- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (4 July 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743239911
- ISBN-13: 978-0743239912
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 142,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Helen Fielding
'A very funny, original, clever, knowledgeable, cheerful, well researched, well argued and beautifully written book. I loved it'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Daily Telegraph
'The film book of the year . . . Enthralling . . . Groundbreaking'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nostalgic ride, but...,
By Mme DLR (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer (Hardcover)
Hmmm... mixed feelings on this one. 'Blockbuster' has been out for a while and although I bought it years ago (in an Amazon sale) I've only just got round to reading it. It does feel like a book published in 2004 because there is a real post-9/11 mood to it. In fact a lot of the arguments in the book come back to events of September 2001; they may have seemed true then but are less convincing now. Despite this there is some interesting stuff on the rise of the blockbuster and its current place in cinema history. The analysis of the original 'Star Wars' trilogy is also good.
The prose is easy to read, with a breezy style and because of Tom Shone's position as a cinema critic for the 'Times' he has had access to lots of `top people' (as they might say in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'). The big problem with the book, however, is that it is littered with lots of tiny, silly errors. Take just two pages for example (p52 and 53 in the hardback). On 52 the character of Biggs in 'Star Wars' (who notoriously ended up on the cutting room floor) is called 'Wedge' - the character played by Dennis Lawson who IS in the final film. On the next page, 53, the author describes a scene in the original 1977 film where the Millennium Falcon blasts off from Mos Eisley but before this the spaceship stalls. What? This doesn't happen in the film! I presume Tom Shone is thinking of the scene in 'Empire Strikes Back'. These are not isolated examples. Everywhere you look there are these types of mistakes as if the author hasn't actually seen half the films he's writing about. The overall effect is to diminish his credibility. And irritate this reader! I grew up in 70s and 80s and spent half my childhood at the pictures. So this book was a nostalgic ride through the films I grew up on. Unfortunately due to the sloppiness of the writing and editing it's not the classic book it could be. 3.5 stars - rounded up to 4 because that's my usual policy and it's sunny today so I'm in a good mood!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good... but not that good,
By
This review is from: Blockbuster: How the Jaws and Jedi Generation Turned Hollywood into a Boom-town (Paperback)
As a riposte to ERRB, BB is not bad. As a piece of film history, it’s not bad either, though most of it has been told before elsewhere. The book fails in the end though because not enough thought has been put into it. Is this a book about how some people changed Hollywood, or is it a history, coupled with some “making-of” sections and some reviews? Also, the bibliography does not include all the texts mentioned in the book itself. For example, in the section about Blade Runner he mentions a couple of essays which are not referenced in the bib and so we have no idea where they were published, when they were published, etc. Not helpful. Shone repeats himself quite a lot, too, either because he likes the sound of his own voice or because he knows his book needs padding-out. Or both. So yes, it’s not bad, but it’s no masterpiece. ERRB is one of those film books that became essential because there hadn’t been a book quite like it before. BB is a mish-mash of enjoyable personal reminiscences, making-of stories, box office figures and anything else Shone can cram in. Not unenjoyable, but hardly essential.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good,
By John E. Davidson (Purley) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blockbuster: How the Jaws and Jedi Generation Turned Hollywood into a Boom-town (Paperback)
Before I start of criticise, it should be noted that this is actually a rather good book. It is one of the best and most accessible books about film written in recent years; almost anybody with any interest in film of the last thirty years will find this book interesting and often entertaining.The book is essentially a monologue (although Shone readily admits that it is the product of many conversations) expounding his thesis that blockbusters, starting with Jaws and Star Wars, saved Hollywood. Actually, it is not a particularly sophisticated thesis: he simply takes the opposite view to a very simplistic interpretation of the thesis expounded by Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that blockbusters killed Hollywood. There is a good deal of Biskind baiting in the early chapters of his book (although Shone seems to lose interest in this as the book progresses) and Shone’s makes some interesting points. However, he invites comparison between the two books and these comparisons are inevitably unfavourable to Shone. Although there are lots of good and interesting sections, overall the book is a bit of a mess and there are some odd things about it. Shone seems strangely distant from the subject matter in the sense that this feels like a book written by a cinema goer rather than somebody with real inside knowledge and insight. Often he simply repeats well-known or previously published anecdotes. There is much less insider gossip (than the Biskind book), which some readers may approve of, but it also means that the characters are flat and uninteresting. It is also rather confusing that he wants to have his common man cake and eat it with a side order of rather esoteric, post-modern film criticism. At times it reminded me of an intellectual undergraduate post-pub rant. Perhaps the biggest problem Shone faced is that his subjects Lucas, Spielberg et al, are dull (deathly dull in comparison to the characters in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls). Many of them appear to have no interest other than making profitable movies; this does not make them interesting characters to read about. One other thing bothered me: the seriously over laudatory praise verging on hyperbole, from a group of people I suspect are his friends, which adorned to book cover. Despite all my issues with the book I still enjoyed it. It is an enjoyable and interesting read.
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