Movies Books

I doubt that I can say anything about this book that hasn't been said before but this is, by every measure, an outstanding examination of Cassavetes amazing body of work.
I go back to this book every six months or so and have for a number of years. It is a very thorough, reverent, and insightful reference book but it goes well beyond that. Though very full of information, it is personal enough that it has allowed (and encouraged) me to go and evaluate the films myself without the feeling that there is a "law" or an agenda already set with these films.
The greatest beauty of Cassavetes' films is that each one belongs to the individual; meaning that every person who chooses to lend his or her heart to the characters, stories, and subject matter(s) can get something out of it that belongs solely to that person. The films can excite, enrage, entertain, and rattle you in ways that films seldom do.

Cassavetes films make you more than an audience member as they make you more aware than ever that you just might still be human.

Great book and highly reccomended.

I'd like to corroborate Matthew Langdon's review (above or below this one). I had the advantage of having Ray Carney as a professor at Boston University. By some stroke of genius (possibly by administrative accident), all entering film students were required to take a survey course from him on film art before taking anything else. Carney started with warhorses like Hitchcock's "Psycho" and made the roomful of us (vocally) do exercises during the screening that exposed the highly polished but rather ridiculously superficial artifice of the "classic film". We all thought he was crazy. Here was this man -- that one friend described as a combination of Andy Warhol and Orville Reddenbacher -- unsubtly undermining a number of the most globally revered films. He then paraded a host of highly experimental films (many from the library of Congress that practically noone outside of a Carney class has ever or will ever see) before us that were appallingly difficult and often downright confrontational. It's pretty safe to say that practically none of us really "got it" until long after that semester, possibly years. At some point I did. Carney loves film just like we all do, however he had recognized something that we (and, most likely, you, too) had not, that film can be so much more than anything we had imagined (or yet been exposed to). That's largely what he wanted to show us in this class. Film is still a nascent art, highly immature in scope and depth. So far, Cassavetes -- one of the EASIER filmmakers Carney introduced us to -- is one of the handful of film artists that has done something deeply new with the form since its inception. If you develop an interest in Cassavetes, you will find this book essential, and you will return to it after every screening.

I originally got this book and read the whole thing, before i had seen any of cassavetes movies. This is not a recommended route. I have now seen all of his films, except for husbands, and i can't tell you how amazing i think the importance of this book is. I wonder what the ratio is between the people who disagree and agree with it's context, in respect to it's attitude towards american cinema. the book really does rewire your brain. The people who i am friends with, who are also interested in film are dumb founded when ever i casually undermine 2001 or citizen kane in a conversation. More importantly though, this book, like Cassavetes films, extends into life and actually opens you up to knew spiritual territory
you didn't think about. One last point: Does any one notice how suprisingly objective Carney is when he mentions his most hated film makers like Spielberg ? Get this book. It may feel too intellectual, but it really isn't. If you think that then you are reading it too quickly and not thinking about what it's actually saying.

I'm not sure what book the reviewer below this read, but I don't know how many times I'd have to read about films that completely re-imagine the way I (and our popular culture) see the world and my own experience before I'd feel "bored" or anything less than inspired and envigorated. In fact, I read this book very often - not just to gain information, like a dictionary or an encyclopedia, giving me facts and figure data I didn't have before, but as mental calethenics, or something like spiritual openess training. This is a much more meaningful and important activity than thematic comparison and contrsating, no matter how technically interesting that is. As the concepts and points of view on the world process thru my brain as I read them off the page, I gain new abilities to understand and see - and this takes work, and often repetition. So I reccomend anyone who reads this book and hopes to gain insight, not just into Cassavetes and his films, but into their own personal attitudes, to keep themselves OPEN, as Cassavetes explicitly did in every frame of film he exposed, and to always give the artist (or author) the benefit of the doubt before passing judgement based on arbitrary ulterior motives (which, naturally, we all have). This isn't easy (especially to the greatly film cultured), but I dare say you'll enjoy this book, and your life, a lot more.

Almost everything Carney says, you tend to utterly hate him for at first. His most recent article seemed so pessimistic that I spent an hour in my apartment, sitting in front of the TV depressed by it all.

Everything Carney writes tends to be tough at first, because, like Cassavetes, he mentions truths about life that very few people wish to confront. There is no evasion of reality in this book. People can be horrible to each other. We all die in the end. That's life.

Carney doesn't analyse Cassavetes' work in relation to other movies and cultural trends (as most film professors tend to do), but prefers to focus entirely on the performances of the characters on screen. Like Cassavetes, he never really explains the characters' motivations, but instead focuses on how they react to their environments. Everything he writes is about life -- you'll find nothing about tendentious compositions, popular culture, or auteur theory. The only important thing here is Carney's love for the characters and their creator.

One of the greatest books ever written on American film.

If you were born in the 1950's this book is for you! All the great shows are here (U.N.C.L.E., Wild, Wild West, Mission Impossible, etc) The book is nicely illustrated and features the author's incredible collection of props from many different shows. Much of the author's prose illustrates his considerable knowledge and love of the subject. I wonder if the former Soviet Union has books like this one? It is my theory that the Soviet Blok collapsed because it simply wasn't very fun. This book is fun. Buy it, or you will be shot with a sleep dart (while you are sleeping, of course, so you will never know that you have been shot with a sleep dart)

Danny Biederman is the actual author--the forward was by Robert W. Wallace. Biederman's collection of fictional spy artifacts is interesting to both movie buffs and to those involved in real-world espionage. I hadn't heard of most of the movies in "the Incredible World of Spy Fi," so I'll be looking them up on DVD. The spy gadgets and props are almost as important as the actor--the gimmicks are characters, too! Who can forget John Steed's steel-lined bowler, Maxwell Smart's shoe phone, the U.N.C.L.E. Special, James Bond's PPK and tricked-out sports cars, or Jim Phelp's self-destructing tape recorders? I enjoyed reading this book and it will be a valuable reference in my personal library.

Christmas present, birthday present, valentine's present, no-special-occasion present: this book makes me HAPPY! I can't imagine anyone not falling in love with it. It brought back floods of ecstatic memories -- and of course, I had to read it while drinking a shaken/not/stirred martini! BRAVO! MORE BOOKS from Mr. Biederman's archives -- and WOW, can he write! Wry, witty, charming, impeccably researched -- 10 STARS!

Danny Biederman's THE INCREDIBLE WORLD OF SPY-FI is not only the perfect coffee table book for those of us who grew up wanting to be James Bond (and maybe still DO want to be James Bond), it's also a brilliant and deeply enjoyable work of scholarship and pop-culture history. Biederman's personal collection of props, costumes, and other arcana from the Bond films, TV shows like THE MAN FROM UNCLE, and even spoofs like AUSTIN POWERS, has been justifiably legendary for years; now he's given us the gift of an intense look at just a fraction of that collection. One word of warning: Don't just get lost in the incredible photos, because Biederman's insightful, humorous, and intelligent prose (which accompanies the pics) is every bit as pleasurable as the visuals. My only complaint? I just wished this book was six times longer. Can we hope for a SPY-FI 2 sometime in the future, Mr. Biederman? Sure hope so.

This book should be in the library, or, more likely, on the coffee table of every aficionado of espionage. Most of us of a certain generation were weaned, so to speak, on the exploits of the imaginative and edgy TV spy series of the 1960s, so there's much here to bring one back to one's formative years. Danny Biederman gives it all his intelligent, informed, and indulgent commentary. There is simply no book like this.

I gave my granddaughter who is an avid "Lucy fan" this book for Christmas and she loved it because it focused on Lucy's movie career.

This book is very well written and has wonderful pictures. The write up about Lucy gives even the biggest fans new insight into her life. It is a great way to find all the movies she was in.

To start off this is a great book and not being much of a reader myself I really love this one. It has great large pictures, hard to find pictures and the words are fairly large in this one also. Not being overly large like a kids reader but being the perfect size! But not only this, it has a lot of informative info aobut all of Lucy's movies that she has appeared in and also a despription of each movie. This is great because if you have never seen any of Lucille Ball's films you will get a thrill out of reading about all of the movies as well as jotting them down and looking online to buy them on DVD. This book has so much more also as well as the biography of Lucille Ball and a whole lot more! This is not a boring book but a nice fun book to read and to also make you want to read as well as some great info about the bright and talented star. The book itself is very large and very well made, as well as being thick. It looks like it costs about $50 it is so big and thick but I bought this through a book store in my local town for $29.99 which on the back of the book is the retail value so Amazon has a GREAT price!

"Lucy at the Movies" by Cindy De La Hoz is a coffee table sized visual treat displaying the varied movie career of America's beloved red headed comedienne. It spans Lucy's 5 decade career in movies. The text is easy to read and gives the full cast and credits of all her movies. It includes the synopis,notes and comments, and even the reviews of each movie. There are many pictures from her movies dispersed throughout the book. Also, to the delight of her many fans, there are numerous behind the scenes and other personal pictures of Lucy and her castmates.
This book is worth every penny and if you're a Lucy fan it belongs in your collection. Buy it. You'll treasure it always.

Great large and loaded coffee table book. The photos are gorgeous! Lucille Ball had a real long career. I am in awe of the volume of work Ball had already experienced before "I Love Lucy". She was no doubt a workaholic. From Chorus girl to extra to supporting role to leading lady!
My all time favorite lady of Hollywood did it all. The author of this affordable book, Cindy De La Hoz deserves an award for putting this mother load of Ball's cinema work. Good job!

This is an incredible book, approaching Nixon's life through the movies he was known to have seen and liked. The result is an overlapping portrait that is both unexpected and insightful--in one chapter he's being likened to Walter Neff from Double Indemnity; in the next he's seen wishing desperately (yet a touch ambivalently) to be John Wayne. I'm entranced--something I never thought I'd say about anything related to Nixon.

There should be equal time for a book about JFK and the movies. JFK appears everywhere in the American cinema, from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE to PT-109 to THE GREEK TYCOON, not to mention his own real life romances with movie stars like Gene Tierney. His father made a pass at becoming a tycoon during his own affair with silent star Gloria Swanson. It might be, however, as Feeney suggests, that Nixon is a more natural film subject, if only because the shadows are darker when it comes to Nixon, and the contrasts between the light of California and the darkness of Watergate and Cambodia is more shocking.

We knew that Nixon watched a lot of movies while he was President, but it's startling indeed to see him attending several movies a week even when he was "in between jobs." Feeney shows how Nixon and American film grew up at the same time, even though he may be stretching a point to cite De Mille's SQUAW MAN (1913) as the first American full length film, that's simply wrong. You might as well call John Waters' SERIAL MOM the last American movie, since bizarrely enough that was the number one movie at the box office the day Nixon died (April 22, 1994).

I liked Feeney's writing throughout, and the parallels he makes between Nixon's character, and the character of several American film heroes (like the part Jack Lemmon plays in THE APARTMENT) is always clever and rings surprisingly true. There is something, perhaps, about identifying oneself as a member of the moviegoing audience, as Nixon did, that makes you a little more --what, passive? -- than other US politicians.

Mark Feeney's book provides a more intelligent examination of Richard Nixon, the movies and the twentieth century than anyone writing. That he blends them all together in a seamless narrative is just amazing. He is fair minded and, rare for an intellectual, brimming with common sense.

That doesn't mean that I agree with his analysis of Nixon. In particular, there are three substantive events of the Nixon era on which it is easy to disagree with Feeney:
1. Cambodia: Feeney seems to buy the line that Nixon brought about the fall of Cambodia. He should have read less Anthony Summers and more Lewis Sorley. No respectable historian believes Summers, William Shawcross and their ilk anymore. Sorley (no friend of Nixon) shows just how nearly we came to winning. A quick glance at the map should show anyone that once South Vietnam fell, so would Cambodia. Blaming Nixon is just the way the left avoids its responsibility for genocide.
2. Yom Kippur: Feeney treats Nixon's rescue of Israel in a couple of subordinate clauses, but this was one of the great moments of his Presidency and it was Nixon's personal peculiarities that brought it about. The military tried to block him, his advisors were unenthusiastic ("Get off your fat ass and get those planes in the air, Henry," Nixon is quoted as saying) and the left accused Nixon of organizing a coup d'etat. Only Nixon made it happen and saved Israel in the process.
3. Civil Rights: there have only been 5 US Presidents who furthered civil rights (Grant, Harding, Truman, LBJ and Nixon). Interestingly, they all left office at the bottom of the list of Presidential reputations and they all have revisionist cheerleaders, although only Truman has been pulled out of the gutter so far (Grant will be next). Nixon's signal acheivement was to pursue a liberal civil rights program (integrating the schools in the South, affirmative action, etc.) while winning white southerners to the Republicans. This depoliticized civil rights to such an extent that today the most conservative institution in America - the military - is also the least racist.

There is far too much emphasis generally on Nixon's anger and poverty creating the "Nixon Era" of break-ins and wiretaps (Feeney does a better job than most). The "Nixon Era" began in 1931 when Herbert Hoover used Naval Intelligence to break into the office of an unfriendly biographer (see Conflict of Duty by Dorwert). FDR, JFK and LBJ expanded the "Nixon Era" until, about the time Bill Moyers, then LBJ's aide, ordered the FBI to dig up dirt on Republican homosexuals for blackmail purposes, the FBI decided to go freelance, setting up COINTELPRO and assorted other programs without outside knowledge (possibly even without J. Edgar's knowledge). Ironically, it was Nixon's efforts to make the FBI more responsive to elected officials that turned Mark Felt into Deep Throat and brought Nixon down.

Nixon ended the Nixon Era by being so uncharismatic. Just as OJ, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson could get away with their crimes because of their celebrity, FDR and JFK could, too. The growth of government has not been ended but the growth of its shadier bits is firmly under control thanks to Nixon, because when he fell, so did a lot of average people. The rules changed for public servants. "Just following orders" no longer got you a gig on public television the way it did Bill Moyers (just compare the good Charles Colson has done for society with what Moyers, a premature angry old man has failed to do). Bill Clinton's sale of technological secrets to China for private gain was made known by the Director of the FBI, because he knew that if he stonewalled, he would be punished.

And Nixon's contempt for the Ivy League was far healthier than LBJ's awe of them. LBJ had big doubts about Vietnam but yielded to the "Harvards" in his administration who ran the war into the ground. Nixon's contempt for their intellect kept them in line ("Get off your fat ass, Henry"). Nixon may have been angry at Kissinger's attempt to steal credit for his own ideas, but he must have gained a certain satisfaction out of it, too. What better way to prove your superiority than to have a Harvard professor cheat by copying from your exam?

Today, it is obvious that Nixon really won. Richard Ben-Veniste, the golden boy of Watergate, was last seen engineering a crude and sordid coverup of a scandal in which, unlike Watergate, Americans did die, thousands of them. The media now is rated by the public [another irony!] on a par with used car salesmen. Dan Rather, the newsreader who delighted in tormenting Nixon, was forced to resign, proving himself to be both unethical and stupid to boot. And for the first time since 1930, conservatives control all three branches of the government.

It is that last point with which Nixon would not take so much satisfaction. Nixon was the most leftist President we ever had, the "last liberal," Garry Wills called him. "I gave them a sword," Nixon told David Frost. But he didn't give it to the Democrats; he gave it to the right wing of his own party. It was Barry Goldwater and Howard Baker who told Nixon that he had to resign because the rightwing wouldn't stand by him. The right took Nixon's sword and gave us the modern world of Reagan and Bush2 by thrusting it into the belly of liberal Republicanism.

Bill Clinton was a bigger crook than Nixon (beginning with Hillary's shortsales of pharmaceutical stocks as a newly appointed health care czar and ending with a wholesale auction of pardons to any gangster with enough Benjamins). He was also as rightwing as Nixon was leftwing, with his main accomplishment being the shutting down of the SEC, turning Wall Street over to crooks who cost the economy a larger share of the national wealth than was lost in the Great Depression. Clinton gave the leftwing of his party a sword too, but the left, fools that they are, committed hari kiri with it.

Feeney may disagree with the above, but his splendid book shows how we got here nonetheless.

Did Nixon miss his calling? Should he have been a Hollywood film reviewer? Nixon was born near Hollywood, where characters were reshaped and manufactured, in 1913, the same year that Hollywood produced its first film, Cecil B. DeMille's "The Squaw Man." In a time before DVD's and VHS/Betamax (when "R" rating meant Regular, not Restricted (hehe)), he watched 538 films during his 67 months in the Presidency (not counting his Vice Presidency under Eisenhower); he was screening about two 35mm films per week, sitting in a darkened room. But aside telling us that Nixon viewed PATTON three times during the VietNam War and Cambodian incursion (both Patton and Nixon suffered the indignities of serving under Eisenhower), or that he loved the works of John FOrd, and in his last White House years, more classic films were selected for him, the author creates a fascinating portrayal of Nixon and a cultural history of America's hopes and dreams and myths and realities, specifically through the metaphors of some of the following films: THE CONVERSATION (1974, Gene Hackman is filled with guilt and secrets, hidden away); PATTON (1970, war, leadership, and Eisenhower); MISTER ROBERTS (1955, the banality of being an administrator); DARK VICTORY (1939, Reagan plays a playboy as Bette David is dying and George Brent is trying to sure her, contrasting Nixon's ambitions to those of a playboy); and DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, growing up in Southern California)

I absolutely loved this book! Every chapter is full of insights into Nixon and the movies. Mark Feeney takes five movies Nixon is known to have enjoyed, and wrings out all kinds of fascinating connections between the story line and Nixon's own personality. Not only politics, but culture and sex and money and ambition and pain -- this book teaches amazing lessons on everything that shaped Nixon. Don't miss the sections on Elvis and Nixon as twin icons of un-cool!

My only complaint is that Feeney never brings Humphrey Bogart into the mix. The amazing and authentic "movie diary" at the end of the book makes it clear that Nixon screened both THE CAINE MUTINY and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE while in the White House. Why didn't Mark Feeney jump on the SCREAMINGLY obvious ties between Nixon and Bogey?

Look at Humphrey Bogart's face -- the mean, kicked around face of Richard Nixon. Look at the unshaved beard, the shifty, beady little eyes. Look at how every man Bogart ever played was a cold, paranoid loner at heart, often with a homicidal streak. It's much easier for me to see Nixon as the vicious small time prospector Fred C. Dobbs (in TREASURE) or as the frightened, incompetent naval officer Philip Queeg (in CAINE) than as the smooth, sexually confident insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray in DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

Note how Fred C. Dobbs is convinced everyone is after him. Note how he's capable of holding on to sanity -- just barely -- until he finally strikes it rich. The fact of finally having gold is what makes him lose his fragile grip on reality -- just the way Nixon survived years of political exile but cracked up the moment all his dreams were within his grasp. By turning on his buddies in bandit country, Dobbs ensures his own downfall systematically. He commits all the most horrifying acts of betrayal, but in his tortured mind it's always a matter of self-preservation. ("No, not murder, partner, not murder, your mistake! I'm saving my life that you'd be taking from me!")Sound familiar?

And how could Feeney have skipped writing a chapter on Bogart's role as Commander Philip Queeg in THE CAINE MUTINY? Nixon is so obviously Queeg it's like the movie was an eerie prophecy. Queeg is a weak, shifty eyed nervous wreck pathetically masquerading as a heroic military commander. Queeg knows he's not the John Wayne type. And he knows his officers know it. He constantly feels menaced by "disloyal officers" and insists "from the first they were all against me." Queeg routinely lies and cheats in order to avoid taking responsibility for his own ineptness as a commander. ("Take the towline . . . defective equipment . . . nothing more!")Queeg longs to rouse and inspire with his speeches, but his attempts at frank man to man talk are pathetically hollow. ("I kid you not.")THE CAINE MUTINY is the best movie ever made about Watergate.

Humphrey Bogart would have been the most logical choice to play Nixon in a major motion picture. He understood Nixon and acted out his tragedy back when Nixon himself was just a young congressman from California. How did the brilliant Mark Feeney miss the Bogart connection?

Sadly, Robert Klepper died in 2000, at the age of 32. A very nice fellow and an important film historian. Do pick up this worthwhile book, and mourn the fact that there will be no more from him.

I bought this book last year and love it and use it all the time. I get films from libraries all over the country and look up the movies that come in. I bring it with me if I am going somewhere that I will be awhile and read each review. It has a permanent place on my coffee table. If you love silent films, this book is a must.

This is the best index of silent film that I've ever seen. The reviews are bold independent and informative, if not always completely objective, Mr. Klepper is not afraid to have an opinion. This is a reference that I keep going back to.

I have owned "Silent Films, 1877-1996" for two years, and use it as a constant reference. (If you are a fan of TCM "Silent Sunday" or are a fan of silent movies and would like a guide to watching or purchasing silent film, this is the first reference to which I turn.) This does not cover absolutely every silent film, but there have been very few which I did not find information upon here. "Silent Films" also covers actors, directors, and other cinematographical information. The price tag is high, but for the silent movie buff it is indeed worth the price. I journal my silent movie viewings on its pages to keep a record. "Silent Films, 1877-1996" has gone from investment to treasure.

Robert Klepper has a remarkable love and knowledge of silent film. His understanding of the historical place of any movie he reviews is impressive and thoughtful. The book is a standing resource for any film enthusiast. In watching these films some of our favorite practices are to look for scenes that more modern films either steal (or pay omage to - depending on your thinking) and to pay attention to stunts that no actor or actress will ever have to duplicate in a more advanced film age. These are things that Robert Klepper also makes notice of and shares with his readers. I find his rating system to be reliable to my own standards and his humor to be very welcome - though I think some readers might miss some of it.

I do cherish this particular book and guard it heavily - no one is permited to borrow it. (I am usually pretty generous with my shelves.)

I assure you that the book is well worth the price -it is an excellent resource to the novice or the expert.

J

This is the first modern book I have seen in a long time that covers the silent era of film with the right combination of good textbook information and photographs to illustrate the era. There are many production stills, behind the scenes photos and poster and other advertising art work for illustration. A history of the development of Hollywood as the center of the film industry is given as well as coverage of different genres and the key players of the era. Overall, a handsome coffeetable edition with good general information about the best of Silent Film.

This gorgeous, glossy coffee-table-style book is a must-have for serious silent movie fans. Fascinating information on the golden age of silent movies and full of wonderful photographs.

This book is an absolute delight. During my initial paging through, I was at first struck by the quality, quantity, and depth of the incredible wealth of illustrations. Glorious eye candy for the film buff. But once I began reading Peter Kobel's eloquent text, I was captured by a prose that makes the silent film world come alive. Kobel provides us with a rich, well-researched picture of this era. I particularly liked his organization which avoids a straight chronology and approaches the subject from a variety of views - genre, individual personalities, the art of film, even promotion and the press. This allows me to read in depth or browse at leisure. Silent Movies is one of those fascinating books that will draw me back into it again and again.

This book is crammed with lush photos and fantastic ad materials from the silent era. The text is thorough, informative, and presented in an organized and entertaining manner, but the book is worth the price for the illustration alone.

I received this book as a Christmas gift and while not a definitive volume on the Silent Era, it is truly beautiful. They have various chapters from the stars, the directors, genres and etc. This book is loaded with photos of stars and posters and is a large coffee table book. I have read bits and pieces but not cover to cover, yet. Still, I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this forgotten time in cinema history.

I bought this book on a trip and thought it might pass some time on the airplane...

It truly surprised me! The quizzes are fun...lot's of great television shows included. There's no cheating...hard to determine which characters match the question choices...

AND...the end reults are surprisingly accurate! VERY fun and addicitng book...I want to find more like it.

This book is so much fun. It's great for groups or alone. When one quiz is finished everyone wants more!! It truly is hard to put this book down. The questions are quite clever and intriguing. In the end, these questions lead to quite accurate personality identifications. I love this book and highly recommend it. It makes a great gift.

This book is highly contagious and very fun. My friends and I were testing ourselves on shows that we weren't even all that familiar with. ;)

A great purchase for anyone who's ever wondered about their television persona. Are you a Carrie or a Miranda? Mary Ann or Ginger? This book gave mostly surprisingly accurate answers.

My only problem with it was that I noticed some of the quizzes were missing one or two characters that I personally felt should've been included. No Lisa on the Saved by the Bell quiz, or Andrea on Beverly Hills 90201. So I do have to wonder if that would've effected my results any.

Oh well, still a great find nonetheless. I hope Noah is planning on a part II.

So have fun and learn about yourself as well.

So much fun. The personality tests are funny and amazingly accurate at the same time. Great to do with your friends or to pass time on your own.
With so many shows there is something in here for everyone. Its a great gift for someone you love - or for that secret santa person you have no idea what to get for them. Definite crowd pleaser.

My boyfriend and I couldn't stop taking these quizzes. We even did one for a little girl on the train. When's the next one? Huh, Noah, WHEN?

Kael's endorsement was good enough for me. The categories are so witty and ingenious, I wanted to solve all of them, but I'm just not maven enough. I hear S. Sondheim had no problem, though.

Really enjoyed this book! Challenging, great photos... even the scoring guide pays homage to cinema in a clever and humorous fashion.

If you're the kind of movie-lover who can reel off the entire Bette Davis filmography in your sleep, this is the book for you! DiLeo knows his stuff inside out, and the wicked complexity of his quizzes will keep even the most knowledgable reader happily amused for hours. The best movie trivia book I've ever seen.

And You Thought You Knew Classic Movies is extremely challenging for even the most accomplished movie buffs. The quizzes are fun! Most of the time I had to peek at the answers - I learned a lot about my favorite old movies. Thank you John!

Had so much fun doing the quizzes in this book flying across the Atlantic with my husband, I was in New York before I knew it. Had to buy it for my friends. It's fun anytime but especially now with the Academy Awards this month.

All of Bruce Henderon's books are worth a dozen times what he sells them for; flawless, stunning reproductions of great movie posters. Buy them ALL!

As previous reviewers stated, this is a marvelous book, & it does have far too many Disney & Popeye posters in it. Considering the wealth of other 'vintage' cartoon posters that are around (even just searching on the net), Im suprised they didnt have a better selection for us to look at. Otherwise, Im very happy to have this book, and I'd LOVE to see a volume 2 some day!!!

I'll be truthful: I received Bruce Hershenson's CARTOON MOVIE POSTERS as part of a "grab-bag" special he was throwing a couple of years back. My tastes lie in the somewhat more arcane area of Horror & Science Fiction posters. What would a guy like me who covets copies of posters like BEAST WITH 1,000,000 EYES want with...harmless, namby-pamby kid's stuff? Plenty, as I soon discovered once I opened this excellent book. First-the reason I had been so unaware of cartoon posters, especially ones from the seven minute variety, is that so many of them are practically extinct. Cartoons, being the VERY bottom of the bill, were treated as 4th-class citizens, and if the studios bothered to make a poster at all, there weren't very many of them and the vast majority of those were tossed. What a shame! This book, which contains close to 400 exqusitely printed images, is an absolute riot of color and imagination that easily rivals any of my beloved fantasy pieces. Starting from cartoon pioneer Windsor McCay in 1911 and ending with the X-rated FRITZ THE CAT in 1972,(and touching on all points in between), Bruce includes examples ranging from the obvious (Disney, Warner Bros, & Fleischer) to the wonderfully obscure (there are several pages of pictures from Ub Iwerks'fairy tale cartoons from the 30s that are gorgeous, more than a little strange, and as rare as hen's teeth.) If you have even a passing interest in movie posters, it is mandatory that you order at least a couple of Hershenson's poster volumes. If you are a rabid, hopeless poster fiend like myself, they are invaluable for both reference and entertainment. Everything about them is first-rate: the printing, the choice of posters (ah, those 30s & 40s Disney 1-sheets...!)the short, inobtrusive, well-written snippets regarding the history of various posters: it's very tough to find fault here. This is the perfect gift for hard-core poster geeks and casual film/cartoon aficonados alike. Five stars all the way, and...abbah-dee, abbah-dee, abbah-dee....That's All, Folks!

Everyone has their own favorite film genre (animation, action and adventure, science fiction, etc.). Next to crime/film noir films, animation is mine. The beautiful thing about this book is the unexpected. Rather than delve into the standard Disney fare (which is included in great detail nevertheless), this book includes artwork from posters from "lesser seen or only mildly popular" titles. Besides Disney, everything from Fleischer to Avery is represented, works of art that can only be bought for thousands of dollars today at many of America's high echelon auction houses. If you are the least bit interested in the jaw-dropping beauty of what has become a lost art -- the exercise of drawing images associated with the advertising of a Hollywood film -- this is the book to have. This book is part of movie poster maven Bruce Hershenson's exhaustive multi-volume series of books highlighting the history and beauty of what much of mainstream America has only in the last ten years begun to recognize. And that is movie posters are a "popular art" form that can stand proudly next to all other styles of art from gothic to modern, from expressionist to impressionist. Great film art borrows from all of these styles and this volume, which focuses only on posters associated with animated films, illustrates innumerable examples whereby despite the restrictive nature of the genre (cartoons), not all posters went in the same direction in terms of style and presentation. From Pinocchio to Popeye, Hershenson and Allen have built an incredible archive (and legacy) of images in all of his books, capturing a period (when all posters were drawn by hand and then printed, as opposed to today's method of using photographic stock and manipulating them digitally and printing them by the thousands) that would otherwise be lost forever. A fine book for any collector (get the hardcover edition if you can, it's harder to find; if Amazon doesn't have it, it's available from Mr. Hershenson directly at mail@brucehershenson.com).

This review can easily apply to any of the books in the Bruce Hershenson edited series of film poster history. Hershenson rightly treats film graphics not just as pop culture artifacts but true works of art. His books are filled with a curator's eye for superior choice and reproduction, each poster in striking color and with a clarity of printing that rivals most any coffee table art book. Somewhere between advertising and illustration, film posters, like book jackets and record covers, inhabit that imaginative and atmospheric zone where one art reflects another. It's not just the history of film or the history of film design, it's a history of twentieth century Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. How often we would go into the dark theatre armed only with the ideas and ideals of the posters outside, and then return to them afterward, perhaps with nodding affirmation or smirking disillusionment, but still a vision of what could be. This series of books should be subtitiled: THE FINE ART OF ANTICIPATION, for no matter if expectation was filled or emptied by the films behind them, their posters kept on shining.

Absolutely stunning! Superb graphics of some of our favorite movie posters! Highly recommend.

How can crime be bad and yet so good! Look inside the cover of these pages for the answer. Not much reading required but plenty of illustrations. And what illustrations!! Cigarettes, dangling from shadowey faces, killer guns begging for victums, and behind every crime there's a "good" women to lead him on to both heaven or hell. These images can usually sum up the classic Crime Movie Poster. In cronological order the images take us from the birth of this gendre to it's present. This is no small feat, as the first poster is dated 1913! That's how many years? Page after page is loaded with poster art that grabs the eye and makes you want to view the film. Vivid coloring shows the excellent printing quality of this volume. One only needs to turn the pages to discover "the stuff dreams are made of".

How can crime be bad and yet so good! Look inside the cover of these pages for the answer. Not much reading required but plenty of illustrations. And what illustrations!! Cigarettes, dangling from shadowey faces, killer guns begging for victums, and behind every crime there's a "good" women to lead him on to both heaven or hell. These images can usually sum up the classic Crime Movie Poster. In cronological order the images take us from the birth of this gendre to it's present. This is no small feat, as the first poster is dated 1913! That's how many years? Page after page is loaded with poster art that grabs the eye and makes you want to view the film. Vivid coloring shows the excellent printing quality of this volume. One only needs to turn the pages to discover "the stuff dreams are made of".

Everyone has their own favorite film genre (animation, action and adventure, science fiction, etc.). This one is mine. If you are the least bit interested in the jaw-dropping beauty of what has become a lost art -- the exercise of drawing images associated with the advertising of a Hollywood film -- this is the book to have. No other genre, in my opinion, was more dark and foreboding and in turn experienced a burst of creativity than posters associated with the film-noir period of Hollywood, which roughly ran from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. This book is part of movie poster maven Bruce Hershenson's exhaustive multi-volume series of books highlighting the history and beauty of what much of mainstream America has only in the last ten years begun to recognize. And that is movie posters are a "popular art" form that can stand proudly next to all other styles of art from gothic to modern, from expressionist to impressionist. Great film art borrows from all of these styles and this volume, which focuses only on posters associated with crime and film-noir films, is my favorite. It illustrates innumerable examples of the ranges in style, despite the superficial expectation that all art from this genre was the same. It was not. From Gilda to This Gun For Hire, Hershenson and Allen have built an incredible archive of images in all of his books, capturing a period (when all posters were drawn by hand and then printed, as opposed to today's method of using a montage of photos and manipulating them digitally and printing them by the thousands) that would otherwise be lost forever. A fine book for any collector (get the hardcover edition if you can, it's harder to find; if Amazon doesn't have it, it's available from Mr. Hershenson directly at mail@brucehershenson.com.

Every last shot heard in the world of motion pictures is displayed here. From Pre-code films like LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT to the Code-in-your-face PULP FICTION, Bruce Hershenson captures the poster art of these films in splashy high quality color. A bonus is that Bruce always includes lobby card art, cherished by many a collector, but not displayed often.