Sunday, July 27, 2008

Twin Cities Film Calendar

First the disclaimer: this is very much a work in progress. The limitations are frustrating, but I have the best intentions of providing something much more user friendly, nicer to look at and with more information. Until then, welcome to the Twin Cities Film Calendar.

There are two components to the calender: Film events (one-time, or short run screenings) and Film openings (openings specific to the Twin Cities). Each of these 'collections' within the calendar are separate and you will either have to subscribe to each one or follow the separate links to view. The calendar is hosted by Chandler, an open source "Note-to-Self Organizer." I would agree that it is not the best design and is limiting for what I would like to do, but I chose this option that more people would have access to than something like iCal.

Once you follow the link to either Film events or Film openings, you have the options of looking at the items either in a list form or calendar form (two buttons at the top, just to the left of the sidebar.) The calendar is presented in a weekly view. (If you don't see any film events, be sure to scroll down to evening hours.) You can search to a specific date in the sidebar or navigate by week with the arrows at the top right hand side of the screen. When you click on an event or tile, more info comes up in the right sidebar. You can subscribe with Chandler Desktop (available for free at Chandler), iCal, Feed Reader or CalDAV. All of these options show up in the left sidebar. I have not tried any of these options, so let me know how they work!

Obviously the biggest component to this is the information. If you know of something going on, please let me know either by e-mailing me or replying to this post. I will do my best to keep the information up to date and correct, but I would also ask for your help if you notice any errors.
The Twin Cities Film Calendar icon will permanently be in the sidebar of my blog. I will put links to both the Film events and Film openings, but the icon will always link to the Film events.

Please let me know what you think.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is great... thanks for doing this!

The interface could be prettier, but it gets the job done, plus it looks like it has subscription options for iCal, Google, etc., if one prefers that.

You should let the various local film blogs (Walker, MNFilmTV blog, Movie Natters, etc.) know about this so word gets around.

Thanks again!

Kathie Smith said...

Thanks for the comment! I want to have it online for a bit and get more comments before I start promoting it too much.

Just want to note a change in listings:

In the case of short runs with repeat screenings, I have included the first screening in the calendar and times and dates for repeat screenings in the notes. This seems a little more practical in the case of the War Movies at the Parkway, the Bollywood movies at Brookdale, and the Cinema of Urgency at the Walker. Repeat screenings was muckin' up the calendar.