A collection of interviews and essays, many of them never before available in English, from one of the most important postwar Italian filmmakers. Antonioni's cinema is ``a world of images, not of words,'' but this volume, published in Italy two years ago, is chockablock with the filmmaker's words. Ironically, Antonioni had seldom written on films before he started making them. As a result, virtually all of the material in this book is about his own films and filmmaking experience. He has said, ``Writing for me is a deepening of the gaze,'' but he's generally been one of those filmmakers who is reluctant to talk or write about his work. Given the intensely visual nature of his film poetry and the cryptic, elliptical dialogue that accompanies it, it is surprising how concise and analytical he is in the many interviews included in this volume. The book is divided into four sections: ``My Cinema,'' a series of general discussions of Antonioni's aesthetic ideas; ``My Films,'' short pieces on individual films, including all of his best-known work (Blow Up, L'Avventura, Red Desert, Zabriskie Point, among others); ``Interviews'' and ``Interviews on My Films,'' which cover his career and specific works, respectively. Unfortunately, the pieces and interviews on individual films often call for a readership with an intimate knowledge of the movie in question, and for the nonspecialist may be a hard slog. Antonioni is ruthlessly candid, a brilliant talker, and an interesting writer. Although it is the fans of his cinema that will profit most from this collection, any serious student of film should give it a look.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56886-012-9
Page Count: 350
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
For anyone who wasn't glutted during the 1994 Winter Olympics with the tale of Dan Jansen's slippery skate for the gold, here it is in his own words (with the help of McCallum, Shaq Attaq!, not reviewed). Jansen has no regrets about skating in Calgary in 1988 on the infamous day when his sister Jane died of leukemia—and he fell in the 500-meter race. The day that started the ``Can Dan Jansen, the best skater in the world, win the Olumpic gold?'' drama that continued through the Albertville games in 1992 and into Lillehammer in '94. Jansen tells how he finally showed 'em. With a lot of hard work, and the help of his sports psychologist—who suggested he create a ``mental war room'' full of spirit-boosting mementos—he had a world-record-breaking skate in the 1,000 meters in Lillehammer. It's a Horaltio Alger story if ever there was one- -the triumph over adversity of a sincere, hardworking, all-American guy. But this slight, earnest book is never as eloquent as his triumphant victory lap around Viking Ship Olympic Hall with his baby, Janie, aloft in his arms.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43801-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.
Ten homespun personal essays—most published elsewhere—from the author of last year’s acclaimed novel Jim the Boy.
Earley grew up in a small-town, kudzu-covered corner of North Carolina more recognizable as the terrain of Thomas Wolfe than that of Dorothy Allison. Seven of these pieces explore his early years there, as a 1960s television acolyte, a squirrel-hunting dilettante, and, through it all, an astute, heartbreaking observer of the idiosyncratic people around him. The title story, which appeared in Harper’s, serves as an introduction to this American boyhood, wholly transformed by a color, Zenith television set, replete with rooftop antenna. As the cornerstone entry here, a masterful exercise in metaphor, it’s hard to imagine what more the author could have to articulate about his young life. But Earley thankfully only has more trenchant memories to spin. With “Hallway,” in an equally unadorned language, but with more deeply felt remembrances, Earley recalls, with a child’s perception, his extended family’s peculiarities and his own fearful awe of his grandfather. A look at the odd Scots-derived Appalachian dialect of his youth (“The Quare Gene”) leads to a reflection on the “shared history” that the author is losing with his highland ancestors. A similar wistfulness pervades “Granny’s Bridge,” a tribute to a time when crossing a bridge—and certainly not one to the 21st century—could enhance a person’s outlook. In “Ghost Stories,” Earley takes his wife to New Orleans to investigate the haunted city: “We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.” And the final piece (“Tour de Fax”), another gem from Harper’s, follows him on a record-setting circumnavigational flight, recorded stop by stop in under 32 hours. Earley’s skewering of the trip’s corporate sponsors is good fun, and his capstone epiphany—that where he ended up, at home, is the only place he’d fly around the world to get to—rings true.
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.Pub Date: May 25, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-302-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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