Rave reviews for review sites

Have you ever wished that you had seen a review before going to the movies or spending your hard-earned money on a hardcover book or music CD? You're in luck! There are a number of good review sites on the Internet that let you search and read reviews of popular and not-so-popular titles.

For movies, whether you go to the movie theater or rent one to watch at home, Cinemachine http://www.cinemachine.com/ is a movie-review search engine that provides listings of movie reviews for films of all genres. Cinemachine gathers hundreds of movie reviews of new releases, classic films, popular hits and independent features in one convenient listing. The information is current, since it searches the Web every day for new movie reviews from leading newspapers and online film sites, including The Chicago Sun Times, Cinemania, Mr. Showbiz Movie Guide, The New York Times, ReelViews, USA Today, Variety and The Washington Post.

Searching Cinemachine is easy. You can search for a film title or select one from the New Releases menu. In addition, there is a weekly recommendations list for scoops on the best new films. You can search for reviews by entering a film's full title in the search box and it will return a list of reviews for that film. If you are unsure of a title or the spelling, you can enter one or two words contained in the title and it will return a list of titles that closely match your search.

For book reviews, The New York Times on the Web: Books http://www.nytimes.com/books/ is a good site to find full-text reviews, news and author interviews. Registration is required, but it is free of charge. It includes the complete New York Times Book Review, daily book-related news and reviews, and a searchable archive from 1980 to the present of more than 50,000 New York Times book reviews, bestseller lists and more. In addition, every week, The New York Times on the Web brings you a new selection of first chapters from books reviewed in The New York Times Book Review or that appear on The New York Times bestseller lists.

There are two sites recommended for music reviews: Reviews & Preview Online and Music Boulevard. Billboard's Reviews & Previews Online http://www.billboard-online.com/reviews/ has a searchable archive of more than 30,000 entries from 1970 to the present. You can search by artist, title, genre, producer or keyword. Many reviews come with audio samples that can be heard with the Liquid Audio player, which can be downloaded for free. Music Boulevard http://www.musicblvd.com/, an online, retail music store, is another useful site for music reviews. Not only does it have more than 200,000 titles on CD, cassette tape and vinyl that you can purchase, it also provides music news, reviews and artists information. You can search for a particular artist, album or song and your results will list reviews, song samples, track listings and more.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Sue Neumeister and Lori Widzinski, University Libraries