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Christmas Bookshelf Reviews
FROM DOORSTOPS TO STOCKING FILLERS
QUENTIN FALK REVIEWS A DOZEN BOOKS JUST PERFECT FOR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
FROM DOORSTOPS TO STOCKING FILLERS
MY FIRST MOVIE
EDITED BY STEPHEN
LOWENSTEIN (FABER, £12.99)
Twenty contempo-
rary film-makers
–fromAfor
Anders, Allison (Gas,
Food, Lodging) to S
for Smith, Kevin
(Clerks) – share some often fascinat-
ing secrets about losing their directing virginity. Brits in the survey include Stephen Frears (Gumshoe), Ken Loach (Poor Cow), Mike Leigh (Bleak Moments) and Anthony Minghella (Truly, Madly, Deeply). Gary Oldman has yet to follow- up his startling debut Nil By Mouth – “what I’ve taken from it, the more obvious things, I won’t know until I do a second one,” he confides.
SPECIAL EFFECTS: THE HISTORY AND TECHNIQUE
BY RICHARD RICKITT (VIRGIN, £60)
The first recorded
special effect
was in Edison’s
1895 production of
The Execution of
Mary, Queen Of
Scots in which a
dummy was substituted at the
moment of decapitation. Since then, and with a recent profusion which has gleefully embraced the rapidly evolving technology, dazzling sfx often prove more compelling than plot or performers (see The Matrix and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, to name but two of many). Backed up by more than 350 colour photos, this gor- geous volume’s cheap at the price.
TIME OUT FILM GUIDE
2W001 (PENGUIN, £14.99)
here else could one learn about
the death of Bart –
the “John Wayne
of bears” last seen going head-to-
head with Anthony Hopkins in The Edge - noted in the Obits alongside his fellow grizzly Hercules, not to mention John Gielgud, Hedy Lamarr, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and stunt pilot Mark Hanna. Great annual also adds more than 570 reviews with fuller credits to its Ninth edi- tion. Typically idiosyncratic, as in “mis- chievous little jape” of the generally reviled Brit flick, Final Cut.
SMOKING IN BED:
CONVERSATIONS WITH
BRUCE ROBINSON
EDITED BY ALISTAIR OWEN (BLOOMSBURY, £12.99)
It’s time to give
thanks for the late
Vivian MacKerrell.
Vivian who? Flatmate
and a fellow student
at the Central School
of Speech and
Drama, he was the
model that memorable piece of
Sixties wreckage so memorably played by Richard E Grant in writer-director Robinson’s 1987 autobiographical gem Withnail & I. In a revealing Q & A, the sub- ject talks about a fascinating, eccentric career to date which includes acting for Zeffirelli and Truffaut before turning screenwriter on The Killing Fields.
THE ULTIMATE DVD GUIDE
(TITAN BOOKS, £8.99)
More than 10
million Digital
Versatile Discs
have been sold in
the UK since 1998
and new titles are
being released at a
rate of 30-40 a week. This handy
guide covers over a thousand of them, with Picture, Sound, Entertainment and Value not to mention, Extras, accorded star ratings. Something like Das Boot: The Director’s Cut gets high fives all the way, a rare accolade in this survey where some other more obviously high-tech titles aren’t simply up to snuff.
THE COEN BROTHERS
BY RONALD BERGAN (ORION, £18.99)
self-conscious-
SHAKESPEARE ON SCREEN
BY DANIEL ROSENTHAL (HAMLYN, £20)
Cinema’s love affair
with the Bard has
lasted more than
100 years – ever since
an 1899 silent show-
ing brief extracts
from a West End
stage production of
King John. This
superbly produced,
expertly written and often witty valentine a century on answers pretty much Everything You Ever Wanted To Know on the subject. It turns out that Hamlet – a new modern-dress, New York-set version’s imminent – is the most-filmed starting with three minutes of a cross-dressed, sword-fighting Sarah Bernhardt in 1900.
VARIETY INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE 2001
EDITED BY PETER COWIE (FABER, £15.99) Picked out for spe-
cial focus in this
38th edition are
Five Directors Of The
Year whose inclusion
best sums up the
global range of an
invaluable compan-
ion – Lasse
Hallstrom (Sweden), Neil
Jordan (Ireland), Goran Paskaljevic (Serbia), Steven Soderbergh (US) and Edward Yang (Taiwan). The A-Z survey of more than 70 film-making nations, includ- ing useful contacts, further underscores its cosmopolitan sweep. And who’d have guessed that Disney’s animated feature Tarzan would have been the year’s top moneymaker in Bosnia & Herzogovina?
LIES, DAMN LIES AND DOCUMENTARIES
BY BRIAN WINSTON (BFI, £14.99)
Great title for a
valuable and
wide-ranging if
rather dry study of a
crucial tributary in
today’s broadcast-
ing landscape. Using recent
scandals surrounding faked TV documen- taries as his starting point, Professor Winston examines the crises of confi- dence in public service broadcasting and the controversy, in particular, surround- ing docusoaps as well as the whole issue of ethics. Fakery is the danger and the industry’s silence in addressing the prob- lem is causing a breach of public trust, the author avers.
FILM REVIEW 2000-2001
BY JAMES CAMERON-WILSON (REYNOLDS & HEARN, £19.95)
Runner-up last year
in its Top 10 Box
Office Stars
chart, Julia Roberts
now takes over (from
this year’s no-show
Gwyneth Paltrow)
the number one slot
thanks to the combined financial
clout of Notting Hill, Runaway Bride and Erin Brockovich. Faces Of The Year, another regular top ten for this hardiest of annuals – includes, from these isles, Samantha Morton, Dougray Scott and Frances O’Connor (well, she was born in Oxford before going Down Under at two). The reviews are agreeably incisive.
THE ESSENTIAL BOND
BY LEE PFEIFFER & DAVE WORRALL (BOXTREE, £12.99)
Softback edition of
the definitive film-
by-film companion
to the “official” – as in Broccoli-produced –
007 series packed with
excellent info and a
fine mix of colour and
black-and-white stills. As well as covering the front-of-camera guys and ‘girls’ – from the villainously butch Rosa Klebb to the unfeasibly pneumatic Plenty O’Toole - there’s an important summary of all the key backroom personnel and gadgetry. Plus a useful reminder of the various other screen secret agents who spun off in the wake of JB.
HOLLYWOOD PORTRAITS
BY ROGER HICKS & CHRISTOPHER NISPEROS - PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE
KOBAL COLLECTION COLLINS & BROWN, £17.99)
f you’ve ever won- dered just why Dietrich, Bogart,
Hepburn, Monroe,
Brando and a pletho-
ra of legendary cine-
ma stars always
looked so perfect in
portraiture, here’s
why and better still, just how it
was accomplished by the great photogra- phers of the 1920’s -1950’s. Hicks and Nisperos analyse the now famous Hollywood look in detail and show how it is possible to recreate that same effect today with easy to follow lighting plots based on 50 classic photographs from the Kobal collection.
A
I
lthough some- times a bit too
ly wacky for its own
good and punctuat-
ed by some ghastly
puns (Icoens,
Coens The
Barbarians etc), this is still easily the best assessment to date of the talented Minnesota siblings. From the beginning, the double act has been a total collabora- tion. Though, nominally, Joel (b. 1954) directs and Ethan (b. 1957) produces, their roles – including screenwriting, and editing as pseudonymous Roderick Jaynes – are indivisible. As one actor remarks, “at times, it’s like being directed in wall to wall stereo.”
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