A wonderful trip down movie Memory Lane.
A legendary actor and director reflects on the innumerable films he watched during his first decades as an audience member.
This first book in Reiner’s (Tell Me a Silly Story, 2010, etc.) two-volume pictorial memoir is essentially an opulently produced memory album commemorating many of the earliest movies he watched in a lifetime devoted to film, with the selections dating from the early 20th century to 1950. The book is heavy and generously oversized, and as memoirs go, it takes the unconventional approach of being 90 percent visual: page after page of large period photographs and gorgeous full-color posters accompanied by minimal text comments from the author along the way. He consistently quotes from reviews of the movies in question, but the draw of the volume remains his own reflections. Some of those reactions are jaundiced (about William Wyler’s 1939 Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, for instance, he grouses: “Fine actors perform in a beautiful love story, but I prefer beautiful love stories where the lovers don’t separate and then die”). And some are winningly idiosyncratic (as when the author presents 1940’s The Mark of Zorro and talks about its famously charismatic star: “Nobody would argue if you said that Tyrone Power was the handsomest leading man of his day and if they did, it’s likely they never saw him in ‘The Mark of Zorro’ ”). A large part of the work’s delight is the way it brings so many of these indelible old movies back into the spotlight, often in touchingly personal tones, as when Reiner mentions 1946’s Stairway to Heaven: “Even though I’m a confirmed atheist I was able to suspend my beliefs so I could enjoy the prospect of climbing the myriad of steps on The Stairway to Heaven so I might, once again, see the deceased members of my beloved family and also my old and dear friends.” The book delivers a series of pleasant surprises, as each film sparks some new memory or quip from a man who’s lived a great deal of Hollywood history himself and frequently recounts meetings with some of the titans of the industry’s golden age.
A wonderful trip down movie Memory Lane.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9995182-0-5
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Random Content Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience...
This compelling memoir of a German girl’s bitter, frightening life reveals the horrors visited upon an average family caught between two of the most cruel dictators in history.
Amidst the copious histories of Hitler and Stalin, historians have often neglected the horrific tales of innocent girls like Schulze, who early in World War II survived Nazi occupation, then was forced to hide in a secret attic for months at war’s end to escape sexual attacks from the invading rampages of the Russians. The Russian soldiers pillaged her tiny village of Doelitz, where women scrubbed their faces with ashes and dirt to make themselves unappealing to the Red Army’s serial rapists. With professional writer Collier’s help, Schulze tells a ground-level story that is at once haunting and shocking in its narration of ordinary, peaceful lives shattered forever by war. The small, poignant touches are riveting–the family’s favorite horse being dragged away to haul artillery; their argument about whether to follow Nazi orders to display Hitler’s portrait. Her inspiring story concludes with the long, harrowing struggle to escape to West Germany, followed by a months-long wait for a berth on a ship bound for America. Her first tastes of ice cream and pineapple aboard the ship are a fitting climax to a tale of never-ending stress and fear–and ultimately, redemption.
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience of all ages.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-58348-072-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.
An intriguing if sometimes ponderous examination of man's place in the universe.
Bartow creates a systematic philosophic framework for integrating concepts from diverse disciplines, such as astrology, psychology, metaphysics, theology, eastern and western mysticism and quantum physics. The author uses complex–and often unintelligible–diagrams to create a visual representation of the corporeal and spiritual universe, building layers of complexity that illustrate the dynamic interaction of mind, matter, energy and spirituality. He divides man’s perception of the universe into objective and subjective categories with distinctive subcategories, using piano keys as the primary metaphor–the black keys represent the objective planes, embodied in the concrete laws of science, and the white keys represent the subjective interior planes. The author makes frequent use of the philosophies from such ancient traditions as the Kabbalah, Buddhism, the teachings of Don Juan and Tibetan thought. The massive scope of Bartow’s vision eventually becomes overwhelming, and the esoteric nature of the study will deter casual readers. Ultimately, however, the text will prove thought-provoking and rewarding for the diligent.
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9760863-0-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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