Hey, did you see the Oscars? Me neither. If you need the highlights, check out Backup Brain: Dori Smith blogged the whole thing, as she does every year.

But right now I am not talking about the Oscars, I am talking about movies. Yahoo has introduced a shortcut to allow you to search on movie titles and location and get a nice chunk of information at the top of your search results.

Enter a current movie and a location — city and state or zip code. Sometimes just city will work — “Detroit” worked. A search for Happy Feet 90210 got a listing that showed a promo picture, links to information at Yahoo Movies, ratings from Yahoo and critics (with links to each) and movie showtimes for the area of Beverly Hills. (There was only one.) And hey, there was even a note that Happy Feet won the Academy Award for best animated feature. Hey, that was quick.

In addition to current features the shortcut also works on upcoming features. I did a search for 300 Detroit and got a promo picture, link to a trailer, link to a Yahoo Movies summary, and the release date, and that was about it. No critical reviews as of yet and of course it isn’t showing anywhere.

Occasionally I did a search that didn’t bring me anything — a search for Rocky Balboa New York NY brought me no shortcut, much to my surprise. Also Yahoo doesn’t seem to list all available theaters. I did a search for Ghost Rider Durham NC, and while Yahoo Movies listed a huge number of places where the movie’s showing, it missed the Starlite Drive In.

All in all, though, this is a great place to start your search for current movies — it’s amazing how much information they can cram into one little shortcut! But if you want to make sure you’re getting all the viewing options, you might want to check the theater listings in your local area’s media.

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