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STANLEY KUBRICK

A BIOGRAPHY

American cinema's least Hollywood-like director never quite emerges from the shadows in this biography, but many useful career details do. LoBrutto (a film editor who teaches at the School of Visual Arts) freely admits to being ``totally obsessed'' with his reclusive subject, and his obsession shows as he traces Kubrick from Bronx child to Look photographer to London-based filmmaker famed for the vision and perfectionism of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket. Along the way, every available fact is thrown in: not only Kubrick's school report cards (he was deemed ``unsatisfactory in social areas''), but a handwriting analysis that unsurprisingly reveals him as a ``perfectionist.'' Fans of the ``master'' (as he is sometimes adoringly called here) will enjoy the wealth of detail, some based on new interviews, some on exhaustive canvassing of previous research. But the Holy Grail—an original interview with the director—is not here, nor are answers to such personal questions as what went wrong with his first and second marriages. Most of the people interviewed know Kubrick only superficially, and are unable to offer intimate insight. In place of that, LoBrutto provides ample behind-the-scenes coverage of each Kubrick film from conception to exhibition, exploring such matters as his early low- budget ``guerrilla filmmaking,'' troubles with Kirk Douglas on Spartacus, and the use of the Steadicam in The Shining. The prose is occasionally purple or obscure (what does it mean to say ``Wartime Lies is a penultimate Stanley Kubrick project''?), and some passages are repetitive, particularly when discussing Kubrick's penchant for many takes of the same shot. But on the whole, the book is readable and informative, both for devoted fans and casual admirers. A brave, and often successful, attempt to chronicle the life of a filmmaker famous for his noncooperation with chroniclers.

Pub Date: Dec. 30, 1996

ISBN: 1-55611-492-3

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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