The 2015 edition of the book will be the final one:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-leonard-maltin-is-ending-his-movie-guides/

I used to really love Leonard Maltin’s movie guide.  So much so that there were several years in a row that I would buy each new edition and hungrily look through it to see what was new and what were the opinions of recent movie releases.

I used to also love seeing the lists presented in the back of the book of directors and actors (an incomplete list, granted, with a focus on bigger names in the industry) and seeing the works they were involved in, particularly earlier in their career.

Of course, this was all before the internet came and, like so many other things, rendered the Movie Guide pointless.

For lists of actors, writers, directors, etc. etc., one has to go to IMDB.com, click on the “search” function, and type in the person you’re looking for.  In a second you’ll have a pretty complete list of all the works said actor/writer/producer/etc/etc. was involved in with links to said movies/tv shows/etc.

The reviews in the Leonard Maltin Guide were sharp, to the point (they tended to be a few sentences long each), and in the case of really bad films, often quite hilarious.  However, what you had was only one review, a review by one “individual”.  Not to sound too snarky, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the reviews were actually penned entirely by Mr. Maltin versus those that came from his staff of writers.  Still, I could ignore this and had fun reading these concise opinions.

Now, you have rotttentomatoes.com with its list of critics (and links to their reviews) along with a statistical analysis of the overall critical opinion and the overall audience opinion.

The bottom line is that, for me, two websites rendered the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide obsolete.

The last Leonard Maltin Movie Guide I bought was the 2009 edition.

Until I saw the above article, and much to my surprise considering how much I liked the Guide, I hadn’t given it much thought.

The moral?  If there is such a thing for this, I suppose its the validity of the old adage regarding the “better mousetrap”.  The internet, in this case, left poor Leonard Maltin and his Movie Guide in the dust.  Perhaps he should have invested in this technology and made a website that would have combined the IMDB.com and rottentomatoes.com concepts.

Too late now.

And time marches on.