Michal Marek The CrazyApps development studio, headed by a young man from Český Krumlov, Tomáš Perzl, and his colleague from Bratislava, Vladimír Krajčovič, is known all over the world for its highly successful application teevee. Since its first version released in 2011, this handy tool for TV series lovers has made it its mission to provide the user with all the essential information about their favorite series. At a time when TeeVee is already in the App Store with serial number 3, the developers are coming up with a completely new MooVee application that wants to build on the success of its predecessor.
MooVee comes with the same philosophy as TeeVee, but instead of fans of series, it targets fans of the most traditional of television formats, which was created by the Lumière brothers. The application offers an extensive database of movies that draws from an open database themoviedb.org and, like TeeVee, MooVee is a tool that lets you manage a list of the titles you're interested in and learn everything you need to know about them. In addition, the application allows you to be notified of the arrival of the selected film in cinemas and, unlike TeeVee, it also brings a certain level of discovery. But more on that later.
Watchlist and catalog in one
If we look directly at the interface of the application, we will find that its central area is the so-called "Watchlist". Here, the app collects your selected movies in three different tabs – To Watch, Watched and Favorites. Movies are arranged neatly in these tabs in previews below each other, which always consist of a cutout of the movie poster and the title of the movie.
If you are wondering how you can actually get movies into individual sections of the Watchlist, just use the side panel, in the upper part of which you will find a search box. As soon as you start typing in it, the application starts whispering to you the names of the movies in parentheses, complete with the year of their release. Thanks to the high-quality database, you can easily find the picture you are looking for (including Czech films) and, using the appropriate button and the clever context menu, you can easily include it in one of the lists.
But now back to the Watchlist. Each film in its overview offers a very pleasant and minimalistic "Description" card, the background of which is the movie poster of the respective film. In the middle of the poster you will find the standard play button to start the official trailer for the movie and at the bottom of the screen you will see the name of the movie along with important information such as title, year of release, length of film, country of origin, genre and last but not least the average score on the scale from 0 to 10. The rating of the film is also taken from the original database, but you can easily participate in it as well. Just tap your finger on the point value and then make your own evaluation.
If you scroll down this tab, you will also discover more information about the film. The application offers an annotation of the picture, information about the director, information about the author of the artwork, as well as the ratio between the budget and earnings. However, below the dry information, there is still a handy section offering content from iTunes related to the film. In this way, you can simply download the entire film, its book copy or soundtrack from Apple's media store through the application. At the very bottom, there are buttons for sharing and for going to the IMDb movie database.
In addition to the "Description" tab, there are also "Actors", "Gallery" and "Similar" tabs available for each movie. For example, the user can easily click on a specific actor from a given film and immediately find out in which other images he can be seen. The "Similar" tab is great for expanding your movie horizons when you're looking for a movie related to the one you're interested in.
In the area of the Watchlist, it is certainly worth mentioning the function of a kind of random selection, which is available in the To Watch section. This function is available under the well-known "shuffle" symbol, which we know, for example, from music players, and it is great for indecisive users who simply cannot choose the picture they want to watch from their list. The elegant way of controlling with gestures, which allows you to conveniently sort movies across the Watchlist, cannot be overlooked either. Simply flick your finger across the film from right to left and options will immediately appear allowing you to reassign the film to the list of viewed, favorites or delete it from the Watchlist.
However, MooVee is not just a manager of the lists described above. It also works as a capable movie catalog. In the side panel, in addition to search and Watchlist, you will also find the item "Browse" and "Discover". The first of these two sections features an overview of current films, in which you can filter films according to individual criteria (In cinemas, Upcoming, Favorites) and also according to genre. The "Discover" catalog then works simply by compiling a list of movies similar to those you have marked as favorites in your Watchlist.
Is MooVee worth buying?
After a detailed description of what MooVee looks like and what it can actually do, a question comes up. Is it worth buying the app for less than two euros? Will this app find a permanent place on the iPhone desktop? Personally, I have to admit that it definitely does on mine. After testing the beta version for a few weeks, I totally fell for MooVee. Some may argue that MooVee only offers a fraction of the information compared to ČSFD, for example. It does not contain actor and director biographies or rankings and user reviews. However, the purpose of the application is different.
MooVee is a beautiful app with a modern user interface and an app that does what it's supposed to do perfectly. Every control or graphic element is carefully thought out and nothing remains in the application. MooVee is a clear movie catalog that provides a reasonable amount of relevant information and presents it in the most elegant way possible.
However, MooVee's main strength lies in its Watchlist feature. If you've ever found yourself in a situation where someone recommended a movie to you and you jotted down its title, but never thought about it again, MooVee will surely be appreciated. In short, you can easily search for a film, you can immediately see what the film is, and if it interests you, you can add it to the watch list. Then when you watch the movie, you simply move it to the corresponding list and you always have a perfect view of which movie you saw, which movie you want to see and which movie you liked.
In addition, using MooVee is incredibly simple and intuitive. You don't have to log in anywhere, you don't have to search for anything, everything is simply always at hand in a natural way. The support for synchronization and backup via iCloud is also nice, so you don't have to worry about losing the contents of your Watchlist. A large amount of work was also done on the localization of the application. In addition to a number of world languages, it has also been translated into Czech and Slovak.
According to the official information provided by the developer, we can also look forward to other big news in the future. At CrazyApps, they are already working on version 1.1, which should bring a widget to the Notification Center with an overview of current movies, as well as synchronization through the Trakt.TV service.
[app url=https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/moovee-your-movies-guru/id933512980?mt=8]
I don't quite understand the added value against the IMDB application (maybe except for Czech). The acclaimed watch list is also there, and from IMDB it is possible to work with it - for example, to integrate with CouchPotato. This seems like a waste of money to me.
For all this, I use the application and the ČSFD portal to my full satisfaction. I have an overview of what I want to see, what I've seen and what films I have in my collection. In addition, I can look into the profile of related users and thus find a tip for an interesting movie to watch.
I originally wanted to try the app, but when I saw that it was from CrazyApps, I lost my appetite. I am still waiting (about a year) for a reply to the e-mail where I reported the malfunctioning synchronization of the TeeVee application between iPhone and iPad. Not really with that attitude.