What are the best Web sites for film fans?

Someone's been talking about me, obviously, because I am indeed quite a fan of the movie industry and both enjoy watching movies (I estimate that I watch upwards of 200 movies/year) and tracking the movie industry itself.

You can get some sense of movie news from reading a local newspaper like the Boulder Daily Camera, as you might suspect (especially the online version, where they have more space for entertainment news from the various wire services), but really there are many sites online that are a splendid source of both celebrity and movie news.

Let's tackle celebrity gossip sites first, though I have precious little interest in the muckraking that seems to characterize that paparazzi-heavy area. One of the best places to catch up on the latest buzz is TMZ.com. You might be familiar with this group because they also have a late night TV show that lets you get all the video clips and listen to the catty comments of their staff too.

There are also sites like Entertainment Tonight's eonline.com and the E! channel's eentertainment.com, People magazine (people.com), Us magazine (usmagazine.com), etc etc. Generally any publication that offers up celebrity gossip likely has a far more informative Web site, because there's no delay of printing and distribution to slow down the latest rumor about Tom Cruise, Madonna, Heath Ledger or Angelina Jolie.

Okay? So we have the gossip side covered, right? Good.

Now, to follow the business of movies, your best bet is to check out the Variety Web site (Variety.com) as it's the Bible of the industry, and the venerable Hollywood Reporter (hollywoodreporter.com). Those are the publications that people in the industry read closely and they get a lot of good scoops on what's in production, which studios are signing good deals, box office ticket sales results, etc. I find both of them very engaging reading.

Another site that deserves an honorable mention here is the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), which is an Amazon.com property that has a massive database of everyone in the movie and TV industry and makes it fun and easy to see connections between cast and crew, upcoming films, and much more. It's not so exciting visually, but if you, like me, are a film buff, it's an essential reference site.

(If you're into music rather than film, by the way, check out Gracenote, a Sony company, at gracenote.com. It's just as informative, but focused on music and musicians, allowing you to finally answer questions like "how many covers of Louie Louie have been recorded?")

There are a lot of film bloggers too, some of whom write about the film industry, or a specific genre in the industry, while others just have their own film review journals. I don't follow many of these but will say that using Google to search for something like "film blog" or "film review blog" will net you thousands of possibilities.

If you are looking for reviews beyond the Daily Camera, there's no better place to check than with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times who has a deep and rich site at rogerebert.com. Other major publications have great reviewers too, notably Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal and the review team at the New York Times. I miss Pauline Kael from the New Yorker, but, alas, she passed away a few years ago. She was a splendid reviewer and made that publication worth buying.

Just about all movies released nowadays have their own Web sites too, but my experience is that few of them are worth any attention and none of them are designed to be long-term references: Once a film is released the site generally is ignored and languishes, eventually being just another historical artifact of a notoriously myopic industry.

Finally, if you're involved in the short-burst world of Twitter, I'll add a small plug that I have a movie news and commentary Twitter stream of my own which you can join by going to @FilmBuzz.

Oh, that wasn't quite "finally", actually, because you asked if I've ever written any film reviews for the Daily Camera. The answer is no, I haven't. Since I'm likely to compare a modern release to some obscure early work by Akira Kurosawa and examine the implications of the POV in a particular shot, or even talk about the oeuvre of Sergei Eisenstein or D.W. Griffith, I'm guessing that it's probably not a good fit with the paper's readership. :-)

Do you have a favorite movie site, either one you run yourself or one you just like reading? Add a note so everyone else can enjoy it too!