Thread by @anupampom

A thread on IMDB ratings of Indian movies/stars. Data from around 18 k indian movies (bollywood+regional) was scraped from the imdb databse

IMDB database is a fun marker for comparative rating of movies/stars .While it can occasionally be gamed IMDB allots more weight to older users to avoid it. Famous Instances- Mithun chakravorty's gunda was for a time highest rated indian movie thanks to its fan-following in IITs

So which Indian movie(with a minimum of 500 votes) has highest rating..

It's Maya Bazaar by NT RamaRao - EX CM of Andhra Pradesh , a true visionary also the founder of 2 rs rice scheme-later adopted all over india.
Rajesh Khanna's Anand also figures here

Actors which largest number of cumulative votes(total views)..
Irrfan Khan over Aamir n Shahrukh (may be because he has acted in many movies) , also post 90s star dominate here ..may be because it is a young medium

In median rating older, regional stars dominate, possibly because those who come to rate them do so approvingly

Lets plot median rating with years. Indeed we see older movies are rated higher-nostalgia at work or may be they were better!

Newer movies have spike in votes. We see around 1993 the spike starts,
How come? Possibly Internet revolution helped also useful to remember imdb started as usenet group in early nineties..Shammi kapoor the famous movie star was active participant in the indian chat groups!

Lets do Bollywood now.
Lets look at comparative ratings of top 5 stars who have held on since nineties in Bollywood.
Salman/akshay/Aamir/Shahrukh/ajay devgn
Lets see total number of views- Aamir/SRK rule here..

But what has happened in ratings..we see decline of SRK captured well here..perhaps after Om shanti OM..
while Akshay who earlier sfeatured in flicks like pandav has had a good turn!

Lets look at their careers via movie graphs . We clearly see aamir's surge post lagaan n DCH

Lets see animation of aamir khan's movies

SRK's career with watchable n avoidable movies

SRK's career gif

A note on gifs -you tap on them to stop n then tap again to restart
His stardom is impervious to IMDB's ratings

Salman Khan's graph

Salman's animation

While Akshay kumar had intermittent bouts of successes..it is only recent discerning viewers have taken a liking to him

Akshay's career giffed

Ajay Devgn's career plot

Career gif
Despite being a very competent actor- his career doesnt have breakout patches.

Comparative analysis/stats of these actors.

Lets see comparative figures of Amitabh,Rishi kapoor,Vinod khanna,Shatrughan sinha n Dharmendra. The guys who ruled between 70s to 80s

Shatrughan Sinha,Jeetendra,shashi kapoor

Lets see curves of guys who briefly ruled in nineties- sanjay dutt,sunny deol,govinda,jackie shroff

The number of votes have negative skew - implying only a minority movies are massive successes while most others are flops/average

Compared to Votes(winner takes it all there), Ratings are normally distributed

what about collaborations(jodis)-
1. regional cinema stars have maximum number of collaborations
2. character actors like brhamanand,shakti kapoor,kader khan are most connected.have least "degrees of separation"
3. Jeetendrdra-rekha/jaya prada, dharmendra-hemamalini mst prolific

Proportion of good movies (defined as IMDB rating>7) by superstars

Lets look at longevity Now..out of 4800 actors,3000 actresses n 3000 odd unique directors in history of indian cinema
only 9% of actors lasted more than 10 years, 6% actresses and 3% directors.
Behind all that sheen is a dark side!

Here are relevant graphs.
Most actors and directors(median) will be one film wonders, while actresses will last for 2 films .The asymmetry between mean and median is there because decadal longevity of actresses lesser.

Zoomed in plot of Longevity ..here..to make difference clear.
Category of Actors have fat tails implying higher longevity.

Which actors gave highest number of good movies..(IMDB rating >7)
we see kannada superstar rajkumar, brahmanandam(large number of movies), mohan babu(?bots), kamala haasan (higher than rajnikanth). among bollywood actors amitabh makes entry. Thier life proportion given as well

Which actors gave highest number of bad movies..(IMDB rating <5)
we see brahmanandam(large number of movies-in both high and low lists), Mithunda, Govinda,Sanjay dutt ,jackie shroff among terrible list..

Many have asked for comparison of southern superstars~
we see kamal haasan starts as child actor, establishes himself as actor of classes(intemrittent foray in bollywood like rajini),
Rajini holds on.

Median runtime of indian cinema is 143 minutes .
median rating is 6.7.
No correlation between rating and runtime.
Runtime decreased after 2000,- start of multiplexes.

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