edited by John Landis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001
Baroque entertainment and a telling time-capsule of turn-of-the-century film writing concerns.
Jam-packed, sometimes enlightening collection of current writing about film.
As editor Landis (better known as the director of Animal House, etc.) notes in his introduction, he follows no general theme; the collection, he quips, might be better titled “Many Different Aspects of Film That Interest John Landis.” The eclectic assortment of works of varying accomplishment covers eight subject areas spanning the perennial (“Actors”) to the particular (“Nazis”), with individual selections favoring boomer movie heroes like stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, directors Stanley Kubrick and Sam Raimi, ape designer Charles Gemora. The section on censorship includes intriguing historical studies of All About Eve and Gone With the Wind. The article about the latter shows civil rights groups negotiating with producer David O. Selznick to tone down some of the more offensive aspects of Margaret Mitchell’s portrayal of African-Americans and reminds us that Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar was an early harbinger of advances to come for black people. Straight-up frame-by-frame movie analyses are well represented by Maria Di Battista's keen dissection of His Girl Friday, which applies the concept of time to find new meaning in much-analyzed elements of the film such as its lighting, tracking shots, and the power struggle between Cary Grant’s and Rosalind Russell’s characters. Rick Lyman's “Whoa, Trigger! Auteur Alert!” reveals Quentin Tarantino to be a devoted fan of genre director William Witney (who did most of Roy Rogers’s films); recalling John Waters's homage to William Castle, it may be the jauntiest piece in the collection. The most unpredictably informative is David Geffner's “People Who Need People,” a profile of indie documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick. As a whole, the pieces illustrate what series editor Jason Shinder calls “a major strain of contemporary writing about the movies: variousness of subject and form.” But they also evoke a longing for new influential critical ideas that could trickle to mainstream viewers.
Baroque entertainment and a telling time-capsule of turn-of-the-century film writing concerns.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56025-344-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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