Anemone's Research Emporium

Research on film content




Sex doesn't sell: the database

Anemone Cerridwen
Posted April 25, 2009

When I did the original number crunching in 2007, I used 917 films (released 2001-2005) and ranked data (1 to 917). The final database (Cerridwen and Simonton) included only 914 films. One NC-17 film was excluded because it made no sense to include it when using dummy variables (but worked fine with ranked data and so is included in the charts posted here recently). Two others were removed (one by each of us) because they appeared not to be fiction films after all (I had already weeded a number of documentaries and standup comedy performances out as I went along during the first round of calculations). Also, I couldn't find an MPAA rating for one of them when I double checked (I had rated it R in the first round of calculations). If you run the numbers both ways you'll see that it doesn't really make any difference which set you use.

This database includes the final 914 films, then the three that were excluded in 2009 but included in 2007, then all the rest (documentaries, stand up comedy) that were never used but still rated at Screen It!, then finally the films for this period that grossed over $10 million or received award nominations but weren't rated by Screen It!

Additional movie critic data was added by Dean Simonton after I forwarded him the database. I don't have that data, or, rather, I have that data but my primitive spreadsheet program can't read it. If you need it you can probably get it from him.

Enjoy.

Original Appleworks 6.2.9 spreadsheet (1.4 MB)

Above spreadsheet converted to Excel (668 KB)

Note: Scroll down to see groupings before sorting.

Data sources

IMDb

Screen It! Entertainment Reviews (for the 15 content categories)

Metacritic.com

Golden Globe and SAG awards data from IMDb awards section

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscars database

Movie guide books:

  • Halliwell's: The only film guide that matters. Film, Video & DVD guide 2006. *With over 23,000 movies*. John Walker, 2005. HarperCollins, London.
  • Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, 2003 edition. Edited by Leonard Maltin. Plume, NY.
  • VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever. Jim Craddock, editor. 2006. Gale/Thomson, Farmington Hills, MI

Not all this data was used in the study. But it's in the database!

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