WHAT’S HOT

    Well, you can’t actually
bring Leonard Maltin into the store with you, but you
can bring his database of films.  Leonard Maltin
2005 Movie Guide for Pocket PC combines a huge list of
movies with synopses and ratings, a list of film and
DVD release dates, and a customizable database to keep
track of your own movie library.

SETUP

    Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide for Pocket PC installs using the standard
ActiveSync Add/Remove programs feature.  You can
install the program in Main Memory or on a Storage
Card without any significant speed issues.  I did
notice one problem with installing on a storage card,
however.  The program apparently doesn’t check
for a valid read when the PPC is coming out of
standby.  So, if you have the program running,
shut off the PPC, then turn it back on again, the data
on the screen will be garbled.  Although shutting
the program down and re-running it solves this
problem, I’d recommend installing to main memory
instead.

PROGRAM FEATURES

The Viewing Guide

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide main screen

    When
you start Leonard Maltin Movie Guide for Pocket PC, you get a screen
like that shown above.  The Viewing Guide lists
movie titles in order.  You can return to this
screen from elsewhere in the program by clicking on
the left (film reel) button on the menu bar. 
Under the banner bar on the left is what looks like
drop-down menu that lets you select which type of
movies you’d like to see.  Instead of a drop-down
menu, clicking it will show the Movie List dialog box
you see below:

 
Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Movie Lists dialog

    In
addition to the types of movies shown above, there are
Popular Family, Popular Fantasy, Popular Horror,
Popular Musical, Popular Mystery, Popular Romance,
Popular Sci-Fi, Popular Thriller, Popular War, and
Popular Western.  Clicking on a list will display
only movies in that list.  Selecting a list name
and clicking on the [Use] button will do the same. 
The [Show All Movies] removes the filter. 
[Cancel] returns to the main screen without changing
the filter.
    To the right below the banner, is a true drop-down menu that
lets you select which information is shown along with
the movie title.  You can elect to show the
movie’s premier Year, the Rating, or both.
    Below the list of movies is the "Look up:" entry and the
[Film Finder] button.  The Look Up entry allows
you to enter the beginning of a movie title.  The
list of movies will scroll to the first movie that
matches what you’ve typed as shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Look Up function

   
The Look Up function only looks up the beginning of
the title, not words embedded later in the title. 
If you want to find a word anywhere in the title, use
the Film Finder.  The Film Finder button opens
the dialog you see below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder

   
The Film Finder dialog lets you find a film based on
any combination of part of the title, the release year, the rating, the
genre, the actors, the director, the awards given for
the film, and some additional attributes that we’ll
see in a moment.  Entering the same search string
as we did in the Look Up entry will find "QUE"
anywhere in the film’s title for the results you see
below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder results

   
Let’s take a closer look at some of the Finder
options.  The Year entry allows you to select the
year the film was released.  The Rating entry
allows you to select a rating from "bomb" to 5 stars. 
You also have the option of displaying films with just
that rating, that rating or less, or that rating or
more.  It’s too bad they don’t have a "so bad
it’s actually funny" rating.  That would allow
you to find "Plan 9 From Outer Space" but leave "Gigli"
on the shelf.  The Genre button displays the
dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Genres

   
You can select any number of Genres from those shown
above.  Keep in mind that the Finder uses an "OR"
operation on the genres so, if you check "Sci-Fi" and
"Western" you’ll get anything in either category and
not just "FireFly," "Outpost," and "Wild, Wild West." 
The [Clear Criteria] button clears all checks and
shows "No Preference" for Genre in the Film Finder
dialog.  Clicking on the button next to Starring
will open the dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Select Actors dialog

   
The alphabet tabs across the top of the list work just
like the ones in the built-in Contacts dialog. 
Clicking on any tab once, moves to the first letter on
the tab; twice moves to the second letter; three times
moves to the third letter.  The "#" will display
the whole list from the beginning.  (As you might
guess, since no actor’s name starts with anything but
a letter, the "#" and "A" are synonymous.)  The
"[ ]Show Selected Items Only" check box will only list
the actors you’ve already checked.  This is
useful if you’re just wanting to eliminate an actor
from the criteria.  "Lookup" functions the same
way the movie title look up does on the main screen. 
The "Item" menu has one option:  "Deselect All"
will remove all check marks and show "No Preference"
next to "Starring" in the Film Finder dialog. 
The Director Selection dialog works in exactly the
same way and has the same options as the Actor
Selection dialog, except, of course, you’re selecting
from a list of film directors.  Clicking on the
button next to "Awards" displays the Award Selection
dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Award Selection dialog

   
The "Year" entry allows you to enter the year in which
the award was given.  Leaving it blank
corresponds to any year.  You can check any of
the awards shown above.  Like the other check
lists, the program will display any movie that falls
into any of the categories checked off.  [Select
None] clears all checks and displays "No Preference"
next to "Awards" in the Film Finder dialog; exactly
the same as "Deselect All" from the "Item" menu. 
[Select All] checks all awards.
    Finally, clicking on the button next to "Attributes" displays
the dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Attributes Selection dialog

   
"MPAA" may not make sense to anyone but a film buff. 
It stands for Motion Picture Association of America. 
What it really means is the age-appropriateness rating
of the film according to the MPAA.  That’s the
familiar "G," "PG," "PG-13," "R," "NC-17," and "NR"
(not rated).  It’s normally called the film’s
"rating," but that could easily be confused with how
many stars it rates.  Still and all, I’d like to
see a more obvious label.
    "Nationality" refers to the country in which the film was
produced.  Clicking on the button calls up the
dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Nationality Selection dialog

   
This screen works exactly like the other screens with
alphabet tabs, "Lookup," "Show Selected Items Only,"
and "Items|Deselect All."  I was actually quite
curious about the "132m" "Nationality" that’s first in
the list.  The only film that matches that
criteria so far is the 2004 release "Van Helsing." 
I suspect it means "No country will claim this." 
Possibly it’s what was written on Victor Navorski’s
(Tom Hanks’) passport in "The Terminal," a movie
which, incidentally, doesn’t appear in the Leonard
Maltin 2005 Movie Guide.

   
Next in the list of attributes is the type of media on
which the film was released to rental shops.  You
can choose from DVD, LaserDisc, and VHS.  Next is
a choice of "Film Stock" which allows you to select
All, only Color, or B/W (only Black and White) films. 
Finally, you can select the film "Process" using the
dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Film Finder Process Selection dialog

   
Obviously, this option is pretty much for film buffs
only, but it’s here for those who care about such
things.

   
Once you’ve narrowed down the list of movies to some
you think you might like to see, clicking on the title
will open the Movie Details screen as shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Movie Details screen (review tab showing)

   
The Details screen always opens with the "Review" tab
showing.  You get the title, director, premiere
year, and run length in the top banner.  Below
that is a smaller banner with the movie rating, the
"stock" (B/W or color), the media (DVD, LaserDisc,
VHS), and the star rating.
    The only problem I have with the top banner is that it’s too
big.  It takes up too much of the screen in
portrait orientation as you see above.  In
landscape orientation, it’s far worse.  Take a
look at how much you can read of the review in
landscape orientation.

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Movie Details screen (landscape
orientation)

    I
have no issues with the second banner.  In fact,
it has a very nice additional feature:  If you
click on any of the icons, an explanation window will
pop up.  Clicking on the red, green, blue film
icon, for instance, shows the "Film Stock" pop up
shown below:

Film Stock pop-up

   
Clicking on "Starring" will switch to the "Starring"
tab as shown below:

Leonard Maltin
Movie Guide Movie Details screen (starring tab
showing)

   
The "Record" menu has only one option.  "Add to
My Movies…" will add this movie to your personal
collection list.  The personal collection list is
a feature of the Movie Manager which we’ll look at
next.

The Movie Manager

   
The Movie Manager is a database of the films you own. 
When Leonard Maltin 2005 Movie Guide for Pocket PC is
first installed, it installs the categories in the
drop-down shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager screen (category drop-down shown)

   
The categories provide a good start, but the program
also allows you to customize the list to fit your
personal tastes and needs.  Selecting "Edit
Categories…" from the Category drop-down menu calls
up the Category Editing screen shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Category Editing screen

   
The Category Editing screen lists the current
categories.  The "Edit Category" entry works like
the "Lookup" entries, allowing you to scroll quickly
to a particular category in a long list of them. 
The [New] button will add a new category.  The
[Delete] button will delete the currently selected
category.  There isn’t a way to easily transfer
films from one category to another and you can only
put a film in one category.  That can be fairly
limiting.

   
Back on the Movie Manage screen, on the right side of
the drop-down bar, is the "Sort By" menu that’s
displayed below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Sort By menu

   
The "Sort By" menu allows you to order your movies in
a number of helpful ways.  I’ll particularly call
attention to the "Due Date, Status" order, which lets
you see which movies you haven’t seen, but need to
return soon.

   
Clicking on the [New] button calls up the Enter/Edit
Movie screen as shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Enter/Edit Movie screen

   
The "Details" tab allows you to enter title, director,
country (referred elsewhere as nationality), year,
made for TV?, runtime, genre, and starring actors. 
This is the same screen that you’d see if you tapped
on a film listed on the Movie Manger screen. 
That would allow you to edit previously entered
information on that film.  As we look at the
other tabs of the Enter/Edit Movie screen, you’ll see
some previously entered data.  That information
came from selecting a film in the Viewing Guide and
tapping "Record|Add to My Movies…" from the menu. 
Next up is the "Item" tab:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Enter/Edit Movie Item tab

   
The "Item" tab allows you to set a "Status" of None,
Reserved, Loaned, Borrowed, Rented, or Returned. 
You can also set a location, whether the film is owned
by you and viewed by you, when the film was acquired,
how much it cost, and the catalog number (which can be
any number that helps you organize the films). 
The next tab is the "Tech" tab, short for "technical
information."

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Enter/Edit Movie Tech tab

   
The "Tech" tab lets you keep track of technical
information about the film including the media, the
number of copies you have, the DVD "region," whether
it’s a color or black and white film, whether it’s
Full Frame, Pan/Scan, Letterbox, or Anamorphic zoom
format, the process, and the type of sound output. 
To the right of the Tech tab is the "Ratings" tab.

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Movie Manager Enter/Edit Movie Ratings tab

   
The "Ratings" tab lets you assign your own rating as
well as the official MPAA rating, list awards given to
the film, and add notes and opinions about the film. 
You can even write your own review there. 
Leonard Maltin’s review is found in the final tab, the
"Review" tab, which also includes the star rating.

Movie Events

   
The final section of the Leonard Maltin 2005 Movie
Guide for Pocket PC is the Movie Events screen. 
The Movie Events screen shows three types of events. 
The first is DVD Releases as shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide DVD Releases

   
The DVD Releases shows the title and date on which
that particular DVD will be on the market.  You
can order the list by title or date.  If you
order by date, you can choose oldest first or newest
first.

   
The next list of Movie Events is Film Festivals as
shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Film Festivals

   
The Film Festivals list shows the name of the festival
and the date on which it begins for the current year. 
Clicking on the festival name pops up some additional
information such as location(s) and dates.

   
The final list of Move Events is File Premieres as
shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Film Premieres

   
The Film Premieres list shows the title of the film
and the date it will be released in theatres. 
The list can be ordered by film title or by date. 
Unfortunately for informed choice, there isn’t any
review information for Film Premieres.  You’ll
have to check the web to see if you want to see an
upcoming premiere.

   
The Movie Events lists are extendable in two ways: 
You can add your own calendar(s) to the list and new
calendars can be added by LandWare when you
synchronize with their online databases. 
Synchronizing will also update the current three lists
with up-to-date information.
    You also have some control over the information that’s
displayed.  Clicking on the [Show...] button will
call up the Event Display Options dialog shown below:

Leonard Maltin Movie
Guide Event Display Options

   
The Event Display Options dialog lets you choose the
sort order (which you can also do from the main
screen), choose to show only current events, and/or
"Trim Events."  The [Trim Events] button lets you
remove events that occur before a given date.

The Blockbuster Test

   
One of the things I like to do when I review software
is to come up with at least one "real-world" scenario
to see how the software does.  For Leonard Maltin
2005 Movie Guide, the "reality check" was a trip to my
local movie rental shop (whose name will appear only
in the section header).  The test was in two
phases:  The first phase was to check all of the
new releases to see if they appeared in the recently
updated movie database.  Movie Guide did very
well:  Of 74 new releases that I found in the
store, the database had information on 71 of them. 
The next test was the "obscure" test.  I went
through the racks, looking for movies that I didn’t
recognize at all, trying to stump the program. 
Again, Movie Guide did very well:  Of 127
forgotten films, Movie Guide pegged 113 of them. 
Good thing too.  A few of the ones I found were
real gems.  A number of others were real
stinkers.

HELP SUPPORT

   
Leonard Maltin Movie Guilde for Pocket PC has built-in help available
from the "Options" menu.  Tapping "Help" on
the Options menu will show an extensive help file
using the Pocket PC’s Help application.  Since it
uses the Pocket PC Help application, you can also see
the help at any time by running the Help application
and selecting "Movie Guide" from the list of programs. 
LandWare
has a
Knowledge Base search page to answer known
questions.  In addition, you can also contact
LandWare
via e-mail
with questions, bug reports, and comments that aren’t
already in the Knowledge Base.  Oddly, although
they have a visual tour and downloadable manual for
the Palm OS version of this software, they don’t
(yet?) for the Pocket PC version.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

   

Leonard Maltin Movie Guide for Pocket PC requires
1.07MB of Storage Memory for the program and 3.6MB of
Program Memory to run.  It runs very well in
WM2003SE, including switching from portrait to
landscape orientation and back.  It will also run
under Pocket PC 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003 (First
Edition) operating systems.

BUGS AND WISHES

   
I did run into an issue while running the program on a
few occasions.  When whatever it was happened,
the program closed itself and removed itself from
memory.  It’s nice that the crash was so well
behaved, but it was a crash nonetheless.  Running
the program again would always work.
    The second bug is that the program doesn’t wait for storage
cards to "wake up" properly after standby.  The
data on the screen is garbled and requires shutting
down the program and re-running it for it to be
useable.  This isn’t an issue if you install to
main memory.
    Another issue I had with the program was the size of the
Title banner when you show the details of a specific
film.  The banner is just too big.  It’s
just annoying in portrait, but it renders the
landscape view nearly unusable.  If they lost the cute
movie tracking holes on the top and bottom it would
help a bit.
    The last thing I’ll mention here isn’t really a bug or wish. 
It’s just an observation.  The full title of the
program is Leonard Maltin 2005 Movie Guide for Pocket
PC.  Note the 2005.  It’s really just a
hold-over from releasing this kind of information in
printed form.  At this time of year, publishers
are releasing the 2005 Guides for all kinds of things
even though we’ve got three more months of 2004 to go. 
In one respect, this program will remain up-to-date into and
even after its name-sake year because of the ability
to update the new releases databases via the Internet. 
It doesn’t appear that the main movie database is
updated as well, however.  That means there
probably will be a Leonard Maltin Movie Guide for 2006
and 2007 and so on.

PURCHASING

   
You can purchase Leonard Maltin Movie Guide for Pocket
PC
from the pocketnow Store for $19.95.  There
is also a
14 day trial version.

PROS

• Database
  of films is very complete
• Lists
  upcoming theatre and rental releases and film
  festivals
• Updates
  with new information via Internet
• Works well
  with WM2003SE

CONS

• Details
  banner bar is too big
• Can’t put
  your films into more than one category
• 
  Occasionally unloads
• Doesn’t
  properly wait for storage cards to "wake up"

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

    Leonard Maltin 2005
Movie Guide for Pocket PC is the nearly perfect
companion for the serious video-phile.  With Leonard Maltin
at your side (in your Pocket PC of course), you’ll
boldly venture into the video rental store, confident
that you’ll be able to find a movie that suits your
taste and preferences.  With Movie Guide in your
Pocket PC, you’ll know when the new releases will hit
the shelves and the box office.  With Movie Guide
in your Pocket PC, you’ll have a ready list of videos
you’ve decided to rent or buy.
    If you’re serious about films (or just hate to be embarrassed
when you bring home a truly awful turkey), give
Leonard Maltin 2005 Movie Guide for Pocket PC a try.

All
screenshots in this review are taken using

SOTI’s Pocket Controller Pro.