Review of CD-ROM based Film Encyclopedias

For the last three or four years, the computer industry has been convinced that the widespread adoption of CD-ROM discs is just around the corner. Software developers can store text equivalent to a several-volume encyclopedia, plus still pictures, sound and even video clips on a single CD. If you have a computer, all you need to read it is a specially modified CD player, costing as little as £150.

Unsurprisingly, one of the first consumer applications for this new medium has been putting reference works onto discs for computers to access, and some of the first of these have been film guides.

The first question that leaps to mind, of course, is 'why bother?' Most cinephiles already have inexpensive, portable, random-access, paper-based guides (books) that they are quite contented with. The new breed of film guide costs from £45, and you need to have access to a computer to be able to read it.

The answer lies primarily with the flexibility of access that a computer gives to data. Conventional reference books are designed to be searched one way - most film guides are sorted alphabetically by title. Fine when you want to find a review of a film whose title you know, but what if you want to find reviews of all of the films by Woody Allen? You have to go to the index and flick back and forth through the book to look at each one. If you want to find of his films which contain Diane Keaton and received or was nominated for one or more academy awards, the task becomes very tedious.

This is just the kind of work which computers find easy. Once I'd started mine and put in the relevant disc, I was able to perform the above search in a minute and ten seconds. For the true film buff or the researcher, this facility alone may make the expenditure worthwhile, but some of the guides, Microsoft's Cinemania '94 in particular, offer much more than this. Not only can you view stills of your favorite actors and actresses (as you could in a book), you can also hear dialogue and music from your favorite films, or even short video clips.

At the moment, due to the limitations of today's personal computers, video clips have to be kept short (usually less than two minutes), and the quality of the result is poor. Even on a fast computer, the image is only about one inch by two - on an average machine, movement can also be jerky. In the next few years, however, full-screen moving pictures will become widely available on CD-ROMs, though there are still numerous problems to be overcome before this can happen.

Consumer electronics companies think full-screen video will help them to bring computers into the home, disguised as consoles which will provide games, education and eventually home shopping. Both Philips and Commodore now have Video CD add-ons costing £149 to £199 for their CD-I and CD32 consoles which enable them to play back up to 72 minutes of video on a single disc, and Paramount is busy putting several of its films onto Video CD discs. Nimbus claims to be able to adapt similar technology to squeeze twice as much onto a CD and plans an in-expensive add-on for the most modern audio CD players to let them play back films. Thanks to these advances, a number of other major firms plan to build machines of their own with similar abilities.

Not many years hence, if the industry's vision of the future is correct, you will be able to leaf through a film guide on your TV screen, watch a few trailers stored on your disc, and when you have found your choice of viewing for the evening, it will be sent down the cable and into your living room.

Even as they are, however, CD-based reference works have plenty to offer. The first choice for most people will be Microsoft's Cinemania ‘94, which costs around £45 and is available for IBM PC compatibles and the Apple Macintosh. Unlike competing guides, it includes information from several different reference works, and it has far more "added extras" - sound, pictures and the like.

The main reference work it is based on is Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 1992, which contains mini-reviews and simple cast information for 19,346 films, but there are several other sources of information provided. Baseline's Motion Picture Guide gives detailed reviews of 902 films, there are 2,600 short reviews by Pauline Kael, more than 1,300 reviews by Roger Ebert, biographies of nearly 4,000 film people and articles on movie topics from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film plus a glossary of film terms from James Monaco's How To Read A Film - all linked together.

If your favorite Woody Allen films all have Diane Keaton in them, you could go on to read a mini-biography, find all of the films she has been in, and find both a small picture of her and a larger still from Annie Hall.

Altogether it includes more than 150 snatches of dialogue (you'll need a sound card to hear them), 100 snatches of movie music, 2,000 still pictures and 20 short film clips.

Halliwell's Interactive Film Guide is the chief competition in this country - it costs about the same, runs only on the Apple Macintosh, and covers around 18,000 films. While the amount of coverage given on each film varies, few have more than a paragraph or two of review, plus occaisionally a few selected sentences from other reviewers. The cast and credits are fairly comprehensive, but unfortunately the guide fails to identify which character is played by each actor or actress.

Since it is British and Cinemania is American, you might expect Halliwell's to give better coverage of foreign films, but while Cinemania misses a few items, both cover the high points of foreign cinema pretty well. Although Cinemania doesn't have an entry for Un Chien Andalou, it does contain a three-page biographical sketch of Bunuel, for example, and a complete filmography, plus capsule reviews and details of 19 of the 42 films he was involved with. Halliwell's does include Un Chien Andalou, but it only has details of 17 of the films. Halliwell’s does have better coverage of early films, however. Cinemania only has films from 1914 onward - Halliwell’s has six films before that date, and Cinemania covers 24 films before 1922, while Halliwell’s offers 61. The search facilities for the Halliwell guide are also slightly better for the serious researcher, but since the only multimedia elements provided are 200 still pictures, and since it lacks Cinemania's numerous supporting texts, it is hard to recommend it except to Halliwell fans.

Last, but not necessarily least is Paramount Interactive's Movie Select disc. It is aimed less at the film buff than the bored video viewer and each entry only mentions the director and a few principal performers plus a perfunctory plot summary, but it has details of no fewer than 44,000 videos and a search mechanism aimed specifically at helping you find a film you want to watch.

First you tell it three of your favorite films, then it pops up a list of about ten and asks you which of them you enjoyed. Once you’ve answered the questions, it will produce up a list of suggestions for future viewing in one of 19 different subject areas (including ‘adult’ X rated entertainment), based on the recommendations of a panel of viewers with similar tastes.

I was prepared to slate it for lacking coverage of foreign films, but while it doesn’t compare here to Cinemania or Halliwell’s, I was won over - it has mentions for nineteen of Bunuel’s films, for example (including Un Chien Andalou) and 34 Bergman films, so its coverage will certainly be broad enough for most consumers. It costs £58.69 and is available for the Apple Macintosh or IBM PC compatibles. Best of all, it is also available on floppy disks, so you can use it even if you have no intention of buying a CD-ROM player.

All I want for Christmas 1994 is a single disc with Cinemania's wealth of detail and glossy presentation, Halliwell's breadth of coverage of early films, Paramount's clever film picking technology and hundreds of full-screen film clips. To use that alone would justify the purchase of a £1,200 computer, a £300 CD-ROM drive and a £60 disc. Wouldn't it?