The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition by David Thomson (English

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Seller: the_nile ✉️ (1,207,739) 98.3%, Location: Melbourne, AU, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 134792581131 The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition by David Thomson (English. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Thomson's voice is one of the most distinctive and enjoyable in film criticism. For as long as there are films worth writing about, Thomson's opinions will remain worth reading.". The Nile on eBay  

The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

by David Thomson

With more than 100 new entries, from Amy Adams, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Cary Joji Fukunaga to Joaquin Phoenix, Mia Wasikowska, and Robin Wright, and completely updated,  here from David Thomson—"The greatest living writer on the movies" (John Banville, New Statesman); "Our most argumentative and trustworthy historian of the screen" (Michael Ondaatje)—is the latest edition of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, which topped Sight & Sound's poll of international critics and writers as THE BEST FILM BOOK EVER WRITTEN.
3/7

FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New

Author Biography

DAVID THOMSON is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, Movieline, The New Republic, and Salon. He lives in San Francisco.

Review

"America has given the world Emily Dickinson, "Moby-Dick," jazz, Faulkner, Hollywood, rock 'n' roll, and this book." --Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune

"The best book on the movies ever written in English." —The New Republic

"Thomson proves anew that he is irreplaceable . . . His monologue has blossomed into an unlikely, searching dialogue about what to value in the movies—how to love what's come before without nostalgia, and how to find the courage to demand more from the stuff being made right now . . . Deservedly treasured . . . One of the most probing accounts ever written of a human being's engagement with the movies." —Sarah Kerr, The New York Times Book Review

"Delicious. One of the best and most useful books written about the movies." —Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle

"The Dictionary is not only an indispensable book about cinema, but one of the most absurdly ambitious literary achievements of our time."  —Geoff Dyer, Sight & Sound

"A marvel . . . Eccentric, audacious, sparkling . . . Probably the greatest living film critic and historian, Thomson writes the most fun and enthralling prose about the movies since Pauline Kael." —Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic

"From Abbott and Costello to Crumb's Terry Zwigoff, David Thomson expertly caters the banquet of film history in the latest edition of this classic. One critics' poll called it the best movie book ever; it also has some of the finest, orneriest writing in the English language."
—Time 
 
"Truly, maddeningly, gloriously subjective . . . Buy this book for a friend, and bask in the pleasure of knowing that you have incalculably enriched his life. Buy it for yourself, and book some quality time with one of the finest writers the story of film has ever had."
—Saul Austerlitz, San Francisco Chronicle
 
"[A] mad and magnificent opus . . . Thomson is a great rhapsodist of how film acts on his, and therefore our, imagination. . . . Close viewing, and the insights that spring from rapt attention, are what Thomson's criticism is all about. Despite its seemingly straitlaced A-to-Z format, the 'Dictionary' is oddball and Borgesian, finding imaginative ecstasy in its encyclopedic tendency. The book crackles with epigram while often reaching for meanings that endow familiar subjects with a new reality. . . . It's an essential, loony, irresistible book, and scarcely a week passes when I don't submerge myself for an hour or two in its labyrinthine marvels."
—Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
 
"Essential . . . Razor-sharp reviews are often commentaries on both the filmmaker and the audience. . . . We're always aware that we're engaging with a passionate educated human being. Isn't that more interesting and rewarding than marketing-driven Netflix summaries? Great critics are cinema's most inspiring enthusiasts. Four stars."
            —Jeffrey Overstreet, Books & Culture
 
"Witty, expasive, convincing, honest, more than a little mischievous and, so often, absolutely on the money. Thomson's voice is one of the most distinctive and enjoyable in film criticism. It leaps from the pages of this spruced up classic like flames from a bonfire. . . . Almost every page contains at least one unexpected nugget of information that you would struggle to come across by any other means. . . . However, the real value of this book lies not in facts, but in opinions. Thomson's views are so shrewd, so exquisitely stated that, more often than not, they feel like thoughts you already held but were never quite sure how to put into words. . .  In a world awash with amateur pundits, the value of a genuine expert who knows his own mind has never been higher. . . . Dip into any entry and you will find irrefutable proof that his gaze remains as sharp as ever. For as long as there are films worth writing about, Thomson's opinions will remain worth reading."
            —Benjamin Secher, The Telegraph
 
"The newest edition of David Thomson's New Biographical Dictionary of Film is 1,076 pages long. It weighs a ton. And yet, it's almost impossible to put down."
—The New York Observer
 
"Invaluable and occasionally maddening."          —Steven Rea, The Kansas City Star
 
"Skip the movie; read David Thomson instead. Addictive . . . his landmark work. You'll see how erudite, generous, cheeky, elegant and fascinating Thomson's writing is. Take any entry and it's impossible not to want to read to the finish." —Kyle Smith, New York Post

Review Quote

"The best book on the movies ever written in English." --The New Republic "Thomson proves anew that he is irreplaceable . . . His monologue has blossomed into an unlikely, searching dialogue about what to value in the movies--how to love what''s come before without nostalgia, and how to find the courage to demand more from the stuff being made right now . . . Deservedly treasured . . . One of the most probing accounts ever written of a human being''s engagement with the movies." --Sarah Kerr,

Excerpt from Book

CHAPTER ONE A Abbott and Costello: Bud (William A.) Abbott (1895-74), b. Asbury Park, New Jersey; and Lou Costello (Louis Francis Cristillo) (1906-59), b. Paterson, New Jersey The marital chemistry (or the weird mix of blunt instrument and black hole) in coupling is one of the most persistent themes in tragedy and comedy. At their best, you can''t have one without the other. More than fifty years after they first tried it, Abbott and Costello''s "Who''s On First?" sketch is about the best remedy I know for raising laughter in a mixed bag of nuts-or for making the collection of forlorn individuals a merry mob. Many people know the routine (written, like most of their stuff, by John Grant) by heart. Amateurs can get a good laugh out of it. But Bud and Lou achieve something lyrical, hysterical, and mythic. Watch them do the sketch and you feel the energy and hope of not just every comedian there ever was. You feel Beckett, Freud, and Wittgenstein (try it!). You see every marriage there ever was. You rejoice and despair at the impossibility of language. You wonder whether God believed in harmony, or in meetings that eternally proved our loneliness. Lou is the one who has blood pressure, and Bud hasn''t. So they are together in the world, yet together alone, doomed to explain things to each other. They are companions, halves of a whole, chums, lovers if you like. But they are a raw display of hatred, opposition, and implacable difference. They are also far better than all the amateurs. And if Lou is the performer, the valiant seeker of order, while Bud is the dumb square peg, the one who seems oblivious of audience, still, nobody did it better. If I were asked to assemble a collection of things to manifest America for the stranger, "Who''s On First?" would be there-and it might be the first piece of film I''d use. At the same time, they are not very good, rather silly, not really that far above the ocean of comedians. It isn''t even that one can separate their good work from the poor. Nor is it that "Who''s On First?" is simply and mysteriously superior to all the rest of their stuff. No, it''s only that that routine feels an inner circle of dismay within all the others, the suffocating mantle next to Lou''s heart. It isn''t good, or superior; it''s divine. Which is why no amount of repetition dulls it at all. I think I could watch it every day and feel the thrills and the dread as if for the first time. They bumped into each other. Bud was a theatre cashier where Lou was playing (around 1930), and he grudgingly took the job when Lou''s partner was sick. They were doing vaudeville and radio for ten years before they got their movie break at Universal: One Night in the Tropics (40, A. Edward Sutherland) was their first film, but Buck Privates (41, Arthur Lubin) was the picture that made them. There were twenty-three more films in the forties, a period for which they were steadily in the top five box-office attractions. Buck Privates, and their whole appeal, reflected the unexpected intimacies of army life. They broke up in 1957, long since outmoded by the likes of Martin and Lewis. But there again, Abbott and Costello are the all-talking model (as opposed to the semi-silence of Laurel and Hardy) of two guys trapped in one tent. Costello made one film on his own-for he had great creative yearnings-The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock (59, Sidney Miller). He died of a heart attack, which had always seemed about to happen. Bud lived on, doing next to nothing. Ken (Klaus) Adam, b. Berlin, Germany, 1921 At the age of thirteen, Adam came to Britain, and stayed: he would be educated as an architect at London University and the Bartlett School of Architecture, and he served in the RAF during the war. It was in 1947 that he entered the British picture business, doing set drawings for This Was a Woman (48, Tim Whelan). Thereafter, he rose steadily as an assistant art director on The Queen of Spades (48, Thorold Dickinson); The Hidden Room (49, Edward Dmytryk); Your Witness (50, Robert Montgomery); Captain Horatio Hornblower (51, Raoul Walsh); The Crimson Pirate (52, Robert Siodmak); Helen of Troy (56, Robert Wise); he did uncredited work on Around the World in 80 Days (56, Michael Anderson), and assistant work on Ben-Hur (59, William Wyler). Clearly, he was adept at getting hired by American directors, or on Hollywood productions, yet he did not seem overly interested in going to Hollywood. Indeed, he built a career as art director and then production designer in Britain, and he would be vitally associated with the design look and the huge, hi-tech interiors of the James Bond films: Soho Incident (56, Vernon Sewell); Night of the Demon (57, Jacques Tourneur); The Angry Hills (59, Robert Aldrich); The Rough and the Smooth (59, Siodmak); The Trials of Oscar Wilde (60, Ken Hughes); Dr. No (62, Terence Young); Sodom and Gomorrah (62, Aldrich); Dr. Strangelove (64, Stanley Kubrick); Woman of Straw (64, Basil Dearden); Goldfinger (64, Guy Hamilton); The Ipcress File (65, Sidney J. Furie); Thunderball (65, Young); Funeral in Berlin (66, Hamilton); You Only Live Twice (67, Lewis Gilbert); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (68, Hughes); Goodbye, Mr. Chips (69, Herbert Ross); to America for The Owl and the Pussycat (70, Ross). An international figure now, he worked increasingly in America, while keeping his British attachment to Bond and Kubrick: Diamonds Are Forever (71, Hamilton); Sleuth (72, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); The Last of Sheila (73, Ross); winning an Oscar for Barry Lyndon (75, Kubrick); Madam Kitty (76, Tinto Brass); The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (76, Ross); The Spy Who Loved Me (77, Gilbert); Moonraker (79, Gilbert). Illness caused a significant gap in his work in the early eighties, at which time his only credit was as design consultant on Pennies from Heaven (81, Ross). Since his return, he has been based in America and Bond-less. He also seems to work on more modest projects, while staying loyal to Herb Ross: King David (85, Bruce Beresford); Crimes of the Heart (86, Beresford); The Deceivers (88, Nicholas Meyer); Dead Bang (89, John Frankenheimer); The Freshman (90, Andrew Bergman); The Doctor (91, Randa Haines); Undercover Blues (93, Ross); Addams Family Values (93, Barry Sonnenfeld); then back to Britain, with another Oscar, on The Madness of King George (94, Nicholas Hytner); Boys on the Side (95, Ross); Bogus (96, Norman Jewison); In & Out (97, Frank Oz); The Out-of-Towners (99, Sam Weisman). Isabelle Adjani, b. Paris, 1955 There is something so frank, so modern in her feelings, yet so classical in her aura, so passionate and so wounded, that Isabelle Adjani seems made to play Sarah Bernhardt one day. Why not? She is a natural wearer of costume capable of making us believe that the "period" world we are watching is happening now. She is bold, a mistress of her career, and has been a fiercely equal partner in her romantic relationships with Bruno Nuytten, Warren Beatty, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Her mother was German, and her father Algerian and Turkish. When only a teenager, she was invited to join the Com

Details ISBN0375711848 Author David Thomson Short Title NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICT OF FILM Language English ISBN-10 0375711848 ISBN-13 9780375711848 Media Book Format Paperback Pages 1168 Edition Description Revised Edition 6th Subtitle Sixth Edition Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2014-05-06 NZ Release Date 2014-05-06 US Release Date 2014-05-06 UK Release Date 2014-05-06 Place of Publication New York Publisher Alfred A. Knopf Year 2014 Publication Date 2014-05-06 Imprint Alfred A. Knopf DEWEY 791.43028092 Audience General

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TheNile_Item_ID:140105671;
  • Condition: Brand new
  • Format: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-13: 9780375711848
  • Author: David Thomson
  • Book Title: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

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