Which Flick to Pick??
by Gary Woods

My Tuesday morning ritual is to wander through the stacks at Blockbuster and try to figure out what pictures would make my wife smile come Friday and Saturday nights. Ideally when I'm cruising Blockbuster I'd have Leonard Maltin at my side saying, "get that one," or "definitely don't get that one!" Well since Leonard seems to be busy on Tuesday morning the closest I can come to having him with me is Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie Guide on my Palm OS Device. There's no desktop component for the program and it takes up about 3 megabytes of memory for a full install.

This is the perfect PDA program for movie lovers, whether you're just a casual viewer, a fanatical movie addict or an industry insider. Every Maltin review has icons that show a film's screen format, MPAA rating, if it's out on DVD, and his rating from "bomb" to four stars. Made-for-TV films are rated with different criteria.

Another screen of the program shows lists of the most popular films, by decades or by genres, going back to the 1930s, and ranked top lists of popular movies as voted by over 100,000 regular movie goers.

For the latest releases there's an Events screen that lets you connect to the Web and download weekly updates of new DVD releases, upcoming film premieres, and film festival dates and locations. You can get Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie Guide from www.landware.com for only $19.95.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910