|
"Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films | 
 enlarge | Author: David Thomson
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $26.37
You Save: $13.58 (34%)
New (34) Used (11) from $23.00
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 5181
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1024
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.8 x 2.3
ISBN: 0307264610
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.4375
EAN: 9780307264619
ASIN: 0307264610
Publication Date: October 14, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2008: Having already written (and twice revised) the greatest bathroom book of all time, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson has refreshed his encyclopedic and idiosyncratic understanding of movie history to confect another giant slab of candy for anyone who loves movies or just likes to watch a great mind at work. "Have You Seen...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films is no cobbled collection of old reviews: written fresh from start to finish, Thomson's page-long profiles often ignore plot to focus instead on the people behind the film or the slippery, personal question of what the movie is actually like to watch. And writing about a thousand films pushes him beyond his favorites into more interesting territory: flaws and failures are often his best subjects. You'll want to discover movies you've never heard of before, and rediscover others you thought you knew well. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
In 1975, David Thomson published his Biographical Dictionary of Film, and few film books have enjoyed better press or such steady sales.
Now, thirty-three years later, we have the companion volume, a second book of more than 1,000 pages in one voice—that of our most provocative contemporary film critic and historian.
Juxtaposing the fanciful and the fabulous, the old favorites and the forgotten, this sweeping collection presents the films that Thomson offers in response to the question he gets asked most often—“What should I see?” This new book is a generous history of film and an enticing critical appraisal written with as much humor and passion as historical knowledge. Not content to choose his own top films (though they are here), Thomson has created a list that will surprise and delight you—and send you to your best movie rental service.
But he also probes the question: after one hundred years of film, which ones are the best, and why?
“Have You Seen . . . ?” suggests a true canon of cinema and one that’s almost completely accessible now, thanks to DVDs. This book is a must for anyone who loves the silver screen: the perfect confection to dip into at any point for a taste of controversy, little-known facts, and ideas about what to see. This is a volume you’ll want to return to again and again, like a dear but argumentative friend in the dark at the movies.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Can you find it? January 2, 2009
Somewhere in this bible size book for reasons apparent to Thomson and his editors he places "Les 400 Coups" on page 699 After "Quai des Orfevres, page 768" and before "The Queen" page 700. One wonders why he does not put this review in a place where it makes sense...say in the F's or even Les F's...or like some who begin their long books on film with "8 1/2" and "8 Mile" "2001"....etc before the A's.
It means slowly turning pages until you find this review. This kind of idiosyncratic system can be also applied to his ideas of films. Thomson has some good things to say but too often sounds like his first intention is to sound clever- smug- a " I have seen move films than you so I can write like this to cover how board I am when I write like this" sound to it.
I enjoy reading books like this. Ebert's current two volume The Great Movies is far richer and feels much more like person who really loves cinema. Thomson has a manner in writing much like the staging manner or those poor lost souls who design the Oscar award shows...big lavish tributes to a medium they don't much seem moved by.
I recommend his book as one among many like this. But I recommend it with some caveats. Don't expect his points to always be little more than mere assertions- assertions he should try to support. He says of "The Soprano's" ..."in the end Tony is a bore".
well now. David that is really a brilliant insight. Yes. He is a bore. I think that was a big point the series intended to reveal. Gangsters are in the end pretty uninteresting flawed people. Being a Bore in an artistic insight worth making.
 Bloody maddening December 8, 2008
21 out of 24 found this review helpful
This series of thumbnail summaries of many many movies is erudite, funny, well-written and infuriating. Like Pauline Kael and Anthony Lane, Thomson is an intrusive critic; we're usually more aware of his own presence than those of the movies he evokes. And his presence is that of the worst sort of Englishman in Southern California, a virus that has infected theSanta Monica region since English directors, actors and technicians (and decades later, music industry folk) began flocking to these shores in the 1900's. They get rich and fat off our pop culture, love the weather, yet feel free to criticize us from their perspective as insider/outsiders who truly have Yanks' measure as no-one else does. Public school class snobbery drips off of these loyal social democrats more than any fox-hunting hyphenate I've ever met; they spend their entire life, when they're not getting drunk, playing hide-the-ball for the fact that they are involved, one way or another, in making mindless entertainment for midwestern american teenages for the benefit of american banks by heaping scorn on the institutions that fatten them.
Thomson is a gruesome offender here -- no matter how much he likes a movie, he's always somehow better than it. Individually, his reviews are terrific, but his flaw-spotting becomes noticable after a while, because it always comes down to the immaturity and infantalism of American audiences that the even the most gifted film-makers are in thrall to, even Kubrick, Altman, the Coppola of The Godfather. He extends this to most global cinema post-1980, seeing folks like Kieslowski as too Hollywoodized; he also hates religion in all its forms, and thus consigns Tarkovski, Bresson, and John Ford to the ash-heap of history, on the implicit grounds that the religious are stupid gullible people.
This from a man who wrote two book-length mash-notes to Warren Beatty and Nicole Kidman, of all people, books all the worse for being highly intellectualized and cerebral. See what I mean about fattening yourself at the trough while biting the hand that feeds?
His book on Orson Welles was the nadir, he clearly loathed the fact that Welles was a popularizer of high culture, and a smiling bad boy who would back down to no-one (unlike Thomson,who writes commisioned works on behalf of Nicole Kidman), and instead of recognizing Chimes at Midnight as being the greatest, smartest Shakespeare cinema adaptation ever, beats up on Welles for his weight and supposed dilletanteism and inability to complete anything, all myths (except the weight part) biographers like Bogdanovich, Leaming, and Rosenbaum have done much to dispel. It comes down to the lamentable notion that if Thomson had been around Welles in 1942, he could have told him a thing or two about better managing his career and putting together his films. What's weird is that this kinda Marxist critic of the US culture industry winds up sounding little different than the executives at RKO who executed Welles' downfall on the grounds that he was too big for his britches and cocky and didn't care what they thought of him.
All of the capsule reviews in this book start to read like this after a while, know-it-all hectoring of the "those who can't do, teach" variety. The self-hating critic's contempt channelled from his job to the works under review. For all his scholarly talk of Sterne and Nabokov tucked away in his movie reviews, he cannot conceal the fact that books like this, and his most famous, similarly thumb-nail entry-organized book The Biographical Dictionary of American Film, are essentially meant to be read while on the toilet.
On the other hand, his novels about the movies Silver Light and Suspects are Borges-like little wonders, fiction about characters from classic movies and their unlikely interactions that actually show a real understanding and empathy for how America's myths often victimize and trap her. Maybe Thomson is just more humble as a fiction writer, aware of his weaknesses out of respect for the form. Both novels, which like 7 people have read, are worth seeking out, more so than his criticism.
 Kindle Edition Review: 1 Star December 7, 2008
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
IMPORTANT: This review only applies to the Kindle edition of this book.
I've probably helped to sell a dozen Kindles for Amazon. I have mine with me everywhere I go, and I've developed a complete demonstration for when strangers come up to me in a restaurant or on an airplane and wonder "what is that thing..."
This book is the first one I've seen that argues, almost as if the publisher had intended it that way, against the Kindle concept.
1) I point out to everyone I talk with how reasonable Kindle versions of books are - mostly under $10, and many under $5. This one is over $20. Now, that might be justified if there were special navigation features, but...
2) There are no Kindle navigation features to make this book easy to browse. It covers 1000 films, and there's not even a table of contents! (Actually, there is, but the entry for the "1000 films" part of the book is simply "Begin Reading.") Kindle's Search capabilities are almost useless here, because many films are referenced on many pages, making it hard to find the specific page one might be looking for. Flipping through pages on the Kindle to browse the various films in the book was tedious and frustrating. I started making my own bookmarks (am I going to do 1000 of them?) and realized I'd been had. The publisher obviously intends this book to be a "Kindle Killer."
 Brief but Penetrating November 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Thomson is the author of the well-known "Biographical Dictionary of Film," and the presentation here is similar. The title says 1,000 films and 1,000 films is what you get, each film the subject of a mini-essay of one page or less (usually somewhat over 500 words). Such limited space makes it hard for a writer to say something worthwhile, let alone original or incisive, on each of his 1,000 subjects. Most of the time Thomson is up to the challenge, although there are some duds. For the most part his writing is supple, his opinions passionate and his views well argued. Even if you disagree with him (and you frequently will), you cannot simply dismiss Thomson's views.
But this is not really a reference book (except of Thomson's opinions). Limited space means too much has to be left out. Plot summaries, for example, are very skinny when given at all. Full, formal cast lists are omitted, major supporting actors usually being merely listed without identifying the character played. There is no index.
Still the book is well worth reading. Thomson has vast knowledge and an acute critical sensibility. He possesses very sensitive detectors for pretentiousness, pomposity and fakery and knows how to skewer them accurately and with wit. He often makes you think again about films that you've seen, sometimes even changing your mind a bit (in my case, for example, about "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"). He can also make you want to see films that you have never heard of or that you had failed to appreciate. An accomplishment at any time but especially with so little space.
I think that the book is best served by being read a few selections at a time. Straight through in large chunks is overload and makes things run together a bit.
Sublime October 27, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Essential, fun, and as good as his Biographical Dictionary.... oh, let's just say it clearly now...
Mr. Thomson often says more in one sentence than other renowned critics do in entire reviews, articles, or even books.
There. One sentence.
(Homage to DT with thanks.)
|
|
|
Copyright 2006 - CD Shopper | |
