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Title: The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the Twentieth Century by Geoffrey O'Brien ISBN: 0-393-31296-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It's a cinemascope blockbuster in a book!
Comment: As a movie lover, I was intrigued with the theme of this book -- how movies have shaped our culture, our thinking -- and was prepared for a heavy, textbook-like reading. As I read, though, I was overwhelmed with O'Briens style, his sterling craftsmanship in describing the feelings and emotions of the movies. I would literally stop after every few lines and shake my head in amazement. As a writer, I am jealous of his skill. As a reader, I am eager to read it again.
Steve Martin said (in L.A. STORY) that "a kiss may not be the truth, but it's what we wish was the truth." I do not know if O'Brien's book is THE truth about movies in the modern mind but, oh, how I hope that it is.
Rating: 5
Summary: Exceptional
Comment: Don't be alarmed, just go to the movies. O'Brien, in this unforgettable, beautifully written book, has come up with an idea and a work so original and startling that it is difficult to describe. Essentially, he sees how movies [and he's seen hundreds of all kinds] have helped create the pyschology of the century. In one chapter, for example, he uses the melodramatic chestnut "The Four Feathers" to show how the movies displayed the customs and manners of a class and society different than ourselves, and thus taught us how to live in certain ways. And that's just scratching the surface of a book that seems to have a new and astonishing idea on every page. Neal Gabler published on this topic recently, but to a much inferior extent. Skip that and buy this. You will never, ever go to the movies the same way again.
Rating: 5
Summary: READ THIS BOOK
Comment: This book is the most chillingly relevant commentary on our modern society of the spectacle that I have ever read. Although at times slightly alarmist in its portrayal of the totalitarian tendencies of contemporary cinema in forging the substance of our thoughts, these claims can not be taken lightly. O'Brien is convincing by virtue of the fact that he writes mostly in the second person. "You believed....You were shocked....You this...You that"...making the reader truly believe the shocking reality before him: That the overmind of the cinema is becoming the only reality in the 20th century. His memories are its memories and everyone else's too. O'Brien does a great service to point this out even if its too late to change it.
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Title: The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading by Geoffrey O'Brien ISBN: 158243056X Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 30 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life by Geoffrey O'Brien ISBN: 1582431922 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 16 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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