The Internet, you may have noticed, has been getting a lot of media coverage of late. You may be surprised to find it escaping from the science pages and popping up in your favorite movie magazine, but don’t stop reading yet - it has something for everyone, including the movie buff.

So what is this Internet? It is a huge collection of computers linked together across the world. Something like 30 million people are connected through it now - a number that has been doubling each year for the last five years. It was designed for military and academic use, but there are so many countries and organisations connected that no single body owns or controls it. People soon realised that they didn’t have to stick to academic discussion - the Internet could be used to chat and share information about everything from bird watching to baking, including - you guessed it - movies.

Perhaps two thirds of those currently connected come from the US where movie-going is a national obsession, and California is home both to the computer industry and the movie business, so it should come as no surprise that movies are one of the most popular subjects of discussion.

There are dozens of different movie-related resources on the Internet, but the first one users turn to is the rec.arts.movies “newsgroup”. This is a global discussion forum in which anyone who is connected can take part. Whatever your movie question or opinion, you can type it in and within days it can be read by hundreds of thousands of fellow buffs. Recent topics have included  the casting of Interview with a Vampire, the cause of Jenny’s death in Forrest Gump and the expected release date for Die Hard 3. If you want to know how people rated a film you were thinking of watching, rec.arts.movies.reviews contains hundreds of opinions, and because many of the writers are in the US, you can learn about a film well before it arrives here.

On the Internet, a fanzine for thousands of people costs almost nothing to create and nothing to receive. As a result, films and directors with their own vociferous “real world” fans have similar followings on the Internet. I am a subscriber to alt.fans.woody-allen, and films like Aliens, Blade Runner, and Reservoir Dogs are all covered in exhaustive detail by their proponents. Star Trek towers over all of the others - if you are interested in the films, the television series or any of the assorted spin-offs, there is so much material available there that you could stay connected permanently and never reach the end of it.

One of the most impressive resources available is the Cardiff Movies Database. This is one of the most comprehensive archives of movie information in the world. It is compiled and maintained by about a dozen volunteers from around the world and is contributed to by thousands. It contains information on more than 33,000 films, including cast lists, plot summaries and often interesting details like continuity errors. If you want a list of the films directed by Woody Allen which starred Diane Keaton, you can get an up to date one in seconds. Perhaps its most interesting feature is its rating system. Most films are rated from one to ten - a figure arrived at by averaging the votes of the Internet public. Anyone who wants to can add their own vote to the tally at any time. Similarly, if you spot a gap in the database and happen to know the answer, you can do your bit by telling the compilers, who can update it on the spot. The studios in Hollywood are starting to recognise its influence and are contributing their own information, so casting information is now often available before a film even hits the theatres in the US.

The Internet is not just a home for opinionated amateurs. You can read film reviews from Eye Weekly - Toronto’s equivalent of Time Out - find out the week’s top grossing films in the US, study Film Maker or CinemaSpace from Berkeley’s Film Studies Department. Specialist discussion groups exist for directors, film historians and screenwriters - even projectionists.

Even this is only the beginning. Companies around the world are beginning to wake up to the Internet’s commercial potential. Nearly all of what is available so far has been free, as electronic billing systems are not yet in place. As soon as they find a way to get paid for the information they provide, magazines and newspapers are expected to get connected, making the Internet into a huge, global news-stand where the magazines are updated hourly instead of weekly or monthly. Further into the future, as communications technology improves, you may be able to send and receive film clips through electronic mail as well as talking about them.

Being online is starting to lose its nerdy image - before long having an electronic mail address may be as fashionable (and more useful) than owning a mobile phone. Get connected today and join the Internet pioneers - you have nothing to fear except an enormous phone bill.

Connecting to the Internet

There are as many ways to connect to the Internet as there are reasons to do it. Your choice depends largely on how much you have to spend and how much you expect to use it.
If you are lucky, you may find that you are connected already - perhaps without realising it. Universities and some large companies have been connected for years - if you have a computer connected to an academic or commercial network, it is worth asking the head geek what kind of access you have.
If you are starting from scratch, you need three things - a computer, a modem (to connect your machine to the network through the phone) and a “service provider” - someone already connected to the Internet who acts as your gateway.
Almost any computer can be used to provide a connection, though a Windows-capable PC or an Apple Macintosh are preferable if you want to use some of the “point and click” software becoming available. You shouldn’t scrimp on a modem - the magic word to ask for is “V32 bis” which costs from £140. Anything slower is a false economy - you won’t save much and the low speed becomes very frustrating.
Most importantly, you have to choose a service provider. Bulletin boards like CompuServe and CIX - the Compulink Information Exchange - are easy to connect to, offer additional services of their own on top of Internet access and offer a cheap way in with minimum charges of £6 or £15 a month, but they may not offer access to all of the facilities on the Internet, and if you become a heavy user, their hourly charges can be expensive.
The other option is direct Internet connection - this costs a flat rate of £10 to £15 a month, not including your ordinary phone charges you pay while connected. This is offered by an increasing number of small companies, and British Telecom plans to offer its own service to home users sometime next year.