Flickchart Addicts Anonymous

This post originally appeared on The ViewLondon Blog (affectionately known as The Blog No-one Reads) back in August, 2009.

Damn you, the internets! As a result of spending an awful lot of time on Twitter (currently following 863 people, which is maybe a few too many), I discovered a website called Flickchart (www.flickchart.com) that has quickly become my new internet obsession. Unfortunately it's also addictive as hell and has become a massive time-suck. Argh. 

The concept is simplicity itself – the site puts up a choice of two movies and asks you to pick the one you think is the best. After a few minutes you have a top 20, but if you've only been offered mediocre or rubbish films by that point, your top 20 might include, say, Big Momma's House, simply because you thought it was better than Big Momma's House 2, so you keep going until your Top 20 includes films you can actually be proud of. Similarly, my current number one film is Magnolia, simply because I haven't yet had to rank it against my actual number one film, Vertigo (currently at number 2). 

As of the time of writing, I have now ranked 4638 films and my list contains 1949 movies. The site also helpfully informs me that I have spent 139 days, 18 hours and 30 minutes watching movies. However, the fascinating thing about the site (apart from the despair-inducing moments where you have to choose between two much-loved favourites, e.g. Fight Club vs Goodfellas) is that you discover all sorts of films that you didn't realise you loved as much as you actually do. In my case, that's Superman: The Movie, High Plains Drifter and When Harry Met Sally. 

My other favourite thing to do is to rank as many films as possible over The Dark Knight (not because I don't like The Dark Knight – I do – but because I don't think it deserves Best Film Ever status). Anyway, it was recently knocked off the number one spot on Best Movies Of All Time list and I'd like to think I had a small part in that... Oh, and a word of warning: signing up to the site requires patience, as it's officially still in beta-testing mode and it can take up to 10 days or so for the invite to arrive. Savour those ten days, because once you're in, you can kiss your free time goodbye.