A merely proficient biography of the master director of such Surrealist classics as Un Chien Andalou and Belle de Jour. Like many early directors, Bu§uel stumbled into the film-making business. He left his native Spain for a putative Parisian diplomatic posting with an offshoot of the League of Nations. While waiting for an assignment, he began to work in a variety of capacities on film sets and as a film critic. At the same time, he was drawn to the Surrealist movement. Desperate for a career, he borrowed money from his mother, and together with Salvador Dal° made the short film Un Chien Andalou. With its dreamy eroticism, its shocking violence (most memorably epitomized in a shot of an eye being sliced with a razor), it was an enormous success, as was his next, equally controversial film L’Age D’Or. Beyond the shock value, there was a strongly considered—though often fetishistic—aesthetic at work. Octavio Paz noted that Bu§uel’s films balanced “ferocity and lyricism, a world of dreams and blood” with a “bare, spare style that is not at all Baroque and results in a sort of exaggerated sobriety.” Despite his notoriety, Bu§uel made almost no more films for the next ten years. The Spanish Civil War sent him into exile, first in Hollywood and then in Mexico, where, eventually, he was able to get work directing low-budget films. From their relative success, he was able to rebuild his career and to gain international acclaim. Unlike many directors whose late work is largely disappointing, Bu§uel enjoyed a great final flowering in his 70s when he produced three masterpieces in a row, including That Obscure Object of Desire, his final film. Veteran film biographer Baxter (Steven Spielberg, 1997, etc.) does a thoroughly competent job, but his writing is uninspired, and his research lacks a fulfilling depth. Not a tour de force but still a useful primer. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-7867-0506-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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