Goodbye, Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by lbangs, Aug 19, 2014.

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  1. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    In the pre Internet days, these guides were essential for navigating through catalog video releases. Nowadays, you can find tons of reviews of any movie online with a few clicks. I haven't consulted a printed movie guide in years, even though there was a time when I had dog eared copies. I guess that's par for the course...
     
  2. gates69

    gates69 Music Junkie

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    A little off topic but does anyone remember the name of the mail order company that put out a huge catalog of VHS tapes back in the day?? This was when buying commercially released films on VHS could run you $50 or more. At a time when renting movies in the late 80's/early 90's was huge but buying was still very expensive.

    I remembered.....Movies Unlimited
     
  3. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I like having a massive printed volume of Maltin's Movie Book in my library.
     
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Is there much of a difference between the mass paperback and the paperback editions...
     
  5. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    It would be nice if Amazon could license all if the Maltin reviews and include them in IMDB. I always read the Ebert ones when available.

    Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I read the critic reviews after I watch the movie.
     
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I saw that and thought it was a sad sign of the times. I read his books since around 1970-1971... I even went through the entire thing a few times and checked off the films I had seen or the films I wanted to see. And once I had a VCR in 1976, I started bracketing the ones I had on tape! It was an indispensable guide, and I bought nearly every edition through the late 1990s. Some of those paperback books were unbelievably thick, probably pushing the limits of what could actually be printed and bound.

    I'm kind of flummoxed that Maltin says he can't figure out a way to monetize a website with all the information contained in the past Maltin Movie Guide books, especially if he could post banner ads at the top. I suspect either he wanted a lot more money than backers thought was reasonable, or there are so many competing free sites (like IMDB and Wikipedia), he just threw in the towel.

    When the original Gremlins was released in 1984, Maltin went on Entertainment Tonight and absolutely excoriated it as one of the worst, most violent movies ever made, which astounded me. I thought it was an "OK" movie, mostly a spoof, certainly not something I would take seriously, but not a horrible movie by any means.

    But I usually found myself agreeing with Maltin about 80% of the time. Generally the deal was, if he disliked a film, I hated it, and sometimes if he merely liked a film, I really loved it. So when we disagreed, it was just by degree. As a general rule, I think the critic I've agreed with the most was former Variety critic Todd McCarthy, who I think has a well-rounded judgement of the commercial, artistic, and technical factors that go into a film.
     
  7. Thwacko

    Thwacko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Peacham, Vermont
    My wife has a 1987 copy I love to thumb through and she jokingly refers to it as the "good book". I love to just open to a page at random and find the most hilarious description of some forgotten movie.
     
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  8. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I never read the critics reviews a policy I've stuck with and got to enjoy many movies I may not have by being swayed...the Synopsis is perfect for me...even then If I like the actors it's a must watch.
     
  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I always like it when the Maltin review says AVOID. He's right about 99% of the time (for me).
     
  10. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    VOID for me...it wouldn't matter if I was interested in the movie, but now I'm curious...I'm gonna look through my older copy and see if I agree with any.
     
  11. Torontotom

    Torontotom Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    I loved collecting his books even though I often disagreed with him. I always remember his "*1/2" reviews for Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Blade Runner or ** for Taxi Driver and BOMB for Thank God It's Friday
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Knowing Maltin's sensibilities, I understand why he had those opinions. And Thank God It's Friday is a horrible, horrible movie. Blade Runner, Goodbar, and Taxi Driver are all really downbeat movies, mostly about very flawed people, and they're not movies I like to see very often. I saw Blade Runner about 3 weeks before it came out, and my reaction was, "it's a brilliant-looking film with incredible lighting, but Harrison Ford is very dull and the story is very depressing. Plus they veered sharply away from Phillip K. Dick's story. This will make no money." And I was right at the time. I think Blade Runner is a classic in some ways, but I think it's a very flawed film, despite being extremely well made.
     
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  13. Torontotom

    Torontotom Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    haha I love Thank God It's Friday. It's cheesy fun for me but you're right about the others; I can see why they inspire such reactions.

    But I will always be grateful for his review of Finian's Rainbow (***1/2). It inspired me to rent it and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
     
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  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's a strange film, but it has some good moments and memorable songs.
     
  15. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    My mom used to give me the latest edition of the guide every Christmas. I think I'll buy the last edition.
     
  16. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    mass or trade paperback? do you or again anyone else know what the difference is? I have the mass paperback. SMALL & ULTRA thick on cheap thin paper!
     
  17. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I don't know the difference. I've never seen anything but paperbacks as you described.
     
  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There's sometimes a larger trade paperback edition about 9" x 6" with bigger type and better paper.
     
  19. Jeff Edwards

    Jeff Edwards Senior Member

    I used to get a new copy every year for Christmas and I had two friends who alternated receiving my older copy. At Christmas, they'd argue over whose year it was to get it.
     
  20. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    looks like there is one available at Amazon.
     
  21. Back in the 90's, when I was young, there was no such thing as IMDB. I bought Maltin's movie guide every year and often found the short reviews very useful when I was trying to figure out which movie I should rent on VHS. I often disagreed with the opinions expressed in the reviews, but that was part of the fun.
    Movie guides like that are now (inevitably) a thing of the past, but I felt a little sad when I read that there'll be no more editions of Maltin's guide. His movie guide was a part of my youth and my youth is now also (inevitably) a thing of the past.
     
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  22. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    He could be selling memberships to his online movie guide by next year, who knows? Or. maybe he's gonna go live on a sunny, warm island and sip drinks with little parasols through a colourful, looping straw....?
     
  23. I'm not worried about Leonard Maltin. He'll be all right, no matter if his movie guide is in print or not. I'm sure he'll be able to pay all the parasol drinks he'll ever need, if he moves to a sunny, warm island. He's earned it.
     
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Some of Maltin's movie books were bestsellers for 20+ years, so he did very well in the 1970s ad 1980s. I think there's a ton of reference books that started collapsing in sales during the 1990s due to the internet. I'm reminded of the collapse of World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica, which used to make millions of dollars selling reference books. Some fiction books and diet books sell well, but not much else these days.
     
  25. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    It's easy to thumb through a book then search on internet for some obscure movie
    you could find accidentally in a book.
    You have more privacy.... reading a book for information than on the web.
    IMDB has so much tracking everytime I use that dam! website has
    my ad block is on red alert.
     
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