Happy World Book Day everyone!
In celebration, let’s take a moment to highlight some new additions on this cinephile’s bookshelf as well as some upcoming titles that may be of interest to any lover of the movies.
America’s Film Legacy, 2009-2010: A Viewer’s Guide to the 50 Landmark Movies Added To The National Film Registry in 
2009-10 (2012), by Daniel Egan.
[Editorial Review from Leonard Maltin] … This slender paperback covers the fifty newest films to join their ranks during the past two years, and like the overall roster, they truly run the gamut in terms of age, genre, and popularity. Eagan’s clear-eyed essays place each film into proper context within the larger picture of American cinema that the Registry seeks to represent, whether dealing with the 1906 actuality short A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire, Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, or Sally Cruikshank’s nutty animated cartoon Quasi at the Quackadero.”
ILC’s Take: Given to me as a gift, I find this to be a great resource to have in my cinematic library.
An Empire of Their Own: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1989), by Neal Gabler
[Editorial Review from Library Journal] Gabler has written a thoroughly researched history of the early Hollywood film industry and the men who ran it. Coming from similar humble Eastern European and Jewish backgrounds, Fox, Laemmle, Meyer, Zukor, and the Warner brothers shared an overwhelming desire to achieve wealth and status in their new country. Finding barriers to success through traditional means, they gravitated to the fledging film industry where they “could simply create a new country an empire of their own, so to speak one where they would not only be admitted, but would govern as well.” Gabler documents the consequences of their quest and the tragic results that followed.
ILC’s Take: I only THOUGHT I knew the history of the foundation of Hollywood. This book went into exhaustive and personal detail about what motivated these early moguls to create the dream factory that entertains us and influences us to this very day. A must read.
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Coming Soon ….(or Just Released)
Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist: Reading the Hollywood Reds by Jeff Smith (April 2014)
The UC Press synopsis is quite descriptive so there is no need for me to rephrase. But given the title, it seems to be an intriguing subject that intersects the worlds of Hollywood and politics. I am sure that we will see the worlds are much closer than we think.
Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins by Noah Isenberg (January 2014)
Chosen as a must read recently by TCM, Isenberg examines the life and work of the director best known for the noir classic Detour.
What have you read lately? Please share 🙂
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