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christmas book shelf
by Quentin Falk
Adventures Of
A Suburban Boy
By John Boorman (Faber, £20)
Whatever
you
think
of Boorman’s
irregular
filmography
(which in just
16 features
over nearly
40 years has
spanned
the sublime
of Point Blank and
Deliverance to the cor blimey of Zardoz and Where The Heart Is), he does write memoir
like a dream.
Elements of autobiography have often permeated his work whether on celluloid (Hope And Glory, his charming account of a wartime childhood) or print (Money Into Light, about the fraught mak- ing of The Emerald Forest).
This account of his whole life (to date) is a readable, quotable joy - a mixture of highs – especial- ly some of his trailblazing early work for television - and the dark- est lows (notably the death of his daughter Telsche).
He always gives credit where sometimes dubious credit is due even to the point of “owing” David Lean his career when a phone call by the distinguished director from the set of Dr Zhivago distracted the then MGM studio head enough to greenlight Point Blank.
His wonderful stories about making Deliverance are worth a book in itself, but sadly tail off towards the end so we don’t learn anything about the more recent exploits of the 70-year-old. A sequel is required.
Conversations with Jack Cardiff: Art, Light and Direction in the Cinema
By Justin Bowyer (Batsford, £15.99)
Although
Cardiff
told his
own story
compellingly
enough in
the 1996
autobiogra-
phy Magic
Hour, there’s
still plenty to learn
in this obvious labour of love.
Now in his 90th year, the tireless Cardiff was still supervising cine- matography on a new short film, The Tell-Tale Heart, just a couple of months ago in North London.
For a man who has won everything, been everywhere and probably met everyone in a
30
career which began in front of the camera as a child actor aged four, he still remains delight- fully starry-eyed.
He was recently summoned to Hollywood by Francis Coppola’s director nephew Christopher Coppola (who loved The Red Shoes) to help out on a sequence for a new horror film called Bloodhead.
Said Cardiff: “When I got out there I found I was working on stage 11 at MGM which was where they had shot Gone With The Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons. So that alone was an amazing thing. I even had my own trailer with my name on it... quite unbelievable!”
Radio Times Guide To Films Edited by Kilmeny Fane- Saunders (BBC Worldwide, £19.99)
Time Out
Film Guide
Edited by John Pym (Penguin, £19.99)
C
pages between them. Fatter by nearly 400 pages, the BBC’s fourth and latest tome has some 500 new reviews.
The RT’s film editor Andrew Collins suggests, “Don’t leave home without it... but that would be impractical unless you have a wheelbarrow... why not join me and stay in more?”
In its 12th edition, the Time Out offering – whose cover bears a suitably striking shot of Samuel L Jackson - has gone for a spec- tacular make-over with the use of full colour.
More than just a companion to film, video and DVD watching, it’s a veritable buff’s bible full of extra reading that will keep you at home... even if you wanted to go out.
It even has a review of Gus Van Sant’s Palme D’Or winner Elephant yet to be released here. On the other hand, the RT guide is the only place to go for the lowdown on A Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell.
The Television News Handbook
By Vin Ray (Macmillan, £12.99)
A
broadcast jour- nalist’, Ray, as the BBC’s Deputy Head of Newsgathering, clearly knows what he’s writ- ing about.
The post
also includes
overseeing
the recruitment and devel- opment of on-air talent so his thoughts on everything from Storytelling to Pictures are a must for wannabe (Matt) Freis and (Orla) Guerins.
Screenwriting: Techniques for Success
By Jimmy
Sangster
(Reynolds & Hearn, £12.99)
S
resurrect
Dracula
and
Frankenstein at
Hammer in the fifties, rightly sug- gests the only way to become a writer is to “write...write...write.”
Half the book is taken up with one of his own as-yet unpro- duced screenplays (35 have made it to the screen) which then becomes a very useful case- study for in-depth analysis.
Rungs On A Ladder
By Christopher Neame (Scarecrow Press, £26.95)
T
Hammer
Films has
been told
by many
people,
working fore
and aft of the camera. But, “seen through a soft gauze” by a hum- ble clapper boy has to be some- thing of a first.
Not just any clapper-boy but the son of distinguished filmmak- er, Ronald Neame, who would progress rapidly up the ladder before eventually becoming a busy producer (The Flame Trees Of Thika, Monsignor Quixote etc) in his own right.
Neame Jr writes affectionately about the golden days of blood- letting at Bray and gives some insight into colourful characters like Terence Fisher, Seth Holt and Anthony Nelson Keys. The only quibble is the whopping price for such a slim volume.
1001 Movies To
See Before You Die Edited by Steven Schneider (Cassell Illustrated, £20)
A
- from Melies’ Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) to last year’s Chicago –
may be more provocative for what it has omitted.
The usual suspects are mostly all there along with some wilfully tacky entries like Pink Flamingos (1972) and Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) which may simply infuriate.
The Encyclopaedia of British Film
Edited by Brian McFarlane
(Methuen, £24.99)
I
film critic
Philip French
describes
this as “a book I’ve
been waiting for all my life” and it’s difficult to disagree with him even after the most cursory skim of its 775 pages.
From A for Aardman Animation to Z for Zucco, George (Manchester-born if better known for his Hollywood horror roles) this is quite simply the most compre- hensive and, above all, readable companion yet on a dear domestic subject.
Not afraid to be opinionated, of Mike Hodges it suggests that after Get Carter “nothing else in his cv comes near this tough, raw piece” while of Alan Parker’s knighthood, “some may see this as feeding the hand that bites them.”
Although there are bound to be some key omissions – and I’ve spotted a few – the final selection is still awesomely representative of more than 100 years worth of tal- ent on both sides of the camera.
Let’s hope that with modifica- tions and some additions this volume might become a
hardy annual.
mbitiously subtitled ‘an insider’s guide to being a
great
handsomely-presented century of
selections
ometh the
pair of mighty annual
doorstops boasting 3,500
n his Foreword,
Observer
angster, who helped
he fasci- nating
story of