Though some arguments reveal their armature and a few essays read long, Schickel lays his words out cleanly and is ready for...
Garbo to Fargo spans the range of this prickly grab bag by the Time reviewer.
In the introduction to this collection of essays (his favorite form), Schickel (Clint Eastwood: A Biography, 1996; Brando: A Life in Our Times, 1991; etc.) cites his purpose and method. As collective movie memory erodes through deaths and the transience of popular culture, Schickel aims to preserve parts of the move past by examining film with “the same kind of rigor and passion…that any good historian will bring to explorations of other aspects of the past.” Rather than constraining him, this goal opens him to easy, informed pieces that re-create the film world. Among the most free and revealing are the profiles of Charles Laughton and Andrew Sarris, the former for explicating Laughton’s joyful artistic flamboyance, the latter for recalling the battles incited by the American Cinema and the unaffectedness of its creator. All of the profiles share an urgency and sureness befitting a man who, like profile subject Clint Eastwood, is “on the back nine” of life. They exhort readers to remember Irene Dunne or Satyajit Ray or King Vidor – and Schickel will tell you why. Less convincing (but ripe for debate) are the thought pieces. The observations (such as the reasons behind the AFI best-of-the-century list tilt toward midcentury films) are pithy, but some arguments are weak (like the speculation on how the absence of censorship might have made the Golden Age of movies even more golden – yes, and what if Napoleon had an Uzi…). But he prefers Notorious to Vertigo and so is redeemed.
Though some arguments reveal their armature and a few essays read long, Schickel lays his words out cleanly and is ready for the parry. Read it when you want a conversation with an ideal common viewer.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56663-260-9
Page Count: 305
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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