by Alex Cox ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2008
Suggests that director commentary is best left to the special-features disc.
An iconic independent filmmaker looks back on his career.
Cox has spent nearly 30 years in the movie business as a director (Sid & Nancy), screenwriter (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and journalist. This book documents the production of ten films. Fresh from UCLA film school, Briton Cox made Edge City for less than $10,000 and internalized the first four of many dictums about low-budget filmmaking sprinkled throughout the text: Don’t shoot where you live (you might cause damage); there are benefits to casting yourself (one less mouth to feed); leave actors’ disputes to their agents; befriend the rich. In 1982 Cox set up a production company and wrote Repo Man, a teen comedy inspired by an acquaintance’s side job and by Southern California’s rowdy music scene. (The book can also be read as a parallel history of L.A. punk.) A friend passed the Repo Man script to former Monkee Michael Nesmith, who brokered a production deal with Universal Pictures. Creating a studio picture, even at moderate cost, was a struggle for the indie-minded director. “If you think this movie’s going to have a punk rock soundtrack, Cox,” Nesmith told him, “think again.” Assertive co-star Harry Dean Stanton unfavorably compared the fledgling director to Francis Ford Coppola, who “let me do whatever the fuck I want!” Cox survived to work on Walker in 1987 with the equally challenging Ed Harris, whose visible hangovers didn’t befit a teetotaling 19th-century revolutionary. The author gives a thorough account of his evolution as a filmmaker, from single-camera projects to transatlantic locales, legal vetting for Sid & Nancy and support from the Sandinistas for the controversial Walker shoot in Nicaragua. Indeed, his overstuffed narrative could stand to lose a few of its agreeable but sometimes tangential anecdotes. They could make room for explanations of technical terms like a split-diopter shot, since the book is clearly aimed at general readers.
Suggests that director commentary is best left to the special-features disc.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59376-193-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
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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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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