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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 791.4375 ROU | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From Altman to Zefferelli, The Rough Guide to Film puts directors and their film careers centre screen - be they mogul, maverick or studio stalwart. This A-Z guide includes- The Choice- thousands of recommended films reviewed for DVD viewing with listings and illustrations. The View- from The Chair Career profiles of contemporary favourites like Soderbergh and Scorsese plus hordes of lesser-known names, from silent maestros like D. W. Griffith, through to such household Hollywood legends as Hitchcock and Huston to the best of cult and art-house maestros such as David Lynch or Ken Loach. Planet Cinema - loads of great films from each decade and from around the globe as well as all the best Hollywood and American Indie cinema- French new wave, German giants, Iranian innovators and the best of East Asia from Akira Kurosawa to John Wu and Wong Kar Wai. The Wider Cast- special feature boxes on directors' collaborations with actors, cinematographers and composers as well as features on key cinema movements and specific genres.
Author Notes
Various Authors
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
In the spirit of the Rough Guides travel books, this volume looks beyond the Hollywood mainstream to provide assistance to anyone who is browsing rental-store shelves or online DVD catalogs in search of something new. More than 800 directors from around the globe are profiled, and more than 2,000 of their most important films are briefly reviewed. Boxed features examine genres, national cinemas, and other topics. If you're in a hurry, you can turn to the various categorized lists of five great directors, five classic films, and five lesser-known gems. --Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
An unsigned introduction, ostensibly by the four main writers, states that the goal of this volume is to "present the world of cinema through the lens of its leading directors" because they are "the people whose artistic vision is often what ultimately determines a film's value." The four principal authors are certainly well qualified to make such judgments, as all have written extensively on this medium: Lloyd Hughes and Jessica Winter are responsible for Gangster Movies and American Independent Film, two previous titles in the "Rough Guide" series; Armstrong has written for periodicals like Film International and Film Quarterly; and pieces by Tom Charity appear frequently in the pages of Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope, and Total Film. An additional 17 contributors back them up; these 21 individuals together wrote the approximately 835 entries. Each entry consists of a heading that lists the director's name, country, and birth/death dates, followed by a biographical sketch of variable length that places his or her work under a microscope. The coverage is impressive, both chronologically, ranging from such pioneers as D.W. Griffith to today's Young Turks like Quentin Tarantino, and geographically, profiling directors from Hollywood to Bollywood to such lesser-known corners of filmdom as Senegal and Turkey. Features include 49 shaded boxes sprinkled throughout the text, which highlight some genre ("The Western: Destiny to Demise") or special aspect of film creation ("Jazz in the Movies"). A guide titled "Essential Films and Filmmakers" is like an amped-up table of contents and makes for a great browsing tool. Ditto for the "Index of Film Reviews" at the end of the book. While one could argue that much of this information is available free online (check out, for example, www.imdb.com for movie reviews or www.allmovie.com for director bios), it can be difficult, if not impossible, to establish the credentials of those who create web content. BOTTOM LINE One always gets what one pays for, and this authoritative book is a good compromise between single-volume works such as Visible Ink's The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, which does not do justice to the subject matter, and comprehensive multivolume sets like Gale's four-volume International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, which are beyond the budgets of many libraries. Compact, accessible, and well organized, this book gives quite a bit of bang for your library buck. [Available in print only.]-Michael Bemis, Washington Cty. Lib., Woodbury, MN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
