MovieFilter: Syndicated review service

July 22, 2007 4:21 PM

Is there a site/service that I can buy (well written) movie reviews from?

A company I am doing some consultancy work for are looking to add value to their web presence by adding movie reviews to one of their sites.
They don't (as yet) have the budget to employ someone to write for them but they would like to syndicate reviews from a 3rd party in the interim.

Anyone familiar with such a service or system? Thanks in advance.

posted by ReiToei to media & arts (6 comments total)

There's a difference between "buying" and "licensing". Are you looking for exclusive rights?

And if you just do RSS syndication, you may not even have to pay anyone or ask for permission. For instance, you could use James Berardinelli's RSS feed.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:38 PM on July 22, 2007

No, they wouldn't be looking for exclusive rights, though they would like to present the content as their own. Licensing is probably the better term to use in this context.
posted by ReiToei at 5:48 PM on July 22, 2007

Would you client's web presence benefit from soliciting reviews from readers? You could start with a small seed of reviews, and encourage site users to submit their own, with certain requirements as needed. Although the process of culling the entries could be costly and tedious, depending on your audience.

Otherwise, you could beg/borrow/license reviews from established movie-review bloggers, singly or on some kind of rotation. By "Presenting" a rotating cast of reviewers, I think your client could create a facade that would be almost as good as taking direct credit.

These are my suggestions because I can't answer your question directly.
posted by chudmonkey at 6:22 PM on July 22, 2007

We used to license the AP Wire; they may have a movie review selection for you. Not sure if it qualifies as "well written", though.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:25 PM on July 22, 2007

How about Rotten Tomatoes?
posted by Neiltupper at 9:45 PM on July 22, 2007

That looks promising, Neiltupper. Thanks :)
posted by ReiToei at 6:40 AM on July 23, 2007