Hi,
A few weeks ago, I shared on the quarantine side-projects thread my idea of a recommendation engine based on famous directors tastes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185673 ). At this time, I was procrastinating, but your warm messages motivated me to complete it, so thank you HN!
I had for a long time this idea of a movie recommendation engine built not on the tastes of people like you or peoples you follow but on favorite film director tastes. I became a film buff with starting watching Tarantino movies, then watching movies of directors that influenced Tarantino (Melville, Godard, Woo), and so on. It helped me to become aware of all the phases, periods in film history and to develop a critical approach to movies. Conversely, I'm often frustrated by movies recommendation systems today. Most of the recommendations I get are often the same, too out of context, too cold. This is why I made this small website, to generate recommendations based on the favorite movies of the directors you like the most.
To use it, you just have to export your Letterboxd profile to CSV ("Settings" > "Export your data") and import it here: http://theylovepictures.com/
It'll generate you recommendations like this: http://theylovepictures.com/recommendation/33241372-cc7e-4fe... (they're mine!)
I also develop a Directors section, where you can access to a "family tree" of a director. For instance, here is Martin Scorsese's: http://theylovepictures.com/director/Martin%20Scorsese
Feel free to give me some feedback, but please keep in mind that I don't really plan to make it more than just a side project. I know that the UI/UX is very basic and that having to import a CSV is not user-friendly, and I don't really know if it will scale or if it will work for all kind of profiles, but again, it's nothing more than a toy project, and if it gives some good idea of movies to watch to a couple of film buffs, I'll be happy!
