I think that Ewan's advice is ok. 10 days is a long period of time, especially when your database grows to tens of thousands or more movies. Things to be considered when implementing the solution:

• if your web app is used less in some period of the day (based on logs), try to use that period for async operations like this (this is particularly useful when inserts or updates volume is high and tables are locked for a larger period of time)
• synchronous check since is also a solution, but pay attention to the extra delay for the client (time to fetch data from IMDB, parse, update in db). Based on discussion from here, it should not be a problem, though

I would favor the async option, since you have better control over how often you query IMDB (I expect to have some limitations to avoid abuse). Theoretically, if someone or a bot is crawling your site and you use the sync option, you might run into lots of fetches from IMDB.

I think that Ewan's advice is ok. 10 days is a long period of time, especially when your database grows to tens of thousands or more movies. Things to be considered when implementing the solution:

• if your web app is used less in some period of the day (based on logs), try to use that period for async operations like this (this is particularly useful when inserts or updates volume is high and tables are locked for a larger period of time)
• synchronous check since is also a solution, but pay attention to the extra delay for the client (time to fetch data from IMDB, parse, update in db). Based on discussion from here, it should not be a problem, though

I would favor the async option, since you have better control over how often you query IMDB (I expect to have some limitations to avoid abuse). Theoretically, if someone or a bot is crawling your site and you use the sync option, you might run into lots of fetches from IMDB.