Product Description
Pocket Essentials is a fresh new series of film books that are short, snappy, and easy to read. Packed with facts, and backed up by opinion, each book has all the key information you need to know about the world's most celebrated film directors and film genres. What's in a book? As well as an introduction to the subject, each film by a director or each genre is individually analyzed and reviewed. In addition, the director or genre's impact on the film industry is explained, and a handy reference section lists all the far weightier (and more expensive) books on the subject. For movie buffs and students, these are great little entry-level books that build into an essential film library. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Perfectly shoddy in every way
Luckily, this book is very small in size, so one can hurl it against thewall or furniture or even the TV set and not do any damage.To be fair,its size is part of its problem--it seems to be part of a series of"Pocket Essentials," books which aim to give a brief overview ofa director's work.Allen had almost 30 movies to his credit when this bookwas written, so cramming that much plot summary and commentary into 90pages had to be tough.Oddly, it's Interiors that gets the most space(about 5 pages), not Annie Hall or Manhattan.

Once you accept the factthat this will be film commentary lite, however, annoying problems stillabound.The author's style is simplistic--it sounds like his firstunedited draft is what was published.Sloppy sentence style, typos, andpoor word choices (he calls Take the Money and Run a "skit,"quite literally, even though it's a 90-minute movie; "adopted"and "adapted" are not the same word) are frequent.Poor researchis evident--he claims Allen has worked with only three cinematographers,which is wrong and easily disproved.He also incorrectly claims thatAllen's unique credits style started with Annie Hall.Some major plotpoints are missed, such as the importance of Holly's pregnancy in Hannahand Her Sisters.

Occasionally, the author does express an intererstinginsight--his discussions of Interiors and Broadway Danny Rose are good. However, this is overall a shoddy production in every way, right down tothe physical look of the type.Most revealingly, on the last page, in anannotated bibliography entry, the author criticizes his own work.Herefers to a recent Allen biography as "[o]bviously compiled fromvarious thin sources and padded out with background detail, much like thebook you now hold in your hands."Avoid this book.I know I willavoid any more in the Pocket Essentials series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Unknown Allen Trilogy
"Did you hear about Sy Clops? He's got a middle eye infection." "God" is one of three on-acts Allen wrote to be performed together. The others are "Sex" and "Death." The author used elements of these plays in subsequent films. In the 1980s, radio versions of all three were produced and broadcast in the U.S. (National Radio Theater), Great Britain (BBC) and Australia (ABC). "God" is set in ancient Greece where actors are preparing to produce a tragedy. Or is it set in a modern Broadway theater, where the characters keep calling Woody Allen on the phone to complain about how he wrote them? This was written to accompany two other Allen one-acts, "Sex" and "Death." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Lenny Maltin gives us another look at comedy's great talents
Once again.Leonard Maltin has given us another look at "The Great Movie Comedians"and he shows us why they are still popular with movie fans.In this third look at filmdon's funniest clowns and comics.He explains why Laurel & Hardy,Abbott & Costello ,"The Three Stooges",The Marx Brothers,Charlie Chaplin and W.C.Fields are still popular with their fans even years after these talented performers stopped making movies.He also explains why some performers like Jerry Lewis is still unable to work successfully as a solo clown or why "The Marx Brothers"were never able to sustain their popularity with moviegoers into the war years.(Mainly because of creative sabotage from stupid studio execs like Louis B.Mayer At MGM and the equally stupid heads of RKO and UA).He also looks at the brief but interesting film careers of Thelma Todd,Raymound Griffith,Charlie Chase, Fatty Arbuckle,Mabel Normand,Harry Langdon and Harold Lloyd.The book also includes a filmography of these performers best work and photos of these clowns and comics in their best scenes and off camera as well.While one can hardly agree with the insight into the films of Woody Allen ,Jerry Lewis,The Marx Brothers,etc in this book(I still don't find Mr.Allen,Mr.Lewis,The Marxes,Mr.Chaplin,Mr.Keaton,Mr.Langdon,Mr.Lloyd,Mr.Buster Keaton and Mr.Fields Funny).Mr.Maltin's estimation of their work is informative,interesting and fun.Which can make even a non "Three Stooges"or Non Fields,Marx,KeatonFan take another look at the careers of these famous funnypeople.Bravo Lenny.Kevin S.Butler.

The perfect book on movie comedians and movie comedy:
No one understands and appreciates movie comedy better than LeonardMaltin, and here he has written a book on the subject that is simplyperfect. His enthusiasm and love for these comedians and their comedies isinfectious, and he gives us a giddy yearning to watch the movies he cites.If one is an aspiring comedian, too, this is an inspirational book, fillingone with the wonderful possibilities of making an audience laugh. It isdifficult to fully describe the unpretentious, simple manner in which Mr.Maltin nails down the very essence of comedy in these pages. Mr. Maltinunderstands better than anyone the subtle art of analyzing comedy withoutkilling it, making his book an absolute joy.TO AMAZON:PLEASE NOTETHISIS A SLIGHTLY CORRECTED VERSION OF A REVIEW I WROTE FOR A LATER EDITION OFTHIS BOOK.THE REVIEW APPLIES EQUALLY WELL TO ALL THREE AVAILABLEEDITIONS. ... Read more

Product Description
This book reprints a four-hour conversation between Mr. Schickel and Mr. Allen and includes a long essay of introduction by Mr. Schickel, which places Woody Allen's entire career in critical perspective, as well as a complete filmography.Readers will find Mr. Allen's reflections on his major preoccupations--the battle of the sexes; the conflict between reality and fantasy in his major films; mortality, religion, and the role that chance plays in the unfolding of our lives.The book also offers insights into Mr. Allen's working methods as a writer and the growth of his skills as a director. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Embarrassing. Shameless waste of time
I'm a huge Woody allen fan but this book is an embarrassing and shameless waste.Nothing new here is gleaned from Woody and his thougts on his films are much better presented in Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation With Stig Bjorkman.In an introduction seemingly ghost-written by Allen himself, Schickel uses at the end to defend the Soon-Yi situtation and even delves into the Mia Farrow charges, "I do not think anyone believes the hysterical (and preposterous) charges of child abuse Mia Farrow brought against him; certainly the courts did not."Did Schickel not read the court transcripts that Farrow attached to the end of her book where the Judge said he was unconvinced that something did not take place?It is as if he has made a deal with the devil just to land a prize interview, except he completely wastes his opportunity by asking almost nothing of interest or get anything new from Allen.

He lets Allen get away with saying his plots are fabrications and have little to do with his own life, ignoring the fact that many of the films parallel Allen's life almost exactly.In fact, in "Deconstructing Harry," there is a fight scene between Harry and his wife which uses almost the exact words that Farrow wrote occurred between her and Allen! Yet, all that is not spoken about.Schickel, who thinks he is an authority on Allen, questions him about Bob Hope, who Woody Allen is well-known to have admired, but seems ignorant of the fact that "Love and Death" is almost a loose reworking of Hope's Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) - some film authority!

There is nothing new of interest here at all.Read the "Woody Allen on Woody Allen" book instead-Schickel seems so excited to be talking to Woody, he even thinks something as awful as "Hollywood Ending" is acceptable.This book is less a book on Woody Allen and his films and more about how a film critic can lose integrity and a respect for his craft by cashing it in to talk to Woody Allen.It's sad.

A Great Filmmaker's View of Himself
Woody Allen makes films like no one else.Sure, the themes of Allen's films (New York, anguished intellectuals) aren't ones that are shared by most blockbusters, but his process of making films is different.Since he started making his own films over thirty years ago, he has put out about one every year, a record no other American director has come close to, and of course he writes them and acts in most of them.It is no metaphor that he has put his life into films, and in _Woody Allen: A Life In Film_ (Ivan R. Dee), the movie critic for _Time_ magazine, Richard Schickel, examines the life work along with Allen.The book is the complete text of a four-hour interview shown last year on the invaluable Turner Classic Movies channel; that version was edited to ninety minutes.It also has an essay of appreciation about Allen's work, which Schickel clearly values.He admits that he is biased, not because of friendship for Allen, but because of similarities between them, being roughly the same age and distrusting organized religion, corporate America, and aromatherapy.Allen "... speaks to me - and _for_ me sometimes - in a quite uncomplicated way."If you do not share his bias, he warns, you are reading the wrong book.If you do, you will find Schickel's essay, and especially Allen's own words about his work, a delight.

The film a year output has lead to many people thinking that along with all the other neuroses that Allen has depicted for himself, he is a workaholic.He denies it.He likes the work."It keeps me sane to the degree that I'm sane.It helps me."But if he can't get the shot exactly right, and it is time for the Knicks game, he lets the shot go.He may love making the movies, but he is distinctly modest about them."I think I'm going to write _Citizen Kane_ every time out of the box, and it's going to be great."And then he is humiliated by what he sees on the screen."I have failed almost every time..."He reflects here on his ability to make jokes; even in high school, he could get out of class at one and go into New York to start writing jokes for clients to put in the newspapers.His films are not all just funny, of course.Even though there is humor in, say, the masterful _Crimes and Misdemeanors_, the sad lesson of the movie is that good intentions don't count; "... they do in your heart - but to society success is the bottom line."The earnest film-maker in the movie is a loser and the murderous doctor loses nothing."I just wanted to illustrate in an entertaining way that there's no God, that we're alone in the universe..."No wonder people like his early funny ones.

Schickel has done a masterful job asking the right questions.He does not go much into Allen's personal life, but sticks to the work.Allen gets to explain his attitude toward actors, and it is clear why he can continue to get the best of them to work with him.He lets them improvise, and he lets them alone: "You get out of the way and let them do what has made them great."He is laudatory about Mia Farrow's participation in the films, and for all her subsequent acerbity towards him, he did provide her with an enormous body of work.Schickel rightly gets Allen to talk on the magic in his movies, like the character leaving the screen in _Purple Rose of Cairo_.Magic is the only thing that could save us, but it doesn't do so for Farrow's character because she, like all of us, has to choose the real world.There is a surprising segment on gangsters in Allen's films, who play roles more often than I had remembered.Allen says that with his father having been a pool hustler and his own having grown up on the streets of Brooklyn, he is closer to gangsters than intellectuals: "I mean, I was thrown out of college in my freshman year."There are insights in this small volume aplenty, and if you like Allen's films, you will learn much about him by hearing what he has to say about them.

More interview, less essay!
The prefatory essay is about 65 pages long, and the entire book, stopping short of the filmography and index, is about 174 pages.Because the book is so slim, I felt a bit cheated once I finally got to the interview.Maybe the publisher wanted an extended essay to make the book long enough to be marketable, but just beware -- interesting essay, fascinating interview (if you like Allen), but when you see how slim the book is, just realize less than 2/3rds of it is interview. ... Read more

Product Description
Marion Meade tells the whole story of Woody Allen's life, from his working class beginnings in the Bronx, through his early career as a gag writer for New York newspaper columnists, his struggles as a stand-up comedian, to his break-through into films with What's New Pussycat (which he wrote and starred in alongside Peter O'Toole). As a writer/director he has made many films most notably Annie Hall (starring Diane Keaton with whom he lived for many years), Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters (with Mia Farrow, with whom he had a 13 year relationship) and Broadway Danny Rose.Marion Meade's is an unauthorised life, but many of those close to Allen both professionally and personally have talked as her previous books on Keaton and Dorothy Parker were widely praised. ... Read more

Product Description
In this extended essay, Vittorio Hosle develops a theory of the comical and applies it to interpret both the recurrent personae played by Woody Allen the actor and the philosophical issues addressed by Woody Allen the director in his films.

"In Woody Allen, Vittorio Hosle goes a long way toward explaining everything you wanted to know about Allen but were afraid to ask. Just why exactly is he funny, and why does his humor have a strong appeal for academics? In his comprehensive analysis of Allen's work, Hosle outlines a workable theory of humor, illustrates his conclusions by referring to the films and prose, and points out several philosophic motifs underlying Allen's deceptively complex comedies. Hosle's work elevates the enjoyment of Allen's films from guilty pleasure to satisfying intellectual engagement with an intriguing contemporary thinker and artist." --Richard A. Blake, S.J., Boston College

"Vittorio Hosle presents a compelling overview of Allen's work in which he discusses different theories of laughter and argues for the priority of the incongruity theory as the only one able to answer the normative question, what distinguises good from bad laughter? On this theoretical basis he goes on to delve into both the humor and the philosophical profundity of Allen's films." --Sander Lee, Keene State College ... Read more

Product Description
Award-winning director and screenwriter, actor, playwright, romatic hero, proud New Yorker--these are among the many faces of Woody Allen. The Films of Woody Allen examines the life and career of this brilliantly innovative artist, from What's New, Pussycat and Annie Hall to Mighty Aphrodite and Everyone Says I Love You. Photos throughout. ... Read more

Product Description
Jo Anne Worley, Jonathan Winters, and Woody Allen explain such "stuff" as how bird's nest soup is made, how hot dogs got their name, and where mustard comes from. ... Read more