I know, I know: the idea of publishing a reference book in the age of instant communication sounds positively quaint. But the 2011 Edition of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide is just out, in two paperback formats—mass-market and a larger “trade size”—still alive and kicking after forty-one years (!). True, we can’t offer the immediacy of the Internet, but I still think the book is relevant, and so do a substantial number of readers around the world, thank goodness. We’ve added 300 new reviews, as recent as Sex and the City 2 and Iron Man 2, bringing the book up to a whopping 1,643 pages, and as always we’ve made hundreds and hundreds of changes, corrections, and additions. If a film is remade or followed by a sequel, turned into a TV series or Broadway play, we say so. If an actor who wasn’t well known when a film was—
—made is now recognizable, we add him or her to our cast list, or point out their appearance. We’ve noted early credits for Jay Baruchel, Thomas Jane, Jane Lynch, Bill Nighy, Michael Cera, Rainn Wilson, January Jones, Jeremy Piven, Jane Adams, Hugh Laurie, Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, and Jonah Hill, among others, this time around.
It’s a point of personal satisfaction to lead people to good movies they might not otherwise watch, and in this edition we cite such worthy small-scale films as Summer Hours, In the Loop, The Answer Man, The Tiger’s Tail, Five Minutes of Heaven, Big Fan, World’s Greatest Dad, That Evening Sun, The Maid, Trucker, Me and Orson Welles, and Skin. I hope our reviews will inspire some readers to try them out.
Most of all, my valued team of collaborators and I work very hard to be as accurate as possible, whether it’s confirming a running time or the spelling of an actor’s name. When we do make a mistake, our readers let us know and we’re able to fix the problem in our next edition.
I’m awfully lucky to have a great team working with me, led by managing editor Darwyn Carson, and peopled by dedicated film buffs who are also detail-oriented. My thanks go out to Luke Sader, Mike Clark, Rob Edelman, Spencer Green, Pete Hammond, Joe Leydon, Michael Scheinfeld, Bill Warren, Casey St. Charnez, Jerry Beck, and my daughter Jessie Maltin for sticking with this project year after year.
