Taylor has taken his love for a specific film and turned it into something greater—a beautiful compendium of not just...
Loaded with archival material, Taylor’s coffee table book captures the impact a major Hollywood production can have on the area in which it was filmed, as well as the people who live there.
There have been dozens of books about the making of Steven Spielberg’s wildly influential 1975 film Jaws, but never before has the production been so exhaustedly chronicled from the viewpoint of the outsiders—the men and women of Martha’s Vineyard whose lives were turned upside-down by the making of the movie. It’s shocking that this many black-and-white photographs of the filmmaking process were even taken during the much-chronicled production, let alone that Taylor and his team were able to track them all down and, most importantly, provide context and continuity to link them into a gorgeously produced coffee table book; much more than a mere series of pretty stills, Taylor’s work ambitiously offers what amounts to a nearly scene-by-scene accounting of the making of one of history’s most-beloved films. The volume is so impressive that Spielberg himself penned the foreword, in which he seems truly grateful for the anecdotal history provided by Taylor. Divided into six chapters that cover events from the pre-production in the winter of 1973 to the film’s release on June 20th, 1975, the book intercuts archival material, such as newspaper clippings from the era and hundreds of never-before-seen photos taken by local bystanders, with interviews from both sides of the production—the locals and the filmmakers. The result is a remarkable collection of viewpoints that chronicles how a film can impact a locale, from the men and women cast as extras to the mailman derailed by street closures. It’s a wonderfully diverse array of interview subjects, not merely focusing on the people credited at the end of the film.
Taylor has taken his love for a specific film and turned it into something greater—a beautiful compendium of not just memorabilia, but commentary on the importance of community in the art of filmmaking.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983350200
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Moonrise Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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