Finding movie times, as cool as Apple's Sherlock used to be.

June 7, 2007 11:11 AM

I need a Mac app that will let me search for movies and showtimes like Sherlock used to.

Sherlock would let you type in a zip code or city/state, and it would present all of the movies or theaters in that area. You'd pick either a movie or a theater in the first column, and it would tell you where it was playing, or what movies were playing at a specific theater. Drilling down further would show you movie times.

But the best part was just below all of this, when you'd get a synopsis, a movie poster image, and a quicktime preview of the movie trailer, loaded automatically.

A few years ago, the company in charge of hosting the movie trailers stopped that service, so now I can get /almost/ everything I want, but I really miss Sherlock's ability to handle all of this very cleanly.

I suspect there's some ajax-ified website that will do all of this now, so I'll accept answers that mention websites, as long as they deliver the same intuitive searchability.

Top points for a mac app or dashboard widget that provides all of these functions.

posted by Wild_Eep to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Google "movies zipcode"? Then click on the 'More movies', and you can see the times for each film, or click on a cinema name for what it's showing.

Or there's a Dashboard widget that links to trailers and Fandango's ticket-buying service, but no synopses.
posted by holgate at 11:27 AM on June 7, 2007

I use MovieFone (aka movies.aol.com). It's not as slick as Sherlock was, but it gets the job done.
posted by bradlands at 11:27 AM on June 7, 2007

There are several dashboard widgets that do this. Don't need a website. Just look here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/movie_tv/showtime.html

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Dashboard-Widgets/Movies-TV/RADMovieTimes.shtml
posted by luriete at 11:28 AM on June 7, 2007

I also have the Box Office Dashboard widget, which links to info/trailers from a variety of sources, including IMDb and Yahoo!.
posted by bradlands at 11:33 AM on June 7, 2007

As always with Mac software, your best bet is to check out I Use This. If there is free-, donation-, shareware out there, it's on this site.
posted by sneakin at 11:34 AM on June 7, 2007

??? Sherlock still works just fine for me. 10.4.9.
posted by buxtonbluecat at 12:14 PM on June 7, 2007

Okay, so you don't get the poster and trailer. But times, synopsis - is that not enough?
posted by buxtonbluecat at 12:22 PM on June 7, 2007

Seconding buxtonbluecat, I use Sherlock all the time in 10.4.9.
posted by dseaton at 12:45 PM on June 7, 2007

FYI: The poster knows about Sherlock still working, but he/she is specifically looking for solutions that provide the poster and trailer as well as the times and summaries.
posted by Loto at 1:30 PM on June 7, 2007

Watson, in it's current form, has been abandoned with the codebase and rights for all future versions sold to Sun. But the developer posted a final version with a free registration code.
posted by nathan_teske at 5:05 PM on June 7, 2007

Apparently Apple just introduced a widget called Movie Times which will do all of these things (and allow you to buy tickets from Fandango). Not sure if it will function with 10.4, or only with 10.5.
posted by thejoshu at 10:51 AM on June 11, 2007