Disappointing, except for some flashes in selected short subjects. (Photos)
A diffuse, uneven take on the American movie experience, rather surprising from the author of the cogent appraisals of US films and filmmakers in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (2002).
Thomson (Nevada, 1999, etc.) continues to nail some topics with great precision: his appraisal of Marlon Brando confronts the actor’s pretentiousness, a trait most of the obituaries overlooked. But often these rather self-indulgent essays swoop through many, many subjects in confusing ways: Los Angeles in its early days was “a paradise,” then “it wasn’t a paradise,” then it was “a semi-paradise.” Some images turn virtually phantasmagoric; the usher in Edward Hopper’s painting New York Movie, Thomson suggests, eventually returns to the screen “where she belongs.” The author draws his title from Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, suggesting that the Hollywood “equation” includes not just films and directors, but greedy businessmen, stars, artists, and audiences, all of them seeking transformation through celluloid. It’s hardly a novel premise: Robert Sklar’s Movie-Made America and Ethan Mordden’s The Hollywood Studios develop the theme far more coherently. To be sure, Thomson occasionally brings his subject into sharp focus in chapters, for example, on film noir and the validity of the term “golden age” as applied to Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s. But, overall, the discussions are arguable (“Gone with the Wind is not art, not anywhere near it”), mistaken (Frank Sinatra sang “Love and Marriage” in a TV musical adaptation of Our Town, not in The Tender Trap, as Thomson states), and highly subjective in their choices of subjects. The author’s gaze fixes primarily on Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, Irene and David Selznick, with some notice taken of other figures like the brothers Warner, D.W. Griffith, Orson Wells, and Darryl F. Zanuck.
Disappointing, except for some flashes in selected short subjects. (Photos)Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-40016-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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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