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Tag Archives: David Thomson
2016 Books Read
I’ve enjoyed myself this year with reading. I have finally bounced back from 2009 and 2010, when I was so out of my mind that I could barely read anymore. (Larry McMurtry describes a similar thing happening to him post-heart … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Baz Luhrmann, books read, Camille Paglia, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, David Thomson, East of Eden, Elia Kazan, Elvis Presley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Horton Foote, James Agee, James Salter, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Steinbeck, Katherine Dunn, Mark Danielewski, Nick Tosches, Pauline Kael, Robert Kaplan, Stephen King, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner
19 Comments
2010 Books Read
Round-up of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. I am nearly finished with one last book (a collection of stories by Miranda July, given to me by my sister Siobhan for my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Proulx, books read, Dava Sobel, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, E.M. Forster, Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Ireland, Jane Langton, Jaws, Joan Blondell, John Banville, John McGahern, Mark Helprin, Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde, Peter Bogdanovich, Rebecca West, Roman Polanski, Ron Chernow, Russia, Serbia, Shakespeare, Shirley Jackson, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, Tana French, Tarkovsky, Tennessee Williams, Warren Beatty
37 Comments
Edward Hopper’s Usherette
From David Thomson’s The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood: She is not watching the movie. She is not that kind of usherette bursting to get into pictures, a would-be actress studying every tiny gesture on the screen. No, she … Continue reading
Dean Stockwell: An Overview
All indented excerpts from David Thomson’s film encyclopedia: With the TV series Quantum Leap and with his regular work as a supporting actor in movies, Dean Stockwell may never have been better known. Yet he has experienced so many stages … Continue reading
Happy birthday, John Wayne!
Or should I say … happy birthday Marion Robert Morrison? No, let’s stick with John Wayne. Smart move changing your name there, bub. First of all: go here. Keep scrolling. Terrific photos – I was riveted. David Thomson – in … Continue reading
David Thomson Snippets:
I have been devouring David Thomson’s massive 20 pound book The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated. The snippets I’ve excerpted below are just a tiny FRACTION of what he writes about all these people – his essay … Continue reading
David Thomson: George Arliss
“You can tell his Disraeli from his Voltaire because the former has a spit curl on his forehead and the latter wears a mobcap, and it’s in the scrupulous deployment of makeup and costume that Arliss shines. Not that he … Continue reading
David Thomson: Paul Thomas Anderson
“It is also the case that anyone as good and smart as Anderson should be more perceptibly self-critical. In fact, Magnolia is his most youthful and indulgent film — and Hard Eight, his best and most austere. But there are … Continue reading
David Thomson: Pedro Almodóvar
(I’ll see any movie Almodóvar makes.) Thomson writes: “Almodóvar was one of the most welcome explosions of the eighties and a sign of the new Spain. Whereas Carlos Saura (nearly twenty years older than Almodóvar) made intensely measured and psychologically … Continue reading