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Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 1996

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Featuring more than nineteen thousand entries, this comprehensive film guide encompasses capsule movie reviews, identification of movies available in video, a listing of top family films, cross-references to performers and directors, ratings, and more.

1600 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

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About the author

Leonard Maltin

184 books73 followers
Leonard Maltin, is an American film and animated-film critic and historian.

Maltin began his writing career at age fifteen, writing for Classic Images and editing and publishing his own fanzine, Film Fan Monthly, dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood. After receiving a journalism degree at New York University, Maltin went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, national news-papers, and magazines, including Variety and TV Guide.
Maltin in 1990

As an author, Maltin is best known for Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, (some editions titled as his ...Movie and Video Guide), a compendium of synopses and reviews that first appeared in September 1969 and has been annually updated since October 1987. (It was published under the title TV Movies until the 1990s, and in 2005 spawned a spin-off, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, limited to films released in 1960 and earlier to allow the regular book to cover a larger number of more recent titles.) He has also written several other works, including Behind the Camera, a study of the art of cinematography, The Whole Film Sourcebook, Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals, and Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.

Since May 29, 1982, Maltin has been the movie reviewer on the syndicated television series Entertainment Tonight. He also appears on the Starz cable network, and hosted his own syndicated radio program, Leonard Maltin on Video, as well as the syndicated TV show Hot Ticket with Boston film critic Joyce Kulhawik (originally E! personality and game show host Todd Newton). He currently hosts a television show entitled Secret's Out on ReelzChannel movie network. He also spearheaded the creation of the Walt Disney Treasures collectible DVD line in 2001,[4] and continues to provide creative input and host the various sets.

He appeared on Pyramid twice as a celebrity player, in 1987 on the CBS $25,000 version and in 1991 on the John Davidson version. He appeared on Super Password as a celebrity guest in 1988.

In the mid-1990s, he became the president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and is on the Advisory Board of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. For nearly a decade, Maltin was also on the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. He currently teaches in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

In 1998, Maltin settled a libel suit brought by former child star Billy Gray, of Father Knows Best fame, whom Maltin identified as a drug addict and dealer in his review of the film Dusty and Sweets McGee for the movie guide book. The statement appeared in print for nearly twenty-five years before Maltin publicly apologized for the error.[5]

He currently hosts "The Maltin Minute" for DirecTV customers. Maltin also teaches at the University of Southern California.

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Muzzlehatch.
149 reviews10 followers
September 28, 2008
Time for me to get a new Maltin guide I suppose, but I doubt that my opinion will be much different. The good -- Maltin manages to cover a larger number of the good, the bad, and the ugly, especially among American films of the sound era, than anybody else in a single volume, and the reviews are often quite pithy and fun to read. There are rarely significant errors; the editing on this series has always been excellent. The bad? Maltin's middlebrow tastes and his less-than-sterling coverage of non-English-language film doesn't jibe with my own elitist tastes -- although he does better than other, similar American guides generally. Which is why I still find him worth paying attention to, I guess.
102 reviews
May 1, 2009
Before IMBD took over the fucking world, there was Leonard Maltin. An encyclopedia of film knowledge. I spent hours drawing spider webs of knowledge through this book. It's a great resource.

A lot of his reviews are spot on, but some of them are way off the mark. He's not unbiased. Enjoy it. Hold something in your hands. The internet is, while interactive, still a synthetic phenomenon. You can smell this book.
3 reviews
September 10, 2010
Another film reference guide book I'm in. Would have to do HOURS of searching to find all of them but I'm in most all movie reference guides, or books referencing "low budget", "B films", Scream Queens & models of eferemd
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews