Cinemania '94

    Reviewed by Alex van Kaam, used on a 486 DX2 66 Mhz.

Installing was a breeze, the program makes a program group in
Windows and that's it.  Clicking on the Cinemania icon runs the
program ... and that is where the first and only problem was, the
graphics were completely wrong. After a bit of trying out it
appeared that Cinemania didn't run right with the graphics turbo
drivers that came with my card.  Fixing this from the setup was
easy and after that all worked well.

So time to try it out......and before I knew the whole afternoon
was gone....

How, well it all works is so simple, you can search for a film,
read the reviews (up to four on one movie) and if available you
can watch a film still, hear the film music, and if you're lucky
you can even hear dialogue from the film and if you're really
lucky there is also a film clip available.

But there is more, you can also see what prizes the movie won, you
can click on the director or actor and see a personal biography
and a film biography on that person and until now all the actors
I looked at had a photo going with it.

Here are some numbers so you now what I'm talking about,
19000 reviews of Leonard Maltin's movie and video guide 1994
 1300 reviews of Roger Ebert's video companion
 2500 reviews of Pauline Kael's 5001 nights at the movie
 ???? reviews of the motion picture guide, the encyclopaedia of
                 film, how to read a film and the film
                 encyclopaedia
 4000 biographics and filmographics of movie stars
 2000 pictures of movie stars and other film figures
  150 dialogues of famous films
  100 music pieces and songs
   20 movie scenes of the best films of all time
      and the complete list of awards.

Phew, well now you know how big it is, and therefore it isn't
always fast but in return you get some perfect info back.  Being
so big there are of course some errors like Shirley Temple who is
born in 1936 and made her first movie in 1930 (not bad), but all
in all this is a great package, and before you know it a whole
afternoon is gone. Say you look at the 'King and I' and you click
on Yul Brunner, you see his biography and his filmography, here
you see he also played in The Brothers Caramazov, you click on
this film and you see that here he played with Richard Basehart
you click on him and......... well, you'll get the drift by now.

Sure, there are always movies or actors that aren't in it but
these are mostly very lousy movies so nothing is lost.

If you are interested in movies and in some extra info about them
and you of course have your favourite movie star(s) then this is a
must.

The only thing that could be improved are MORE clips............
                              - o -