Basinger brings considerable expertise but insufficient adventurousness to the all-too-often neglected world of silent film. Silent film, to paraphrase L.P. Hartley, is a foreign country, they do things differently there. The silent cinema had its own aesthetic, in some ways profoundly different from the movies that followed, and that aesthetic is unfamiliar to all but a handful of film scholars and buffs. On the evidence of her superb analysis of the ’40s family melodrama, A Woman’s View (1993), Basinger should be an excellent guide to that lost era. She has produced a sizeable tome devoted to 16 prominent actors and actresses (and Rin-Tin-Tin) of the period whose purpose, as she explains, is to celebrate “a group of silent film stars who are somehow forgotten, misunderstood or underappreciated,” a group that might be said to include almost anyone who was a star in Hollywood’s silent era. Unfortunately, Basinger is unduly timid in surveying the field. She includes among her subjects such overly familiar faces as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Rudolf Valentino and Lon Chaney. Certainly, as Basinger points out, Fairbanks and Valentino are not sufficiently recognized for their comedic efforts (indeed, the first half of Fairbanks’s formidable career consists of breakneck comedies), but surely there were others equally deserving of rediscovery. Basinger is smart and perceptive, and her survey is filled with startlingly astute flashes. For example, she connects the appeal of Mack Sennett’s slapstick comedy to a world in which physical labor was still the norm rather than the exception. But the results, for all its undeniable intelligence, feels at once overly familiar yet insufficiently detailed. A mixed blessing, of considerable value but finally unsatisfying. (300 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-43840-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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