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GODS AND MONSTERS

Name: GODS AND MONSTERS
Author: Peter Biskind
ISBN: 1-56025-545-5

THIRTY YEARS OF WRITING ON FILM AND CULTURE FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST INCISIVE WRITERS

by Peter Biskind ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2005

An impressive appreciation of cinema’s highs and lows, but you’ll still wish Biskind could simply go back to writing about...

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The probably inevitable rarities and B-sides compilation from the ex-editor of Premiere.

Previously, Biskind (Down and Dirty Pictures, 2004; Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, 1998) made a niche for himself as the slightly left-of-mainstream scold of the American cinematic scene in whose eyes the sellouts are many and the artists of vision rare. Here are three decades’ worth of Biskind’s past writings that show, besides his undisputable eye for critiquing the form, the evolution of a writer from starchy ideologue to celebrity profiler. What’s most striking in the pieces from the ’70s and ’80s is the uncompromising nature of their political conviction. A Film Quarterly story about On the Waterfront becomes a decent encapsulated history of American liberalism and labor in the postwar era. Biskind’s cant has a tendency toward old lefty revisionism, as when he thrashes the PBS documentary Vietnam and The Deer Hunter for daring to suggest that the North Vietnamese may not have been populist angels, and castigates the NBC miniseries Holocaust for not critiquing Zionism. As he slouches into the ’90s and his problematic editorship of Premiere—where, it must be said, for years Biskind fought the good fight for the idea that you could have a smart but popular film magazine—his writing comes to consist more of profiles of filmmakers, both the creatives and the suits, and the spark goes out. His piece on Clint Eastwood is fraught with uncharacteristic pandering, and one on Robert Redford and Sundance is heavily laden with Vanity Fair Hollywood powerbroker gossip. That said, his 1998 story on the lengthy gestation of The Thin Red Line and the perverse mania of director Terrence Malick is out-and-out masterful.

An impressive appreciation of cinema’s highs and lows, but you’ll still wish Biskind could simply go back to writing about movies again instead of indulging in all this glossy gossip.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005

ISBN: 1-56025-545-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Nation Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PANDORA'S BOX
by Peter Biskind

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SKY IS FALLING
by Peter Biskind

- BOOK REVIEW
MY LUNCHES WITH ORSON
edited by Peter Biskind

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.