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1993-03-27
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Microsoft Cinemania
Interactive Movie Guide
by Tony Curro
Cinemania is a CD-ROM disk for anyone interested in movies. It
contains a wealth of information: from biographies of movie
personalities, to snippets of dialogue from many films. See movie
stills, and hear dialogue of almost 100 movies from westerns and
science fiction, to drama and comedy, and more.
This is a multimedia disk conforming to MPC standards. You can
access text and graphics only if you do not have a sound card.
However, to truly enjoy this disk, you should have a sound card.
Either way you do need MS Windows, VGA display, 386SX or better CPU.
Once started, Cinemania has a remote-control type interface, that
you use to select all you options. There is a TV-like screen on the
control, where you will see photos and other information. There is
also a narrated, animated introductory tutorial that explains many
aspects of the program.
For example I selected Humphrey Bogart. Below his picture you would
click for biography or filmography. In biography mode you will read
a bio of Bogart, with selected film highlights, and other pertinent
information. Filmography will show the year, file title, and what he
did (actor, producer, etc.). There are biographies, and
filmographies of almost 3,000 personalities.
In a TV-like window there is a clock in the center surrounded by up
to 4 symbols. The clock designates running time for the picture in
question. The others, clockwise from upper left denote: Rating,
Color or B/W, Awards (if nominated or won), and video cassette
availability. The bottom two will not appear in all selections.
In all there are capsule reviews of almost 19,000 movies from
Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide 1992, plus detailed reviews of
classic and recent movies from Baseline's Motion Picture Guide.
There is a complete list of all Academy Award nominees and winners,
from the award's inception in 1927 until 1991. The CD will be
updated periodically by Microsoft to keep the information current.
You can get context-sensitive help for any current screen.
Cinemania provides portraits of many stars of today and yesterday.
In many cases when viewing information about a personality or a
movie, you will see the text underlined, and in blue.
Double-clicking on this will take you to another area. For example,
I was viewing movie information on 2001:A Space Odyssey. It mentions
the director, Stanley Kubrick, whose name was in blue.
Double-clicking on it took me to his bio. There I saw his picture
and other information as mentioned above. Clicking on the blue text
in the bio information will take me to other information, or to
another movie he was involved in. This hypertext way of information
retrieval is very well done, and easy to navigate through. You can
wade through a lot of related information quickly and easily.
In movie parlance, do you know what CDS means? I thought in was an
abbreviation for compact disks (CDs). I was wrong. CDS means Cinema
Digital Sound. How about FPS? That is Frames Per Second. These are
just two of the hundreds of bits of information that you will find
in the Glossary. All movie related terms and phrases, even those in
other languages, are concisely explained.
One of the dialogues is, Al Pacino, from 'The Godfather.' To
paraphrase Al, "Microsoft made you an offer you can't refuse." If
you like movies, are curious about movies, or just like to learn
things, you MUST get Cinemania. It is well worth the price of
admission. However, due to rising costs, popcorn is not supplied.
This must be purchased separately.
Product Information
Microsoft Cinemania
Interactive Movie Guide
CD-ROM (supports MPC standard)
List Price $79.95
Microsoft Corp.
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
206-882-8080