Here’s Looking At You, Kid – MovieClips.com Beta Goes Live

Movie buffs and fans, rejoice, take a seat and break out the popcorn. MovieClips.com has announced that it has launched its online, well, movie clip destination site in public beta after reaching licensing agreements with six major Hollywood studios.

And it went ahead and made my day.

And it went ahead and made my day.

The site at launch boasts approximately 12,000 two-minute streaming clips from the libraries of 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. It promises thousands more are coming soon, too.

And since the startup is hedging its bets on advertising revenue and income from affiliate purchases by users, the clips are all available for free.

Relive scenes from classics such as A Fistful of Dollars, Misery, Casablanca, Do The Right Thing and Mallrats (yes, that’s a classic in my book too).

And once you’ve found that clip you were looking for, like the infamous “I’ll be back” scene from the first Terminator movie, you can give it a thumbs up by ‘hyping’ or favoriting it, share your comments below the video or share the whole thing with your buddies on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and so on. It has trivia, too!

You’re supposed to be able to embed clips too from what I can gather, but since the code doesn’t appear in the appropriate box users seem currently unable to.

The website lets you browse movies clips by movie or actor, but also look up scenes based on actions (e.g. Attack) or even mood (e.g. Scary). When you’re busy searching, you get a handy thumbnail version of clips that you can hover over to preview. The only downside of the site is that clips load terribly slow, at least in my experience.

MovieClips plans to generate revenue from affiliate partnerships; you can buy or rent full-length movies directly on legitimate websites and in some cases straight from iTunes.

The startup behind the service is privately-held and based in Santa Monica, CA. The company has aligned some notable advisors, including author and Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, Sid Ganis (former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), former Marvel Studios President Michael A. Helfant, Omniture co-founder and CEO Josh James and Ryan Wright, SVP, Sony BMG Music.

I’m certain MovieClips.com isn’t the first of its kind (also check out yet-to-launch TC50 2009 finalist AnyClip) but it’s free, legal and as good-looking as it is user-friendly.

And in my eyes, that’s a great gift.