Apparently, according to Cinematical, people are going to IMDB and giving Milk a rating of “1″,  just because it’s gay-themed and was nominated for best picture.  The evidence is that the IMDB rating dropped sharply after the nominations were announced.  Brokeback Mountain saw a similar decline.  I suspect that Cinematical is correct in assuming that a lot of hateful people are just going to IMDB and giving Milk the lowest score without ever having seen it.  The drop is large.

But if I wanted to be sure, I would want to see the drop in ratings compared to all the other nominated movies.  Also, if possible, I’d like to see  the number of new ratings compared to changes in ticket sales.  What I think we’d see is that all of the nominees show some decline.  When a movie is first released, the people who see it are the ones for whom it was made.  (unless bad marketing brings in an audience who think they are seeing something different).  Milk played to people who like Sean Penn or are interested in the story of Harvey Milk.  Slumdog Millionaire played to the independent theater crowd, or people who like international films, and possible fans of the director.  But once these films are nominated, a lot of people go see them who were not part of the original crowd.  People who usually watch action movies, or romantic comedies, or whatever.  This crowd will probably be less impressed.  So ratings should fall to some extent in any case.