Compact, incisive, and witty—a great starting point for those interested in Spielberg’s life and art.
The acclaimed director’s work examined through the prism of his Jewish faith.
When noted film critic Haskell (My Brother, My Sister: Story of a Transformation, 2013, etc.) was asked to write a book about Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) for the publisher’s Jewish Lives series, she was hesitant. She wasn’t Jewish, and she had never been an “ardent fan.” She had been hard on his early works, preferring European and art films, but many of his films she did love. To write this book would mean “confronting my own resistance,” but she wanted to do “justice” to his life and art and his Jewishness—“denied, then embraced.” Haskell begins this delightful book with a short biographical sketch of Spielberg’s youthful anxieties, nail-biting nervousness, experiences with anti-Semitic bullying, and a parental breakup that deeply affected him. Haskell admires how Spielberg, a poor student, fulfilled his passion for film with small jobs, finally securing a position at Universal, where his short film Amblin’ opened the door to success. He directed TV shows and made a TV movie, Duel, which the author calls a “mesmerizing little classic.” It demonstrated Spielberg’s “extraordinary technical mastery” and his knack for telling a great story and investing his audience in it. The Sugarland Express, his first theatrical work, an “epic on wheels,” first paired him with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and composer John Williams. Haskell then briefly analyzes 28 films—from Jaws to Bridge of Spies—with ease and aplomb, lightly touching on matters of Jewishness as they come up. With sharp observations and wise judgments, the author discusses her subject’s work with sprightly, accessible prose. 1941 was a “fiasco.” In Raiders of the Lost Arc, Spielberg’s “comic touch is unique, deft, reliable.” Catch Me If You Can is his “most personal” film, and The Terminal is a “visual tour de force.”
Compact, incisive, and witty—a great starting point for those interested in Spielberg’s life and art.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-300-18693-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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