A heartfelt if uneven collection on the stars and zhlubs worth remembering. Embracing a personal, not theoretical, approach to film (where it’s “just you and that mug up there on screen”), Sante (Low Life, 1991, etc.) and Pierson (The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, 1997) undertake a “proper investigation of the screen’s ordinary Joes” and the stars who “render themselves ordinary” to viewers. Readers who spent childhoods awash in The Million-Dollar Movie will be pleased with the homages to the scene-stealing character actors who ensured that the story ahead would be jake. Sante does a cheery roundup of worthy (and half-forgotten) male suspects like Andy Devine, Ralph Bellamy, and Raymond Burr, who, Sante posits, “would have made a better Goldfinger.” In a lovely ode to “Warner Bros. Fat Men,” Dana Gioia bemoans the current cinematic world where “even the heavies are skinnies” and honors past corpulent heroes Sydney Greenstreet and Eugene Pallette, both of whom require a citation from Thomas Aquinas to define their beauty. Charles Simic conveys the erotic hold Gene Tierney had on postwar viewers, including himself, on the strength of one film, Laura. John Updike does likewise for his heartstopper, Suzie Creamcheese—a.k.a Doris Day. Elsewhere Day’s Pillow Talk co-star Thelma Ritter is given her due as an alternative persona for any non-heartstopping female viewer. For those who accept that good films have been made since The Godfather, there’s a tidy analysis of Robert Carlyle’s appeal and an enlarging look at J. T. Walsh. But some of the appreciations don’t convince, such as those for Timothy Carey, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean Arthur. Like an old drive-in double bill of Bananas and Kotch, the works here span the memorable and the middling. But the faces invoked will remain, sending readers running to Blockbuster for Casablanca or Rear Window—and not just to see the stars. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40101-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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
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.
