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Is the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide app ready for its closeup?
Long before people went to the Internet for film information, movie buffs annually bought the latest revisions of huge paperback books like The Leonard Maltin Movie Guide and Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever. These were, and are, massive reference books; the current version of Maltin comes in at 1664 pages, and the current version of Videohound at 1700 pages. You needed a strong coffee table to hold these massive tomes. Today there are many ways to get movie reviews, with IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes probably being the most popular sites. But there is a real virtue to reading reviews written by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and a lifetime career of reviewing them. That's why I was very happy to find that the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide [iTunes Link] $2.99US, has morphed into an iPhone/iPod touch app, adding features that could never be found in books like streaming preview videos, and a tie-in to Netflix and iTunes along with the ability to email reviews from the app. Upon launching the app you are presented with a scrolling list of Maltin's current picks. You can tap on them to bring up a full review, links to information on the director and major actors, and a streaming video preview of the film. If you have an Internet connection you can see the videos. If not, the option isn't even presented. I really like that, since unlike many apps that won't work without connectivity, the main database is always available for any iPhone/iPod touch running OS 3.0 or better.
