A slight biography of Spielberg, perhaps the most successful filmmaker of all time. Attempting a biography of an artist at mid-career is always a daunting task, but the remarkable success of director Spielberg (Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, etc.) makes such a book inevitable. Unfortunately, Spielberg would not be interviewed for the book. Thus Baxter (Fellini, 1994, etc.) is left with already- published reports and new interviews with co-workers. So while he describes the making of each film and probes the differences between the childlike visionary perceived by the public and the driven, often prickly director and businessman who operates behind the scenes, Baxter never finds the key to the unique personality and talent of this quixotic artist, nor does he get beyond the now- familiar story of Spielberg's evolution from film-obsessed child to filmmaker-phenomenon. Baxter also comes to his subject with the thesis, hardly original, that the superficial plot lines and comic- book mise-en-scänes of Spielberg's films have led to the decline of the narrative film as an art form. But because Baxter never seems to grasp the nature of Spielberg's dazzling style (which at its peak, in thrillers like Jaws and Jurassic Park, involved rigorously planned camera angles and deftly timed editing), he fails to adequately define how that style might have been misused (in more character-driven films such as The Color Purple). In addition, Baxter's credentials as biographer and critic are undermined by mistakes any freshman film student could have corrected (Frank Capra's remake of Lady for a Day is Pocketful of Miracles, not A Hole in the Head, Franáois Truffaut's The Green Room is far from his ``last'' film, Broadcast News was directed by James L. Brooks, not Albert Brooks, etc.). Despite some entertaining behind-the-scenes gossip, Baxter's biography is ultimately as superficial as he accuses Spielberg's films of being. (24 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: March 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-00-255587-5
Page Count: 457
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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