Leonard Maltin is bidding farewell to his wonderful Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. The 2015 edition, which goes on sale this week, is supposed to be the last. I have a feeling it won't be but he doesn't seem to feel that way so we'll go with his view of it. I do understand though that in the age of computers, it's a lot easier to look things up online than to page through a 73,000 page paperback. Here, Leonard has some remarks about the end of what has been a 45 year labor o' love for him, his spouse and his crew.
We should weep not so much for the end of that book in book form as for the end of what Leonard calls "curated information," which refers to someone actually doing the legwork to confirm facts before releasing them to the public. Every single human being who has a page at the Internet Movie Database can tell you more than a dozen things that are missing or just plain wrong on their page. I have witnessed first-hand (and occasionally aided) Leonard's mania to get things right.
I received a paperback copy free last week but have paid for the Kindle edition because I think it will be handy to have in that format…and frequently consulted.
(P.S. If you're in the Los Angeles area, Leonard is signing printed copies this Saturday at 5 PM up at Book Soup on Sunset. If you see his wife Alice there, get her to sign your copy, too. She's really the brains of that operation.)