majority of reviews here are spoiler-free, but some do include spoilers and warnings are provided so readers don’t go in and find something ruined.
The title of this post aside, which appears like I’m going to bag on them — and I am, a little bit but it’s meant as constructive criticism and to help them get and retain more people paying them something — I still adore Letterboxd and maybe always will, unless they just ruin the user experience. Sadly, that’s happened with some sites I’ve loved in the past.
It’s a great service and the site needs to make money to stay afloat. I have been supporting them by purchasing a pro subscription ($19/year). It’s a small price to pay for their service. We can, do and will support sites we enjoy using.
Recently our “Pro” subscription for Letterboxd expired and I went to review the service for renewal. I don’t usually save any credit cards used on sites and change the cards regularly, so most sites can’t just auto-renew yearly subscriptions (I know they like to because this is easy money), this means these subscriptions will lapse and then we have to go and decide if we want to support/buy again.
I like to see what it’s like being a free member to a website that I use, how things have changed in the past year. Sometimes the way a site has changed for free members will alter my decision to renew. That’s not going to be the case for Letterboxd this year, but I have to point out the website is uglier and less usable if you aren’t a paid member. (duh?)
About 30% of the screen real estate is ads for free members, a side video and a footer banner ad
The Ultimate Sin – Ads on Pay To Join Pages
I went to their join page and even that was loaded with ads. Hint: remove ads from your pay to upgrade pages! These are potential or returning customers, why on earth would you want to have the join/pay page be cluttered with ads?! Drop those badboys post haste.
If you can’t criticize something you like, what’s the point? Don’t put ads on join/pay pages never, ever, ever, ever.
This is constructive criticism and maybe nobody at Letterboxd sees this, but if they do, turn off the ads on your web pay/join page ASAP. It’s one line of code to block a single page from displaying ads, so use it. You don’t ever want ads on your pay to support/join pages. This is a potential customer or, in my case, a returning customer. Don’t push me away from this page, wallet in hand, and instead prompt me to screenshot, write about it and say, “Guess maybe I’ll come back later and buy, because I can’t even see the button to pay.”
Parting with hard-earned money is already a challenge. Don’t add to the internal strife.
I don’t remember there being so many ads on Letterboxd a year ago. Maybe there were, and missed them. The before and after effect for usability and ad intrusion is noticeable and intentional. It’s about 30% of the screen and there aren’t popups or other even more obnoxious ads, but suffice to say, I’m not clicking any of them. I don’t click like 99.5% of all ads that appear anywhere. They don’t work on this hardened netizen, sorry.
Usually, that’s the point, make the ads abusive and intolerable so people want to pay the subscription fee to get rid of the ads. I understand this marketing strategy, but there are other ones like Wikipedia uses a couple times a year, go on an advertising drive.
You earn our business and support by being something we enjoy using, reading, visiting regularly
There is an app we use for pictures called Pic Stitch. You can see pictures we use here for that because they allow easy creation of picture layouts like comic strips on your phone. That app has ads that play before you can save the image and it costs like $3.99 one time to get rid of them forever. I paid because the app was something we regularly use. The practice of ad intrusion to drive paying to remove ads works or nobody would ever do it. I’m not saying it’s a practice that doesn’t have merit, I’m saying it isn’t without consequences. Sometimes, in some places it hurts adoption and continued support.
End users can and do utilize ad blocker scripts in their browsers, but site owners who rely on paid subscriptions and donations to keep the virtual lights on really don’t like these. I’m not going to get into the debate about whether using ad blockers is a good idea for end users, but everybody knows they exist and many like using them.
Suffice to say, Letterboxd isn’t among the worse sites out there for ad intrusion (pretty much any major news site is worse), but it seems uglier than it was a year ago. Maybe it’s no more intrusive in 2020 than it was in 2019, but I don’t remember it this way. These are hard times, and money is tight everywhere, so I don’t blame them for being more aggressive with ads, but the condition reduces my interest in visiting their site.
This is the side of things that website owners sometimes forget: you can drive away influencers, passionate users by trying to over-advertise to them. Maybe some would love to pay you, but don’t have the money to do so (that’s not our case, but is most certainly applies to a percentage of your visitors). Some of your most ardent fans might support you when times are good, but be turned off when you make your site less usable. Just don’t forget about them. Make some way that the most engaged visitors at your site can be rewarded without paying.
Just to be clear, I support monetizing websites. The comments area below shouldn’t devolve into a debate over monetize vs. not monetize and the whole bogus “the internet should be free.” Bandwidth isn’t free to somebody (even free hosted sites have owners paying a bandwidth bill), time is valuable, we all have to eat. People deserve to be paid for their hard work and effort.
Anyway, I did a search on Google for Letterboxd to see what others are saying about Letterboxd more recently. This is one way to keep grounded about sites and services we like that change as they grow in popularity, users and site expenses.
Right at the beginning of Chicago’s stay-at-home order at the start of April, I downloaded Letterboxd. “The social network for film lovers,” Letterboxd is any movie geek’s fantasy. It’s even better than Instagram. The app allows you to search up anything related to a movie (actor, director, genre, so on), compile lists and interact with the film community.
This blogger is using the Letterboxd app more than the website. I went back to the app and tried to see how that differed from the website experience while I’m temporarily a free member.
Happy to report that the Letterboxd app experience is much better for free users. I mean the ads seen there are embedded between text and much more graceful. It’s a vastly better app experience. I wish the web experience looked like this. Maybe they don’t want us old, sight-impaired folks using the web, they want us to use the app?
Letterboxd UI much cleaner for FREE users in September 2020
Moral to this story: FREE users should use the app. Those that use it a lot and can support, the Pro upgrade, it is well worth the $19/year. If you really love the site and it’s in the budget then throw down the 49 bones for patron status for a year. According to the text, that also opens up for some beta testing and first look features that the Pro subscribers don’t even get to see.
BTW, the purchase screens through the app to upgrade do not have ads. I liked this so much that I went ahead and renewed the patron level for $49+ tax.
For some time I’ve been looking for something to track TV watching like Letterboxd does for movies. After using TV Time for a couple months, this feels like one of the better options available at this time. If anybody reading wants to recommend another, perhaps better option, please let me know in the comments.
The price is right: free. The site isn’t invaded by ads. In fact, I didn’t see any ads anywhere. That’s my kind of clean user experience.
One complaint. I don’t see an easy or intuitive way in the app or on the website to link to my individual TV series reviews (share links are available inside the app, so that’s probably one way to create the link, but I don’t want to share a link to a social media service every time, just to get a link), nor is there any way (that I see) to export my activity on this site, which is problematic for me using as a permanent source for reviews. Therefore, I’m going to continue to post TV series reviews here and use it primarily for tracking what’s been watched. TV Time is, however, very good as a watchlist tracker.
“There’s an incredible amount of quality TV being made today — some of the budgets are insane — and because all these different platforms are doing it, it becomes more confusing for the consumer to find out where to watch, to remember where they left off, and to remember when the premiere is,” says TV Time COO Dan Brian. “It’s hard to wrangle it all.”
Some other things I’ve learned about TV Time. When you want to skip around and watch different episodes, click on the TV series title in the app and that will take you to the overall summary of the show. I don’t rewatch TV series episodes in order. Instead, I’ll rewatch my favorite episodes, jumping all around in between seasons. For example, when Star Trek: Picard was on recently, I went back into TNG and watched relevant episodes with Data and Bruce Maddox.
It is possible to track what you’ve watched this way in TV Time although the app by default displays the newest next episode, so if you watch something from season 5, it will show you the next episode following the season 5 episode you last watched. At first, this puzzled me, but it makes sense when you’re watching a series for the first time and you would want to see the next episode. Just keep in mind, you aren’t restricted to watch a TV series this way. Just click the title of the TV show and you’ll always return to the home which displays all seasons in the series. From there you can quickly find the episode you want.
As for movies, TV Time is just … OK. It isn’t nearly as useful either statistically or functionally as Letterboxd. I wasn’t looking for a Letterboxd replacement, anyway, especially when the name of the app has “TV” in it, but you can track, rate and review movies.
Following people on TV Time is not intuitive at all. You need to drill down on comments and look at the person and then click follow. It’s almost like following other people inside TV Time is an afterthought. What I’ve been doing is following those who leave great comments on TV shows I like a lot (Harley Quinn!).
Commenting in TV Time is a neat experience. You can leave memes and in some shows pick actual screenshots to include. Of course you can include your own screencaps from shows. I’ve found the phone apps Pic Stitch and Over useful for editing pictures (stitching multiple pictures together and adding formatted text).
Both apps are free and if you want to pay for additional features offer a pro version. I made the stitched picture above for Stargirl using both phone apps.
Speaking of Letterboxd, on 5/23/2020 I passed the four digit followers milestone.
Thank you to those following my movie reviews, it’s much appreciated. A friendly reminder to newer readers: all new and old movie reviews are posted to my Letterboxd account first. Maybe it won’t always be that way, but really dig using this site. It lets you export all of your activity any time you want, which is cool. If only it did TV shows too … alas, it’s only movies. TV Time scratches the TV itch, I guess. Not as well, but it comes close enough for now.
TV Time, again, as far as I can tell (corrections welcome in the comments), does not provide any sort of export function for your activity. If you’re looking at spending any amount of time creating content at another site, keep in mind that if the site/service goes away, you won’t have it any more without export functionality. Having your own blog at least provides a way to pull all content you’ve created together in one place.
I’m open to options that have both movie and TV review functionality as well as provide full export at any time (you should always own your own created content). I haven’t found any site or service which nails this for both … yet. Have you? Open to suggestions in the comments area, please. Will keep looking…
It’s no surprise we’re Letterboxd fans. This blog’s creation was because I wanted to do more than the Letterboxd site allowed to do. Started using it to keep track of how many movies we are watching on the various streaming platforms and in the movie theater so that evaluating if we’re “getting our money’s worth” out of the service is being realized.
As of 11/23/2019, my Letterboxd home page
As a movie diary, review and list (memes!) site, it’s fantastic. All our movie reviews are logged and diaried there first and many become linked here as part of a greater discussion.
More and more film writers are using us as—at a minimum—a diary, to ensure they’ve logged the day and date they saw each film. We love the critics who choose to share their first impressions on Letterboxd and we’re noticing more and more of them see Letterboxd as a way to build their brands and bring readers to their host sites. We’re cool with that. What we’re really cool with is the growing number of filmmakers who are using Letterboxd to log their watches and thoughts. Because filmmakers are film lovers first and foremost, and we bill ourselves as the social network for film lovers.
Movies, Movies, Movies 