The year’s social and cinematic concerns are captured in this well-sculpted inaugural volume on film from guest editor and cameo actor Plimpton (The X Factor, 1995, etc.). Beginning with Libby Gelman-Waxner’s gleeful trashing of Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces, the collection lopes nimbly among subjects and moods, from sly critique to Evan Hunter’s wistful recollection of Hitchcock to Gerald Peary’s amiable portrait of John Waters regulars in Provincetown. Together they fulfill series editor Jason Shinder’s belief that movies are “arguably the most influential form of communication we have today,” and that film writing is an “emerging genre.” Equally varied are article sources, which include not only Premiere and Vanity Fair but such small magazines as the Michigan Quarterly Review and Parnassus, and authors ranging from film writers (Donald Bogle) to filmmakers (Martin Scorsese) and novelists (Alice Walker). Despite the assortment, some common threads for the year emerge, notably in the treatment of black women and gays in the cinema. The dismal state of choices for black actresses is seen in two pieces, including one on current biopic hot property Dorothy Dandridge. Likewise the gay experience of films is seen in two works, one of which is a trenchant analysis of the necessary death of diva worship. A thought-provoking commingling of shop talk, sociological meditation, and personal memoir that shows the range of responses possible for an art form at the height of its popularity.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18049-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
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