teachingemails

Rachel Bilson


Biography

Early life

Bilson was born in Los Angeles, California to a Jewish American father[2] (writer/director/producer Danny Bilson) and a Philadelphia-born Italian American mother,[3] Janice Stango. Her father comes from a showbusiness family, as her great-grandfather, George Bilson, was the head of the trailer department at RKO Pictures, while her great-grandmother, Hattie, was a screenwriter and her grandfather, Bruce Bilson, is a film director.[4] Bilson's parents divorced during her childhood, and in 1997, her father remarried Heather Medway, an actress and the mother of Bilson's half sister Hattie (born December 19, 2001).
Bilson has been noted as having a "self-destructive, rebellious period" during her teen years.[5] When she was sixteen, she and a group of her brother's friends[6] were involved in a car accident, a head-on collision with another car. As a result, Bilson was unconscious for a few days, had a scar above her right eye, and sometimes suffers from migraines and memory loss;[7] she has stated that the experience "changed" her,[6] encouraging her to "stop... getting into trouble"[4] and stopping her from "going down that road".[6] Bilson graduated from Walter Reed Middle School in 1996 and from Notre Dame High School in 1999. During her time at Notre Dame, she appeared in productions of Bye Bye Birdie, Once Upon a Mattress and The Crucible, and appeared on stage together with Katharine McPhee, who attended the same school and would later be a finalist on American Idol.[8]

Career

Bilson attended Grossmont College in San Diego, but dropped out after one year,[9] taking her father's advice to pursue a professional acting career[4] and making several appearances in commercials, including advertisements for Raisin Bran and Pepto-Bismol.[4] She made her screen acting debut in early 2003, appearing in episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, and in the short film, Unbroken. Bilson was subsequently cast in The O.C., which debuted in August of 2003. Her character, Summer Roberts, was initially intended to appear in only a few episodes, but became a series regular after a successful run, as Bilson's on-screen romance with Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) became a noted aspect of the series.[9]

As a result of the success of The O.C., Bilson has become well-known among teenage audiences. At the 2005 Teen Choice Awards, Bilson collected three awards - "Choice Hottie Female", "Choice TV Actress (Drama)" and "Best Onscreen TV Chemistry" (jointly won with Adam Brody).[10] In 2005, Maxim magazine named her sixth in their annual "Hot 100 List";[11] in 2006, the publication awarded her #14.[12] The UK edition of FHM Magazine named her 28th in the 2006 100 Sexiest Women in the World list,[13] while the US Edition Ranked her 77th in 2005.[14] Bilson was also named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2006 People magazine.[15]
Bilson's first film role is in the The Last Kiss, a romantic comedy/drama also starring Zach Braff and Jacinda Barrett. In the film, which opened on September 15, 2006, Bilson plays a college student who seduces Braff's character. Bilson had long wanted to work with Braff, having admired the film Garden State, which he directed and starred in.[16] A body double was used for the film's sexual scene between Bilson and Braff's characters, as Bilson specified that she "feel[s] really strong[ly]" about not appearing in a nude scene.[17] One review of the film noted that Bilson played the role with "surprising depth",[18] although another critic described her role as "Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction as an airhead valley girl with a hot bod".[19]
Bilson has stated that she prefers acting in feature films to appearing on television, and that she would like the kind of roles "that Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson are offered".[9] She has specified that though she is "grateful" for the success of The O.C.,[20] she feels that the show "is over" and that she is "ready to move on" to film roles.[21] In September of 2006, unconfirmed reports surfaced that Bilson was linked to star in a film version of the comic book character Wonder Woman;[22] Bilson has stated that these reports were untrue.[23]
On October 16 2006, news emerged that Bilson has signed on for the role of Millie in Doug Liman's upcoming thriller Jumper, as the replacement for Teresa Palmer; Bilson began filming the role soon after.[24] The film is scheduled for a February 2008 release.

Personal life

Bilson began dating her The O.C. co-star, Adam Brody, in 2003. Bilson accidentally revealed that the two where an item while on the show Punk'd which involved her claiming that her dog had another owner. After asking for the name of this other owner, she exclaimed, "Adam." Which quickly shot us back to Ashton Kutcher saying, "Well, look who's dating Adam Brody..." In 2005, Brody gave Bilson a pit bull, Penny Lane, as a birthday gift, (the same pit bull that appeared on the episode of Punk'd with Rachel.) The couple later adopted another dog, named Thurmen Murmen. In 2004, several sources reported that Brody and Bilson were engaged,[25] although Bilson's publicist denied the report.[26] In December of 2006, Brody and Bilson broke up after dating since 2003.[27]
Bilson has volunteered with the Young storytellers program. She has been recognized by several media sources as being a "fashion junkie"[28] [29][30][31] She has described herself as having a "vintage" sense of style, and noted Kate Moss and Diane Keaton as inspirations.[31] Bilson enjoys watching television game shows, especially Jeopardy!,[4] and has stated that if she were not acting, she would be a pre-school teacher.[31]
Bilson has turned down requests to appear semi-nude in magazines, specifying that she feels that her body "is sacred" and "not there for the whole world to see".[32]

TV.com

This article is about the current form of the service. For the predecessor of this website (before 2005), see TV Tome.
TV.com is a website belonging to the CNET Games and Entertainment family of websites. The service replaced the popular TV Tome website.
The site covers television and focuses on English-language shows made or broadcast in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Ireland. In addition to episode guides, it includes US-oriented news, reviews, photos, trailers and TV listings.
The site shares the same accounts as other sites within CNET Games and Entertainment. Users maintain a personal profile page and the ability to track shows. Members can contribute to the site by adding information about the latest episode details and cast members.
TV.com provides show descriptions, cast and crew listings, and detailed episode guides for many TV shows. Episode guides may include synopsis information, a complete recap, notes and trivia, quotes and more. Information is dependent on volunteer contributions so some shows, particularly more recent ones, are extremely detailed while others may have minimal information.

TV.com Commercial?
Yes
Type of site
Entertainment
Registration
Optional
Owner
CNET Networks, Inc.
Created by
CNET Networks, Inc.
Launched
June 1, 2005

Editors and Trusted Users
While much of the information is submitted by general users, most guides have Editors and sometimes Trusted Users. [1] A guide Editor has immediate control over all aspects of the guide and any changes they make to a guide they edit appear immediately. Editorship is determined by the Points system — a user becomes Editor for a show when they have at least 80 points for that show. (40 points for people) If the show / person has an existing editor, then that editor will be replaced if another user gains 80 / 40 more points than they currently have. The Show / Person editor has direct approval capability over all information submitted. Submissions are sent to their queue (if they are over Level 5), where they may choose to approve (with edits if necessary) or reject them.
The editor may also designate up to two other contributors as Trusted Users. Trusted Users also have immediate submission power, but do not handle submissions and do not have the power to edit show descriptions. It is recommended that this setting be used with care, as anyone designated as a Trusted User can much more easily gain enough points to become Editor.

Discussion

TV.com has three types of forums -- general, people-specific and show-specific -- as well as live chats.

General Forums

This forums are used for discussion that isn't related to a specific program.
TV.com ideas (Site suggestions)
Welcome New Users (Place especially designed for "newbie question" to avoid the excessive amount of topics)
User to User Help: Hints and Tips (Users post tips that may be useful to other users, particularly new ones)
TV.com General User Support
TV.com User Submission Support
About the Forums - Ask the Mods (The site Mods answer the questions posted on this board)
TV.com Technical Support Board
General TV Discussion
Off-Topic
Shows in Development
TV Show Fun & Games (if a show forum has more than four game threads, they are moved to this board)
Drama
Comedy
Science-Fiction
Reality
Animation
Soaps
News/Documentary
Talk Shows
Children
Sports
Ask the Editors
Editor's Lounge
Television Hardware
Downloading Television

Show Forums

Additionally, every show has its own forum. Some of the most popular show forums are WWE Raw, 24, Code Lyoko, Teen Titans, Danny Phantom, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xiaolin Showdown, Charmed, Grey's Anatomy, Alias, Angel, The Simpsons, Kyle XY, Lost, Smallville, Desperate Housewives, Inuyasha, and SpongeBob SquarePants. As of July 2006, TV.com added the ability for users to add polls to each thread they created.

People Forums

People forums have to be created by users. Any registered user can create a person forum by clicking on the "Create Forum" button on a particular person's profile.

Forum Moderation

According to Gislef, one of the five forum moderators, forum moderation works in two stages:
The forum users can report threads that they believe violate TV.com's forum policy, using the pulldown tool at the lower right of each thread.
These reports go to a central queue which a volunteer team of five moderators have access to, although staff can look in as well. Reports are essentially randomly assigned and the moderator who fields the case determines if the report requires action. Such action can involve doing nothing, deleting the post (which replaces it with an automated message), deleting the entire thread, locking the thread, suspending the user, or giving a full report of all violations to TV.com staff and letting them determine if a ban is necessary.
As of July 2006 the five volunteer forum moderators are AngelandSpike, Gislef, GeorgeFergus, Grailwolf, and VillaFan. TVCom_Moderator is an account used by staff and the five forum moderators. It is primarily an "automated account" used to send warnings of forum violations and notifications of suspensions.
As of early 2006 the show editors can moderate their own show forums, even if they have less power than a forum moderator. Editors can pin (make sticky), lock or delete threads without asking a mod to do it.
Forum moderators also moderate blog entries, reviews, profile and news comments.

Live Chats

In 2006, TV.com introduced live chats to the site. The chat rooms open at the same time that the program which the chat is about start, so it's a chat-and-watch experience. At April 19, 2006, four chats were held: Lost Chat, 24 Chat, Huff Chat and American Idol chat. During the week of approximately May 17-24, 2006, a "Finale Spring Fling" was held with chat rooms for many shows with finales in or just before that period. On August 27, 2006 they held a live chat for the 2006 Emmy Award ceremonies. There was another live chat for the season 3 premiere of Lost, which was held on Thursday October 5th, a day after the actual premiere.

Levels

Each user on TV.com has their own level. At the website's "Help Center", one of the "Top Questions" concerns levels.
"I just joined the site, and it won't let me submit information because I am not level 2. What does this mean?" All registered users on the site have a level attached to them. Levels are a fun and fair way to reward and identify prominent community members. All users start at level 1 and must reach level 2 to gain the ability to submit content to the site.
Not only are members at level 1 blocked from submitting info for entries regarding the television series contained in TV.com's database, but they also do not have access to post new messages or even replies to existing messages on TV.com's various message boards. This is a fairly unusual practice for internet sites with user forums. The system was put into place as a way to keep users from abusing the site by creating multiple accounts.
Since high-leveled users were complaining about the difficulty of leveling up after reaching level 50, the staff tweaked the difficulty of levels 50 and beyond in April 2006.

Blogs and profile emblems

TV.com users have the ability to write blogs on their profile page which can be read by any internet user and commented on by any registered tv.com user. Blogs are normally written daily, but this varies from user to user. Each member of tv.com also has the ability to gain emblems, which are displayed on their profile page. They include emblems's for; over fifteen reviews, over 500 message board posts, 50 blog entries, different emblems for participating in live chat's, different emblems for Emblem's for 1, 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and 50,000 contributions and level emblems.

Criticisms

Since the transition from TV Tome the site has received a lot of criticism, particularly from old TV Tome members. However, many newer members have complained too. The most common criticisms are:
TV.com has a lot of advertisements, which interferes with navigation and slows down the site.
The graphics of the site slow it down, taking up to one minute for the site to load when using slower dial-up connections.
The moderation of contributions for guides without an editor can take days and can be rejected without an explanation as to why it was rejected
Forum moderators can, at times, be strict in their moderation process.
Approval and denial of shows can take up to months.
The site has a lot of mechanical bugs, some of which can disable the usage of the site for short periods.

Internet Movie Database

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about motion pictures, actors, movie stars, TV shows, TV stars, production crew personnel, as well as video games.
IMDb began October 17, 1990. In 1998, it was bought by Amazon.com. As of December 8, 2006, the site featured 889,844 titles and 2,283,287 people. [1]

Commercial?
Yes
Type of site
Online movie, TV, and video game database
Available language(s):
English
Owner
Amazon.com
Created by
Col Needham
Launched
October 17, 1990
Current status
Active

Overview
The IMDb website consists of the largest known accumulation of data about films, television programs, direct-to-video products, and video games reaching back to each medium's respective beginning, and spanning content of origin from around the world. In many cases, the information goes beyond simple title or press credits to include complete cast and crew credits, uncredited personnel, production and distribution companies, plot summaries, memorable quotes, awards, reviews, box office performance, filming locations, technical specs, promotional content, trivia, and links to official and other websites. Furthermore, the IMDb tracks titles in production, and even major, announced projects still in development. The database also houses filmographies for all persons, cast and crew, identified in listed titles. Filmographies include biographical details, awards listings, external links, and information about other professional work not covered by title entries in the database such as theatrical and commercial advertising appearances. The IMDb also offers ancillary material such as daily movie and TV news, weekly box office reports, TV listings, cinema showtimes, user polls and ratings, and special features about various movie events such as the Academy Awards. The website also has an active message board system. There are message boards for each database entry, found at the bottom each respective page, as well as general discussion boards on various topics.
The IMDb is a free site, which requires only registration to access its complete range of data and activities. Any person with an e-mail account and a web browser that accepts cookies can set up an account with IMDb that allows them to submit information and engage in other site activities. Site visitors wishing only to view information without accessing interactive features can do so without registration. Database content is largely provided and updated by a cadre of volunteer contributors; only 17 members of the IMDb staff are dedicated to monitoring received data.[2] For automated queries, most of the database can be downloaded as compressed plain text files and the information can be extracted using the tools provided, typically using a command line interface. [3]
In 2002, the IMDb spun off a private, subscription-funded site, IMDbPro, offering the entire content of the database plus additional information for business professionals, such as personnel contact details, movie event calendars, and a greater range of industry news.

History

In rec.arts.movies

The database originated from two lists started as independent projects in early 1989 by participants in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies. In each case, a single maintainer recorded items emailed by newsgroup readers, and posted updated versions of his list from time to time. Google Groups coverage of rec.arts.movies is incomplete during the relevant time period, with a 6-month gap in late 1988 and early 1989 and a number of missing articles after that. [4]
It began with a posting titled "Those Eyes", on the subject of actresses with beautiful eyes. Hank Driskill began to collect a list of sexy actresses and what movies they had appeared in, and as the size of the repeated posting grew far beyond a normal newsgroup article, it soon became known simply as "THE LIST". [5]
The other project, started by Chuck Musciano, was briefly called the "Movie Ratings List" and soon became the "Movie Ratings Report". Musciano simply asked readers to rate movies on a scale of one to ten, and reported on the votes . He soon began posting "ballots" with lists of movies for people to rate, so his list also grew quickly.
In 1990 Col Needham collated the two lists and produced a "Combined LIST & Movie Ratings Report",[6] and at this point the ball really started rolling. Needham soon found himself starting a (male) "Actors List", while Dave Knight began a "Directors List", and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST, which would later be renamed as the "Actress List". Both this and the Actors List had been restricted to people who were still alive and working, but retired people began to be added, and Needham also started what was then (but did not remain) a separate "Dead Actors/Actresses List". The goal now was to make the lists as inclusive as the maintainers could manage. In late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series. On October 17, 1990, Needham posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, and the database that would become the IMDb was born. At the time, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies movie database".

On the web

By 1993, the database had been expanded to include additional categories of filmmakers and other demographic material, as well as trivia, biographies, and plot summaries; the movie ratings had been properly integrated with the list data; and a centralised email interface for querying the database had been created. Later in the year, it moved onto to the World Wide Web (a network in its infancy back then) under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database. The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales. Rob Hartill was the original web interface author. In 1994, the email interface was revised to accept the submission of all information, meaning that people no longer had to email the specific list maintainer with their updates. However, the structure remained that information received on a single film was divided among multiple section managers, the sections being defined and determined by categories of film personnel and the individual filmographies contained therein. Its management also continued to be in the hands of a small contingent of underpaid or volunteer "section managers" who were receiving ever-growing quantities of information on films from around the world and across time from contributors of widely varying level of expertise and informational resources. Despite the annual claims of Needham, in a year-end report newsletter to the Top fifty contributors, that "fewer holes" must now remain for the coming year, the amount of information still missing from the database was vastly underestimated. Over the next few years, the database was run on a network of mirrors across the world with donated bandwidth.

As an independent company

In 1995, it became obvious to the principal site managers that the project had become too large to maintain merely through donations and in their spare time. The decision was made to become a commercial venture and in 1996, IMDb was incorporated in the United Kingdom, becoming the Internet Movie Database Ltd, with Col Needham the primary owner as well as identified figurehead. The remaining shareholders were the people maintaining the database. Revenue was generated through advertising, licensing and partnerships.
This state of affairs continued until 1998. The database was growing every day, and it was again reaching a critical point. Most revenues were being spent on equipment, and there was not enough money left over to pay full time salaries. The system was also suffering noticeable slowdowns both in accessing the site and in having new data posted. Offers were solicited and received from major businesses to purchase the database; however, the shareholders were unwilling to sell if it could not be guaranteed that the information would be accessible to the internet community for free.

As a subsidiary company

In 1998, Jeff Bezos, founder, owner and CEO of Amazon.com struck a deal with Col Needham and other principal shareholders, to buy IMDb outright and attach it to his corporate empire as a subsidiary, private company. [7] This gave IMDb the ability to pay the shareholders salaries for their work, while Amazon.com would be able to use the IMDb as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. Volunteer contributors were not advised in advance of even the possibility of IMDb - and their contributions along with it - being sold to a private business, which created some initial discord and defection of regulars.
IMDb continues to expand its functionality. In 2002, it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro aimed at entertainment professionals. It provides a variety of services including production and box office details, as well as a company directory. Most information contained in the IMDb database proper continues to come from volunteer researchers, whose additional incentive, since 2003, is that if they are identified as being one of "the top one hundred contributors" in terms of amounts of hard data submitted, they receive complimentary free access to IMDbPro for the following calendar year. However, many volunteer contributors just contribute data because they want to improve the database, with no thought of reward.

TV episodes

On 26 January 2006, the long-awaited "Full Episode Support" came online, allowing the database to support separate cast and crew listings for each episode of every TV series. This was described by Col Needham as "the largest change we've ever made to our data model," and increased the number of titles in the database from 485,000 to nearly 750,000.
At present, the database entries for TV series are in a state of flux, as listings are migrated from series titles to individual episodes. The maintainers anticipated "a couple of months for data to settle down and bugs to be ironed out", but inaccuracies were still present some 11 months later. [[1]]

Ancillary features

User ratings of films

As one adjunct to data, the IMDb offers a rating scale which allows users to rate films by choosing one of ten categories in the range 1-10, with each user able to submit one rating. The points of reference given to users of these categories are the descriptions "1 (awful)" and "10 (excellent)"; and these are the only descriptions of categories. Due to the minimum category being scored one, the mid-point of the range of scores is 5.5, rather than 5.0 as might intuitively be expected given a maximum score of ten. This rating system has also recently been implemented for television programming on an episode-by-episode basis.
In adopting this method, IMDb is following its widespread usage; the method is the same as rating in the range of a half star to five stars. When used in reviews by a single reviewer, the method has some basic utility given a rating is usually given in the context of a qualitative appraisal of the film. The simplicity of this method makes it popular, but in terms of psychometric, statistical, and other criteria, the method suffers shortcomings (see online rating scales).

Filters and weights

IMDb indicates that submitted ratings are filtered and weighted in various ways in order to produce a weighted mean that is displayed for each film, series, and so on. It states that filters are used to avoid "vote stuffing"; the method is not described in detail, to avoid attempts to circumvent it.

Ranking

The IMDb Top 250 is intended to be a listing the top 'rated' 250 films, based on ratings by the registered users of the website using the methods described. Only theatrical releases running longer than sixty minutes with over 1300 ratings are considered; all other products are ineligible. Also, the 'top 250' rating is based on only the ratings of "regular voters" (IMDb does not define this term). In addition to other weightings, the top 250 films are also based on a weighted rating formula referred to in actuarial science as a credibility formula [2]. This label arises because a statistic is taken to be more credible the greater the number of individual pieces of information; in this case from eligible users who submit ratings.
The IMDb also has a Bottom 100 feature which is assembled in the same way. Although the Top 250 films generally do not shift much (the "great" films are typically better known, and therefore have a high number of votes and a higher popularity inertia) the "winner" of the Bottom one hundred changes frequently. A disproportionate number of "Bottom 100" films were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is said to be a result of an MST3K website encouraging all its users to register with IMDb and vote "1" on films featured on the show, during IMDb's early years. (MST3K was a show specializing in showing bad movies.)
The top 250 list comprises a wide strata of films, including major releases, cult films, independent films, critically acclaimed films, silent films and foreign films. Nevertheless, there are issues associated with compiling such lists of rankings which arise from the shortcomings of the approach to ratings.

Plot Keywords

Plot keywords are keywords that contributors to the IMDb submit. These are keywords regarding objects and occurrences in each film on the IMDb.[8]

Message boards

One of the most used features of the Internet Movie Database is the Message Boards that coincide with every database entry, along with forty seven Main Boards. These boards allow registered users to share, discuss and debate information about the movie/actor/writer. They were not originally part of the IMDb, but were added only after its purchase by Amazon.com, some time in the year 2000.
The Main Boards are wide discussion forums that pertain to certain aspects of film discussion. They divide into the categories Trivia! Trivia! (various aspects of detailed film minutia), Awards Season (various movie awards winners and nominees), FilmTalk (talk about film in general and specific films), TV Talk (television shows, new and old), Shop Talk (film professions), Genre Zone (a number of established movie genres), Around the World (global cinema), Star Talk (celebrities and film professionals), General Boards (miscellaneous and non-film-related topics), Video Games (talk about games consoles and video games in general) and IMDb Help (anything pertaining directly to the site itself). As the IMDb expires older posts from all message boards variably, it is difficult to precisely measure traffic according to individual board, but The Sandbox and The Soapbox are amongst the highest traffic boards on IMDb. The Soapbox is a general purpose discussion board, where users can go for "their more heated discussions". The Sandbox is a general purpose, anything-goes board designated for test messages and off-topic posts.
Also, a few celebrites post on message boards. Morgan York USED to post on IMDb also. Mitchel Musso currently posts on IMDb.

My movies

Registered users also have access to "my movies," which is a database that can be created by any registered user[9]. The user can sort the content of that database according to several criteria, such as vote history [10].

See also

Movie Tome
All Movie Guide
TV IV
Internet Broadway Database
Internet Book List
Fictional film
Films that have been considered the greatest ever
Films considered the worst ever
Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic
Internet Movie Cars Database
Internet Adult Film Database
Hong Kong Movie Database