An excellent primer on the art of film and sound editing from one of the experts.
The nitty-gritty of film and sound editing.
When, in June 1896, the Lumière brothers projected their film of a street scene onto a bedsheet in a brothel, no one could have predicted its revolutionary effect on visual storytelling. That was partly because the “catalytic possibilities of montage” were not yet fully developed. Five years later, nascent filmmakers began to “discover and exploit the intoxicating, virtually sexual power of montage.” One of today’s most celebrated practitioners in the world of film editing and sound design is Walter Murch, who explains the art and science of his craft in this book. Murch calls this work, the first of two anticipated volumes, a “three-braided rope” incorporating theory, practice, and history. Most of the examples he cites stem from his work with Francis Ford Coppola, with emphasis on his efforts on The Conversation (1974), the first feature he ever edited, and Apocalypse Now (1979). He also tells of work on other projects, such as the 1998 restoration of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, a 1958 film Murch says was “a decade ahead of its time.” Much of this book will delight film aficionados who want to get into the weeds of extensive technical detail, as when he describes “the attributes of the saccade—the jump of the eyeball from one focal point to another” to explain why people see motion when watching a film. He also leavens this work with lighter moments. When the workprint for Coppola’s The Rain People (1969) came back upside down, and sophisticated solutions didn’t solve the problem, “Francis found the obvious solution: just turn the television set upside down.” Murch displays a ferocious wit, as when, under a still from The Godfather (1972) in which a movie mogul wakes to discover his beloved horse’s severed head in his bed, Murch includes the caption “Studio politics.”
An excellent primer on the art of film and sound editing from one of the experts.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780571328857
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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