An illuminating collection of film criticism that is like a critical history of rock as exemplified by garage bands and...
Critical perception is laced with love in this appreciation of the B-movies and exploitation flicks of the 1970s, which remain “the third—and, to date, last—great period in American movies.”
An astute critic of film and popular culture in general, Taylor is often drawn to the grittier vitality of the dark underbelly. This collection of critical essays will provide revelation for many—readers who have never heard of most of these movies—but it also serves as vindication for the movie geeks who know exactly where Quentin Tarantino finds inspiration. The author celebrates the emergence of directors Walter Hill and Jonathan Demme, the coronation of Sam Peckinpah, and the riveting onscreen presence of Warren Oates, Charles Bronson, and particularly Pam Grier. Most of these essays are about something larger than just one particular film, and the homage to Grier, “A Queen Without a Throne: Coffy and Foxy Brown,” is particularly ambitious, showing how institutional racism contributes to the systemic underuse of great black actresses and how some of the forces that were at work in the rise of the blaxploitation trend anticipated the popular emergence of hip-hop. “Like the gangsta images of hip-hop,” writes Taylor, “blaxploitation offered a disreputable form of feel-good minstrelsy.” He continues: “there’s no denying that blaxploitation allowed many black moviegoers their first images of black heroes, affording them some of the good, disreputable pleasures that white audiences had enjoyed for years at shoot-’em-ups and gangster films.” The author is equally perceptive and provocative on the connections between the Rolling Stones’ much-heralded “Some Girls” and the less-celebrated Faye Dunaway film Eyes of Laura Mars, “a celebration of sleaze as high chic.” Though Taylor is careful not to inflate the artistic case—“outsized claims for their greatness would only falsify their grungy, visceral appeal”—he makes readers eager to see movies that were barely seen the first time through.
An illuminating collection of film criticism that is like a critical history of rock as exemplified by garage bands and one-hit wonders.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-818-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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