Quickly making watch posts on my website

I was reading about how Cathie LeBlanc sometimes felt overwhelmed about logging the movies she’d recently seen:

I have to be better about posting my movie “reviews” more quickly. I get overwhelmed thinking that I need to write something about the movie when really the whole point of me doing these reviews is just to record what movies I’ve seen. So this month, I’m writing very little about each of these viewings.

I always had this problem too and finding quick and easy ways of posting them before I forgot became part of the solution. I’m not sure I’ve fully documented what I’ve been doing, but it’s slowly changed over time, so I thought I’d take a moment to write down some of the faster methods I use or have used.

One can always use the WordPress mobile posting app, bookmarklets in conjunction with Post Kinds, or even posting via email, but it usually takes a few minutes and can distract from conversations and family/friends when they’re around. Generally I’m looking to immediately capture the title of the film/tv show, the date/time stamp, and maybe the location. Later on, when I’ve got a few extra minutes, I’ll come back and optionally add details/context like poster art, cast, crew, etc. and a mini review with a rating. The method you use will depend on what kind of display you want and how much detail you’d like. At the end of the day, do what works best for you.

Checkin Method

I’m a relatively avid user of the Swarm app (fka Foursquare), so I’ll often take a photo of the movie poster, ticket, theater/other while I’m at the theater and then quickly checkin on my phone. Swarm typically has some interface to indicate which movie I’m seeing when I check into movie theaters. Otherwise it’s pretty easy to manually type things in while I’m waiting for the show to start. Once the movie is over I can discretely can go back to the checkin and add a few quick comments and a rating without disturbing the rest of the party, otherwise I’ll revisit it later.

To get this all on my website I’ve set up the Micropub plugin and configured OwnYourSwarm (for public/private posting–you choose), and the service takes care of posting all the data for me as a checkin so that I don’t forget. In the end it’s usually less than 10 seconds, and I’ve got the data I need as it happens.

Traditional PESOS watch method using IFTTT

This alternate PESOS method can be done using popular services like IMDb.com or Letterboxd.com and relies on using RSS feeds from them to pipe content to my site using IFTTT.com. (Other silo services may be able to do this as well.) Most often I send the URLs of movies/tv shows of what I watch from IMDb to my Reading.am account which has an RSS feed to trigger IFTTT.com that, in turn, creates a draft post on my website. (If only IMDB.com had a usable RSS feed, I could skip the Reading.am account. Typically I’ll search for the movie on IMDb, share that from my browser to may email client and email it to a custom Reading.am email address that autoposts it to my Reading.am account.) Later I can peek in on it, add a mini-review and rating if I like, and publish publicly or not. Letterboxd can be used similarly, but it has the added benefit of having a rating system built in so it can send that data as well.

Hopefully they’ll resolve with a logged in account, so here are the two IFTTT.com recipes I’m using as reference:

(If you can’t access the recipes to recreate your own, let me know, and I’ll manually delineate all the relevant settings.)

Both methods will work without it, but I’m also using the Post Kinds plugin to create explicit watch posts which have a nice contextual presentation which I kind of like. It also has the ability to parse URLs to create the context quickly, so if you put in an IMDb or Letterboxd URL, it will fetch artwork, cast, description, etc. automatically and there’s no need to cut/paste.

Examples

To get some idea, here are some interesting examples of these methods.

If others have better/faster methods, I’d love to hear them or see them documented. Perhaps one day someone (or maybe even IMDb or Letterboxd) will build a custom Micropub client specifically for watch posts (something akin to Teacup for food/drink or Indiebookclub for reading) that will automatically poll the data related to a film/television title and post it to one’s site?

🎞 The Circle (2017)

Watched The Circle (2017) from STX Entertainment
Directed by James Ponsoldt. With Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane.
A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company called the Circle, only to uncover an agenda that will affect the lives of all of humanity.
Even more interesting to watch this after the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. It was sad to see the simplistic surface level only analysis of ideas in the film though.

Watched via Amazon Prime on big screen television through Amazon Fire Stick.

Rating: 

🎞 The Wizard of Oz (1939) – ★★★★

Watched The Wizard of Oz (1939) from MGM
Directed by Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy. With Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr.

Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home in Kansas and help her friends as well.
Haven’t seen this in years. Much more surreal than I remember, especially in HD on a big screen instead of an old TV set. I don’t think I’ve seen this since college sometime, and before that when CBS ran it annually before Turner bought it.

Watched via Amazon Prime (recently released there) on 40″ large screen television streamed through Amazon Fire Stick

Rating:

🎞 Silk (2007)

Watched Silk (2007) from Picturehouse
Directed by François Girard. With Michael Pitt, Keira Knightley, Kôji Yakusho, Sei Ashina.

The story of a married silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler in 19th century France traveling to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply. During his stay in Japan, he becomes obsessed with the concubine of a local baron.
It’s taken me 4 tries over nearly 8 months, but I’ve finally finished this. I worried about its almost painfully slow pace, but the gut punch in the final act was amazing.

Watched on widescreen television via DirecTV and cable.

Rating:

🎞 Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)

Watched Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) from Universal Pictures
Directed by Hal Needham. With Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Dom DeLuise.

The Bandit goes on another cross-country run, transporting an elephant from Florida to Texas. And, once again, Sheriff Buford T. Justice is on his tail.
Not as good as the first, but stupidly entertaining all the way through. An interesting viewpoint into popular culture of the time certainly.

I’ve taken about 3 sittings to manage to get through this. Watched on DirecTV via cable.

Rating: