Though some arguments reveal their armature and a few essays read long, Schickel lays his words out cleanly and is ready for...
Garbo to Fargo spans the range of this prickly grab bag by the Time reviewer.
In the introduction to this collection of essays (his favorite form), Schickel (Clint Eastwood: A Biography, 1996; Brando: A Life in Our Times, 1991; etc.) cites his purpose and method. As collective movie memory erodes through deaths and the transience of popular culture, Schickel aims to preserve parts of the move past by examining film with “the same kind of rigor and passion…that any good historian will bring to explorations of other aspects of the past.” Rather than constraining him, this goal opens him to easy, informed pieces that re-create the film world. Among the most free and revealing are the profiles of Charles Laughton and Andrew Sarris, the former for explicating Laughton’s joyful artistic flamboyance, the latter for recalling the battles incited by the American Cinema and the unaffectedness of its creator. All of the profiles share an urgency and sureness befitting a man who, like profile subject Clint Eastwood, is “on the back nine” of life. They exhort readers to remember Irene Dunne or Satyajit Ray or King Vidor – and Schickel will tell you why. Less convincing (but ripe for debate) are the thought pieces. The observations (such as the reasons behind the AFI best-of-the-century list tilt toward midcentury films) are pithy, but some arguments are weak (like the speculation on how the absence of censorship might have made the Golden Age of movies even more golden – yes, and what if Napoleon had an Uzi…). But he prefers Notorious to Vertigo and so is redeemed.
Though some arguments reveal their armature and a few essays read long, Schickel lays his words out cleanly and is ready for the parry. Read it when you want a conversation with an ideal common viewer.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56663-260-9
Page Count: 305
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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