This is always fun: during the International Film Festival Rotterdam they hand you a piece of paper when you enter a public screening.
The paper just shows the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and you're meant to tear it at the number you choose to rate the movie with.
The score is as follows:
1: Very Bad
2: Bad / Poor
3: Average / Interesting
4: Good
5: Very Good
All these bits of torn paper are collected at the end of each screening, and an end score is calculated.
Now, you don't need to be a statistician (though it helps) to understand that an average of 4 or higher is rare, and an average of 4.5 unlikely. It occasionally happens though! But rest assured that any film film which scores 4 or higher is definitely a crowd pleaser, and this makes the KPN Audience Awards list an interesting one to check out.
At the moment I write this the opening film "Lamb of God" is at number one, and a surprise out of nowhere called "War, Love, God & Madness" is at number two.
And "REC." is three!
See?
Not just a bunch of snobs after all!
You can check the daily updated list of audience ratings on the IFFR website.
IFFR 2008 KPN Audience Awards list has started, updated daily