IMDb Chart Trends

What started as a horse race when Benjamin Button hit the IMDb Top 250 chart on the 27th has quickly developed into a neck-and-neck skirmish between Button and Slumdog. Nothing to hang your hat on, but just another indication of the widely dispersed passions people are feeling for their favorites this year.

For comparison, this past February, the day before the Oscars, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood were at #22 and #23 on the chart. Juno was in the 80s. Atonement had made a brief appearance but slipped off. Michael Clayton never showed up on the chart at all.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ratatouille, and The Bourne Ultimatum, were spread out in the top third of the chart, each sitting pretty in double-digit territory, but that didn’t do them much good in the BP sweepstakes. Into the Wild was nowhere in sight in February, but after its DVD release — and people around the country actually got to see it — it’s risen to #142.