Netflix/New York Times Interactive Map Show Most Popular Movies in 12 Cities

Netflix in a really cool collaboration with The New York Times have created a map that shows most popular movies in 12 major U.S. cities.

Using Netflix rental information, the map ranks the most rented movie and TV DVDs for each zip code.  In addition, you can see how Netflix's top 100 rentals of 2009 fared in each city through a color-coded map.

You could literally spend hours on this map because it's just that interesting.  More importantly though, it always you to make shallow and superficial judgements about certain cities and zip codes.



For instance, you can assume that any zip code where Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail" or "Family that Preys" is popular must be heavy populated by African-Americans who clearly love their Blackbuster movies.  Check out the map here.

Communities that show heavy rentals of films such as "Australia," and "Nights in Rodanthe" indicate snoody places with people who have awful movie taste that I probably don't want to associate with.  It's likely these people have never seen minority in real life so they won't be visiting the Tyler Perry area codes any time soon.

Of course, a negative aspect to this whole thing is that a sexual predator could probably tell which zip codes are full of teenage girls by looking at the map for areas full of "Twilight" rentals.  Quick someone call Stabler from SVU, he'll handle this then the captain tell him, "God damn it Stabler, this is the last time you break the rules."

Unfortunately, this map also convinces me that there's probably someone out there doing the unthinkable: enjoying the movie "G.I. Joe" with their favorite beverage Mello Yello and eating their favorite candy Rolos.