(View entire post here)

Saying you're in the reference-book business in 2009 is viewed in some circles as amusing, at best, and preposterous, at worst. I've been asked more than once why anyone would still labor over an annual volume like Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide when with a few clicks "you can find everything you want about a movie online."

My answer is simple: you can't. I know, because my colleagues and I derive the information in our book from first-hand resources, sweating the details inch by bloody inch. We've added 350 new reviews this year and each one offers its own challenges, about spelling, punctuation, plot points, and what can only be described as minutiae.

When a movie opens on 5,000 screens on the same day, how can The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Daily Variety report entirely different running times? Yet they do, all the time. (Will Smith's Seven Pounds was screened for the Hollywood trade papers before the closing credits were added on, so it was listed at 118 minutes. By the time it opened in theaters it was 125 minutes, but the damage had been done: many sources copied the 118m. figure. That's how mistakes get perpetuated.)

Why, when a familiar-looking character actor has a sizeable role in a new film, is his name not included in the cast lists you find on the movie's official web site? 

Getting it right is the goal, and that means ferreting out information about bad movies as well as good. In a reference book all films are created equal. And when I make a mistake, I hear about it right away from our sharp-eyed readers. Fortunately, I always have next year's edition to make amends.

Hey, I'm the guy who once walked up to Daniel Day-Lewis at a Los Angeles Film Critics Association luncheon to ask if there was a hyphen in his name. (At the time, press releases and even movie posters were wildly inconsistent on this point.) He couldn't have been more gracious in telling me that there was. I wish getting the answers to my questions was always that simple and direct!  

 Leonard Maltin, movies, cinema, films, movie reviews, entertainment, books, Penguin Books