One of the big trends lately is leveraging the data on the Internet, taking a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B. Movienizer is a powerful program which leverages the Net to give you a leg up in documenting your movie collection.
Much like EMDB, it connects to online databases to download information about a movie. You enter the title (Star Wars, for example), and it shows possible matches–pick the one you really want (the original, where Han shot first!), and it then gets all the pertinent data. And some pictures. And a whole lot more.
Movienizer isn’t limited to one database, though. It comes with a huge built-in list of movie sites, and for those of you with eclectic tastes who enjoy watching grainy six-hour black-and-white films about people dying slowly of consumption, it includes many foreign language sites as well.
Beyond the simple look-up and download functions, Movienizer has many other features. One very nice one is the ability to add custom fields to your database. For example, I tend to rate movies as “Watch in theatre”, “Buy it on DVD” or “Wait for Netflix”. Movienizer allows me to add this easily as a field for each movie I add, so I can select for all of my “Buy on DVD” films. All of the other usual suspects are included–find all films starring a given actor, made in a given year, and so on.
I always admire a program that does things intuitively–the way you think they should be done. I decided to “Add Person”: Harrison Ford. He was added. Then I clicked one of the movies he appeared in, and was given the opportunity to download that. I then clicked an actor from that movie, and downloaded him. My database grew rapidly and easily.
One important note: When I first downloaded and installed the program, the default database included custom fields which were, apparently, in a language my system did not support, causing some menu items to appear to be gibberish. Creating a new, blank, database (which all users will want to do anyway) removed this problem.
Note: This program is donationware. It is free to try, but the author accepts and encourages donations towards further development.
–Ian Harac