Like most other “my-favorites” projects, this one will surely ignite debate, disdain and delight.
A veteran critic offers a decade-by-decade list of the films that have been like “friends who’ve enriched my life.”
Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Morning Edition film critic Turan (Now in Theaters Everywhere: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Blockbuster, 2006, etc.) confesses his discomfort with his own project: so many films. He was so uncomfortable, in fact, that at the end, he suggests two others for slot 55, then appends yet another list of 54 that he’s loved. Film lovers will eagerly swoop in to see if their favorites are present, and there are certainly some surprises. Turan does not mention either Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd. Citizen Kane does not make the first cut—though it does appear as a recommendation at the end of his discussion of Sweet Smell of Success; it also appears in the appended list (as do two other Welles films). Turan’s tastes are eclectic: documentaries (Stranded), Westerns (The Unforgiven), an animated feature (Spirited Away), crime films (Kiss Me Deadly), musicals (Singin’ in the Rain), films based on classic novels (Great Expectations), films everyone’s heard of (Casablanca) and films that few beside the cognoscenti know (The Best of Youth). In each case, the author introduces each decade and discusses the directors and performers; in many instances, he summarizes the plots and/or gives some back story about the making of the films. Principally, however, he explores how each film affected him and how the filmmaker managed to do what he did (male filmmakers dominate here). Among the principal factors are cinematography, music, individual performances, the power of the plot, the settings, the ambiance, the effect of surprise and the styles of the directors. Although Turan discusses many Hollywood studio films, he also includes films from Japan, Italy, Denmark, Israel and elsewhere.
Like most other “my-favorites” projects, this one will surely ignite debate, disdain and delight.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58648-396-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
