The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated
by David Thomson
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Book Summary Information
Author: David ThomsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-16
ISBN: 0375709401
Number of pages: 1008
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated
Book Review: The Big Book of Film
Summary: 5 Stars
Thomson writes the mini-essay like no one else. This book has info aplenty, but more than that it finds resonance in the most unexpected places. Try the entries on Rin-Tin-Tin, or the Lumiere Brothers. Some pieces tend more toward the length of full essay-portraits, but these too are surprises. The longest (I think) is Graham Green, which shows the intersection of life, film, lterature and art (a place full of fascinating wreckage). And where else would Sharon Stone's entry get merged with the one on Frances Farmer?
This is an encyclopedia that lacks as many details as it encompasses, yet it has everything it needs. It's more a way of looking at the movies than a mere listing of data. Along with The People's Almanac of 1975, this is one of the two most readable reference works I've ever experienced. Much of it is worth reading twice.
Summary of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated
For almost thirty years, David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely "the finest reference book ever written about movies" (Graham Fuller, Interview), not merely the "desert island book" of art critic David Sylvester, not merely "a great, crazy masterpiece" (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian), but also "fiendishly seductive" (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone).This new edition updates the older entries and adds 30 new ones: Darren Aronofsky, Emmanuelle Beart, Jerry Bruckheimer, Larry Clark, Jennifer Connelly, Chris Cooper, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Curtis, Sir Richard Eyre, Sir Michael Gambon, Christopher Guest, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Spike Jonze, Wong Kar-Wai, Laura Linney, Tobey Maguire, Michael Moore, Samantha Morton, Mike Myers, Christopher Nolan, Dennis Price, Adam Sandler, Kevin Smith, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, Lew Wasserman, Naomi Watts, and Ray Winstone.
In all, the book includes more than 1300 entries, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long. In addition to the new "musts," Thomson has added key figures from film history-lively anatomies of Graham Greene, Eddie Cantor, Pauline Kael, Abbott and Costello, No?l Coward, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Gish, Rin Tin Tin, and more.
Here is a great, rare book, one that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, and nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, and passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker and film buff must own. Time Out named it one of the ten best books of the 1990s. Gavin Lambert recognized it as "a work of imagination in its own right." Now better than ever-a masterwork by the man playwright David Hare called "the most stimulating and thoughtful film critic now writing."
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