Book Details
| Title: | Blaxploitation Cinema | |
| Author: | Josiah Howard | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 03.26.09 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
| Date Read | Note |
| 03.26.09 | Ugh, finally! I picked this up during the last Fantastic Fest and read though the initial essay and brief interview transcripts with 10 directors (fairly flat; he asks the same set of questions to each guy) pretty quickly. I then put it down with plans to read through the "complete reference" section before my proposed February cinematic marathon (that didn't last four days). So it took me like 2 nights to get the first 80 pages read, then something like 12 weeks to make it through the next 150. Now, I know people don't traditionally read through reference guides cover to cover and this probably wasn't written with that in mind, but when your purpose of picking the book up is finding out about new films because you've covered the well-known stuff, how else are you supposed to go through this? So it's pretty dry and gets a bit tedious and all the things you'd expect from reading a reference guide straight through. I accept all that. The reason why I didn't like this book is that the author didn't seem to actually like most of the movies he wrote about. Maybe like a dozen of the 300 or so movies actually got some positive words from this guy, and even the positive stuff never goes into the energy or spirit overflowing from the movies which is the reason why i love them. All the synopses are dry and repetitive and don't really make you want to see any of the movies. It's a real shame because this is one of the best genres for colorful excited prose. A shame really. It seemed more like he wrote the book for some school assignment or feeling like it's something he "should" do rather than actually wanting to do it. |
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