I can’t believe this new IMDB feature slipped by me. If you’re reading this blog, then I assume you have at least an inkling of an idea of what IMDB is. If not, it’s the Internet Movie DataBase and contains info about movies, actors, directors, producers, etc. Pretty handy, if you want to know everything about movies and tv as I do.

IMDB has two main cornerstones: Name pages, for all the people (actors, producers, etc) and Title pages for, ehm, all the titles (movies, tv-series, videogames, etc). Last week they added a new type of page to the mix: Character pages. Every character from a movie or tv-series or video game can have their own page including biography, quotes and appearances. The IMDB staff have already created 20000 character pages of the most well-known characters, but the idea is that users can add and edit pages.

This feature starts to get interesting when considering characters that appear in multiple series/movies or have been played by different people. For instance, did you know that Ursula Buffay, the sister of Phoebe in Friends first appeared in Mad About You? Or that Jack Ryan, a main character in books of Tom Clancy, has been portayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck?

Sadly, I have noticed some problems with this new feature. Because the content is user generated, you only need one lazy user to create a new page for someone who already exists. IMDB gives a nice disclaimer:

The content of this page was created by users. It has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff.

But does this mean that there are also pages that are screened and verified? I’ve already stumbled on multiple pages for one person (King Arthur) and I wonder how IMDB will deal with this.

It’s an interesting new feature and it gives IMDB that extra dimension to create an even more complex network. If you’re looking to procrastinate, you can easily spend some time just clicking from one page to another. Don’t look at me like that; I never do that !

By now you might have heard that JJ Abrams, the “mastermind” (/me rolls eyes) behind Alias, Lost and MI:3, is working on a remake of Star Trek and by now you might have realised that I don’t particularly like JJ Abrams. Yes, he does a pretty good job in creating interesting series (Alias, Lost), but his status as “mastermind” has launched a fervent following, blindly going to anything JJ has created (even though it sucks), and causing JJ to think he can do anything, which he can’t (MI:3 was okay, but not great). Instead of sticking with his creations, after a while he seems to get bored with them and jumps to another project, while those creations completely go under the moment he leaves.

Okay, so I’m not that big of a JJ Abrams fan, but the casting of Star Trek has got me more and more intrigued. First, it was reported a couple of months ago that Zachary Quinto (serial-killer power stealing Sylar in Heroes) would play Spock, but that Leonard Nimoy would aslo be coming back for that role. A couple weeks later Anton Yelchin was cast as the Russian Chekhov. Then it was announced that Zoe Saldana would play Uhura. Since then it remained remarkably silent, until two days ago. It was then revealed that Chris Pine would fill the gigantic shoes of William Shatner, taking on the role of Captain Kirk.

Apart from the Zachary Quinto casting, most of that news just left me cold (I don’t even know those actors). But looking at the pictures I understand why they where cast; all of them seem to have that same air as their predecessors.

Now with this next little bit of casting news that I heard this morning, my interest has really piqued: Simon Pegg has been cast as Scotty. Hmm, interesting and potentially brilliant. The thought of casting Pegg (Shaun of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) hadn’t even crossed my mind and I find it surprising that they even considered this. Wait a minute, I just realized I forgot Pegg was in MI:3, which (drumroll please!)… was directed by JJ Abrams. Okay, now the casting makes a bit more sense.

I’m still not sure how this movie is going to turn out, but casting-wise it’s seems on the right track. I’m hoping it’s not going to be the complete disaster my mind thinks it’s going to be. [Via FirstShowing and AICN]

Update: AICN just reported that John Cho from Harold and Kumar, Kitchen Confidential of Off Centre has been cast as Mr Sulu. I loved him in Kitchen Confidential!