Synopses & Reviews
One of our best cultural critics here collects sixteen years' worth of essays on film and popular culture. Topics range from the invention of cinema to contemporary F-X aesthetics, from Shakespeare on film to Seinfeld, and we include essays on 30's screwball comedies, Hong Kong Martial Arts movies, to the roots of spy movies and the televising of Clinton's grand jury testimony.
O'Brien emphasizes the unpredictable interactions between film as a medium apt for expressing the most private dreams and film as the mass literature of the modern world. Several of the pieces are profiles of individual actors or directorsOrson Welles, Michael Powell, Ed Wood, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, Dana Andrews, The Marx Brothers, Bing Crosbywhose careers are probed to look for the point where obsession meets public myth-making.
About the Author
Geoffrey O'Brien is the editor in chief of the Library of America and a regular contributor to
The New York Review of Books. His latest books are
Early Autumn and
The Fall of the House of Walworth (September 2012). He is a widely published poet, critic, editor, and cultural historian and has been honored with a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in New York City.