by Gabriel Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2013
A welcome addition to the literature of filmmaking.
Comprehensive biography of the pioneering Hollywood director, whose oeuvre included such diverse films as Wuthering Heights (1939), Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Funny Girl (1968).
Wyler, writes film historian Miller (English/Rutgers Univ.; editor: William Wyler: Interviews, 2010, etc.), made numerous contributions to filmmaking, including the development of techniques of depth-of-field cinematography that are still studied and used today, to say nothing of crafting superb yarns in words and images. Yet, since his work dwindled in his later years and included some dogs (The Liberation of L.B. Jones) and puzzling near-dogs (The Collector), Wyler’s contributions, Miller suggests, may be undervalued. Wyler himself, writes the author, jokingly said that he was no auteur, “although I’m one of the few American directors who can pronounce the word correctly.” Yet he left a personal stamp on his films, and he even managed to sneak in a political message or two into films such as Ben-Hur in the face of repression at home, courtesy of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the blacklist. Wyler may be in eclipse today, but in his day, he was “considered a preeminent director by his peers,” including Billy Wilder, who thought that the opening scenes of The Best Years of Our Lives were “the most moving he had ever seen.” And Wyler made films that earned 38 Oscars and 127 nominations—no small achievement. Miller sometimes strikes overly academic notes (“The attitudes and ideologies that were taking root in the 1930s had their basis in the criticisms of American capitalism arising in the previous decade”), but for the moment, this is the best study of Wyler that we have.
A welcome addition to the literature of filmmaking.Pub Date: July 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8131-4209-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Univ. Press of Kentucky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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