AnyClip Can't Be Stumped

email this story
read comments (38)
post a comment

Yesterday I visited the midtown Manhattan office of AnyClip, a soon-to-launch movie clip-finding site that locates and plays clips (plus dialogue transcripts plus the usual data) from almost any film ever made in the history of human endeavor using only anecdotal or fragmentary information. It's the smartest film- or dialogue-finding site I've ever surfed in my life, bar none.

The AnyClip team (l. to r. rear): Aaron "Chris" Cohen, Aaron Morris Cohen, Nate Westheimer, Matt Lehrer; (l. to r. front) Aaron Fisher Cohen, Gabi Mereilles.

It'll be up and rolling on March 15th (i.e., Monday morning), concurrent with a visit by the AnyClip team to South by Southwest this weekend and early next week.

With any luck or pluck AnyClip will soon be a major go-to site for film buffs of any stripe, right up there with IMDB and Amazon and Wikipedia, because it's propelled by what may be the most brilliantly designed movie-and-dialogue-locating software ever coded or created.

I'm not exaggerating -- this site can find any friggin' movie under the sun using any sort of incomplete or half-assed information. Title, stars, costars, dps, directors, whatever...but most impressively, dialogue fragments. And when it strikes paydirt it brings up corresponding clips and pages of dialogue plus rental/purchase links.

I tried to stump the software several times during my chat with co-founders Aaron Cohen and Nate Westheimer, and I beat it only once when the system couldn't recognize a line from East of Eden. But that'll soon be taken care of. I forget how many films they've stored and referenced so far, but we're talking thousands upon thousands. The tech team began with broadly popular titles and movie stars, etc., and are working their way through less well-known, more esoteric fare as we speak.

The technological base of AnyClip is located in Israel, and the whiz-kid software designer is a guy named Maor Gillerman, who wrote this morning in an e-mail that he's "an avid reader of Hollywood Elsewhere since Mr. Wells' dissection of the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men two years ago."

The idea behind AnyClip is to engage casual viewers who are curious about this or that film (or who are looking to investigate a flick they vaguely remember in terms of a line of dialogue or a character or an actor, but can't recall the title of) and prompt them to go to NetFlix or Amazon and rent/purchase. That or just surf around on this site for hours and waste your entire day.

It's the same subtle suggestion technique I've personally succumbed to dozens of times while browsing at West LA's DVD/Laser Blazer -- i.e., deciding to rent or buy Groundhog Day or Out of the Past on the spur of the moment because it'll be playing on the store monitors, and watching a certain scene or hearing a piece of dialogue puts me in the mood.

I'm not entirely up to snuff on all the search terms and devices, but I know you can find movies with almost any dialogue ever mouthed by any actor since the days of Lewis Milestone and Howard Hawks. And not just the generic, well-known quotes from famous films ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn") but just about any line at all, or even a fraction of one.

AnyClip.com co-founders Aaron Cohen and Nate Westheimer with a poster composed of AnyClip search terms from The Howards of Virginia....kidding!

I told Westheimer to type in "what can a man do with his clothes off for 20 minutes?" and wham, AnyClip found it in four seconds -- i.e., the Chicago hotel-room scene between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. It also found every film in the history of the universe that has used that line, or a portion of it. It covers the entire waterfront with every search.

There's a minor line that Groucho Marx says to a steward in Night of the Opera -- "Hey, turn off the juice before I get electrocuted!" AnyClip found A Night at the Opera like that, and a clip from that particular scene plus other films and scenes that used the words "juice" and "electrocuted" -- it's really amazing.

I could go on and on and on, but that's the gist of it. Oh, yeah, there's a Blu-ray searching software that they've also come up with in which you can search a Bluray you're watching using this and that term. I didn't respond as strongly to this as the dialogue-search thing, but fine, cool, good to go.

And just to reiterate: there are three AnyClip guys named Aaron Cohen -- bossman Aaron Morris Cohen plus Aaron "Chris" Cohen and Aaron Fisher Cohen. Here's a video about the army of Aaron Cohens that inhabit the greater New York City area or the tri-state area or whatever.

They Sat For This?<< previous | next >>Does Anyone Want Dury/Serkis?

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on March 12, 2010 at 6:32 AM

comment #1

Josh Massey says ...

Great post. Gotta say your enthusiasm for this is pretty infectious.

Posted by Josh Massey at March 12, 2010 7:53 AM

comment #2

bildeaux says ...

Jeff you coming down for SXSW this year?

Posted by bildeaux at March 12, 2010 8:02 AM

comment #3

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Can't swing it -- Moises Chiullan is HE's SXSW man.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at March 12, 2010 8:07 AM

comment #4

scooterzz says ...

ditto massey....thanks for the head's up, this is very exciting.....

Posted by scooterzz at March 12, 2010 8:32 AM

comment #5

Joshua Mooney says ...

That sounds pretty cool, and possibly instantly indispensable. Thanks for the tip. I have to say, as one who's not cutting-edge technology and still sort of marvels at the miracle of "talkies," I find shit like this amazing. I recently woke up with two words in my brain: "smarm debouching." Movie dialogue? Book, song lyric, randomly recalled street-person rant, Dan Rather quote? I had no clue. I Googled it, and there it was in a tenth of a second: two words from the middle of a sentence in a book I hadn't read in 15 years. How would I have found that in the Olde Days?

Posted by Joshua Mooney at March 12, 2010 8:44 AM

comment #6

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Interesting...I followed a couple links and noticed there was a "watch the entire movie" option (I presume that would take u to your aforementioned Amazon/Neftlix), but what about the actual clips and/or search engine? Are they free, is there a subscriber fee to watch the clips, or even to search?

I hate to say it, but if this isn't free, I have a hard time seeing this really taking off. If you know how to use google -- I mean, really use it -- you can usually find the source of most movie quotes, at least with a little digging. For example, it only took me about 5 seconds to find the origin of your NxNW quote (assuming I didn't automatically recognize it, of course).

Posted by CitizenKanedforChewingGum at March 12, 2010 10:11 AM

comment #7

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

[FIXED -- thanks.]

Posted by CitizenKanedforChewingGum at March 12, 2010 10:12 AM

comment #8

Jonathan Spuij says ...

So is it a payed subscription site or not? If so I hope they offer packages for Universities and Colleges alike so that students can use it fro free. This is a possibly a hugely valuable site for journalists, film students and movie buffs alike. Eagerly awaiting the launch.

Posted by Jonathan Spuij at March 12, 2010 3:01 PM

comment #9

thasos says ...

How's this even legal?

Posted by thasos at March 13, 2010 1:06 AM

comment #10

ms office 2007 says ...

The best software online shop: http://www.softwares-supplier.com/
ms office 2007,only $110!
Windows 7 only $139! No Tax and Free Shipping!
Office 2007 Pro
Office 2007 Ultimate
ms office 2007 pro
ms office 2007 Ultimate
Windows 7 Pro
Windows 7 Ultimate
office pro 2007
office ultimate 2007
Acrobat 9.0
Adobe Acrobat 9.0
Adobe Acrobat 9.0 extended
Flash CS4
Illustrator CS4
Photoshop cs4
Master cs3
Dreamweaver cs3
windows vista ultimate
Windows Vista Business

Posted by ms office 2007 at March 13, 2010 11:58 PM

comment #11

doublexjohn says ...

for four hours, bored out of his skull, all for the chance to get up on stage and have at most forty-five seconds to say a bunch of stuff that will likely be forgotten by everyone ten minutes later. identity theft service

Posted by doublexjohn at April 27, 2010 9:04 AM

comment #12

doublexjohn says ...

I will come back to read some more.ecommerce service

Posted by doublexjohn at April 29, 2010 1:40 AM

comment #13

emogurl12 says ...

I think the movie's better without the cancer diagnosis angle. It actually makes Bingham more compelling -- he's not reaching out because he knows it's his last chance; he's reaching out because he can't quite figure out what to do to make himself right.
online fax

Posted by emogurl12 at May 16, 2010 8:21 AM

comment #14

jack444 says ...

Interestingly, many of them don't wear their evil on their sleeves. In fact, some of them will occasionally show no outward signs of hatred or narrow-mindedness. Fortunately I've learned to be able to see through the phony smiles and insincere platitudes they often try to fool so many with. identity theft protection

Posted by jack444 at May 31, 2010 8:33 AM

comment #15

penchenk87 says ...

Blogger Indonesia Internet support safe, healthy & benefits. The Internet is an information network and global (world). Shadows, a million benefit we can get only with the ability and willingness to use the Internet. For example, with colleagues dipenjuru berkorespodensi world use "super-express mail" (email). We are also able to freely obtain data for a school assignment, reading national and international news.
more visit: Blogger Indonesia dukung internet aman, sehat & manfaat | Ingat Solo Ingat Soloaja.com

Posted by penchenk87 at June 28, 2010 5:27 PM

comment #16