For movie lovers, the news is very good: Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie Guide for Pocket PC is a slick, well-thought-out product full of features and thoughtful touches that will appeal to both the casual movie consumer and to the full-fledged movie fanatic. I count myself in the latter category: this is now my favorite program on my Pocket PC.
Over 21,000 movies
Those familiar with the printed version of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide will feel right at home with the Pocket PC edition. It uses the same rating system and includes the same concise movie descriptions and information. However, the electronic version lists 21,374 titles, as compared to 19,000 titles in the most current printed edition. The electronic Movie Guide also has 5,201 directors and all their movies listed, and 30,594 listings of movie actors, with all the films they were featured in.
Movie information begs for a searchable database, and the Movie Guide delivers this in spades. First, in the Viewing Guide tab the first screen you see when you open the program, you can sort the entire list of movies by the title, year, or rating of the movie. Tap the Up arrow that is to the right of Year to get a list of sorting options (Fig.1).
Fig. 1: The viewing guide lists all movies, or only those in a category; for more complex searches, click on "Film Finder."
Next, the Film Finder tab allows you to search for movies by title, year, rating, genre, stars, director, awards, and attributes such as MPAA rating, country, and media (Fig.2). By combining items, you can, for instance, find the films an actor or actress made in a particular genre. For example, search on "Kevin Bacon" and "Science Fiction" and you get two films: The Hollow Man and Tremors, although I thought Tremors was more of a comedy.
Fig. 2: Film listings show title, director, year, country, running time, content rating (PG, PG-13, etc.), category, rating, and a brief summary. The Starring tab shows the actors in the movie.
Ratings are probably the most useful feature of a movie guide. Maltin rates movies from four stars (excellent) to one and a half starts (not so good). He does not give one star—such movies get a "bomb" rating instead. You may disagree with Maltin's ratings on particular films (as I do on his three stars for Groundhog Day—I'd rate it four stars), but overall it's helpful to have a professional's take on movie titles before you buy or rent them, or even sit down to watch them on TV. If this program saves you from seeing one bomb, it's well on its way to paying for itself.
Another feature in the program is the Movie Manager tab (Fig. 3). Think of it as your movie database; here you enter information on all the movies you own on videotape, DVD, or laserdisc. You can append your own ratings to them, add comments, and track the location of the film (on loan to a friend, for instance and when he's supposed to return it). You can even mark which films in your collection you've seen. Finally, you can categorize your films, and even add categories if you're unhappy with the ones you're offered by the program. The database of your movie collection is backed up via ActiveSync each time you connect to your PC.
Fig. 3: Movie Manager keeps track of all your movies. You can add comments, your own ratings, and keep track of who you lent a movie to and when they promised to return it.
Still another capability is the Movie Events tab. It includes Film Premieres—what's opening, and what has opened in the past two months, and what will open in the next month, Film Festivals—listings of the two previous months and the next five months, and DVD Releases—including the previous two months and a month into the future. This information is downloaded and updated from the LandWare Web site and synchronized with your Pocket PC via ActiveSync.
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