Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your library to. (also, if you have the money and the inclination, get Rosebud, The Whole Equation, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film too.)

seems as if tony floyd has it about right, 19 Oct 2008
l haven't read the book (yet!) but have just read a review in the Telegraph by one of its film critics Jenny McCartney, whose review is along the same lines. Thanks Mr Floyd; I shall be ordering this book for sure.

Robert Mitchum's knuckles, 03 Oct 2008
"Early on as I watched films and tried to read about them, I found that I valued broad comments on the medium...more than intense and reverend scrutiny of particular films composed by critics who treated a Nicholas Ray film as if it might have been a sculpture by Bernini, or Hamlet."

How odd that in the month that Sight and Sound (in its Who Needs Critics issue) includes this comment from David Thomson, his new book is published, a book that consists of "a personal introduction to 1,000 films" or in other words a not quite reverend but certainly intense scrutiny of particular films.

Having made that snidey point, what does the book do and who is it for? Well, each of Thomson's chosen films has one page to itself and approximately 500 words, but no pictures. The period covered is 1895 to 2007. Even though limited to fiction films (with some borderline exceptions like Man With A Movie Camera, F For Fake) the range covered is tremendous. There are intriguing and bizarre juxtapositions, quality rubs up against trash (but not too much of the latter), Tom and Jerry appear between films by two Jacques (Becker and Tourneur), one could go on and on. It's perfect for dipping into and skimming over, though one's eyes are caught by titles and phrases so you keep stopping to read that or this entry; there are great opening lines, to hook you: "Eddie Constantine was forty-eight in 1965, but he looks like a thousand-year-old lizard in Alphaville"; "The starting point of The Lavender Hill Mob is when a man who wears a bowler hat meets a fellow given to bow ties."; "Has anybody made a voluntary decision to see Heston's Ben-Hur in recent years?". As to who it's for, I'd say the knowledgeable and curious cineaste or buff and not your regular multiplex popcorn munching Vin Diesel connoisseur (though a Vin Diesel film is in here, or rather a film with Vin Diesel in it).

However as a born quibbler of course I have reservations, concerns and criticisms. To state my view clearly: I love this book but David Thomson drives me to distraction.

I have often wondered why Thomson has devoted the majority of his writing career to cinema when it increasingly seems to cause him so much distress - about its worthiness to be taken seriously at all, about its infantilisation, its obsession with CGI spectacle, etc. All of his criticisms are true - to an extent. We acknowledge, and by we I mean the sort of person likely to buy and read this book, that movies are created by committee, diluted by collaboration, blunted by compromise, emasculated by censorship, crippled by hypocrisy, tainted by commercialism but despite these restrictions and sometimes because of them, movies do get made that can be called masterpieces, or great, or minor triumphs or that are just worthy of our time and attention.

This dismay with the state and status of film feeds into Thomsons'other recurring concern that watching films, studying them, talking about them and so on takes up precious time that could be devoted to other less demeaning pursuits. He suggests that the failure of many modern films is that they are made by and for people who know too much about movies and not enough about life. This attitude is often viewed as one of his strengths: the following ridiculous comment exemplifies this (in an overall excellent review of Thomson's The Whole Equation): "It is the work of a man who has read novels, listened to Mahler, fathered children and so while knowing perfectly well ...just how big cinema is, never loses sight of the fact that there are still-biggger things in the world." I like the implication that reading books and raising family are exotic achievements available only to a few rarefied individuals - or are they just unusual for film fans. Well, I have done all those things too and I would beg to disagree with the original assumption that devotion to and passion for something (be it film, skiing, butterflies, astrophysics) means that it is exclusive or results in one being diverted from an engagement with the real world. It is usually quite the opposite, I would suggest (though I appreciate certain hobbies are often used as a refuge from it). Stupid people - like fans of The Sound of Music for example (this is Thomson's opinion, by the way) - are usually uninterested in anything. The truth is surely that for the committed, engaged, intelligent viewer cinema feeds into other passions, and informs and stimulates and is enhanced by other interests that are pursued elsewhere. In the real world even.

Thomson's reputation is that he is the most insightful, illuminating and provocative writer on film today. The sort of writer you read not necessarily because of his subject matter but because of his prose style, so suggestive, allusive, nuanced that it enters the realm of literature. Well, I do enjoy reading his books, a particular favourite is Rosebud, about Orson Welles (though I am not remotely convinced by the portrait of Welles that it paints), and there is also the unavoidable and highly regarded Biographical Dictionary of Film. But I also find his style stern, gnomish, aggravating, pretentious. It's often so circumlocutory, so hesitant, so couched in broad strokes and `poetic' generalisations that you finish reading and wonder, does he like the film or not, is this a recommendation or a kicking? I offer as examples: "And it's only when peril gets neurotic, and comic, that people start to smoke". What people? Real people? Movie characters? It's nonsense, David. On Hollywood's vaguely liberal Democrat voting persuasion: "But the allegiance is so unreliable when the custard philosophy is hiding or denying the real muscular differences and antagonisms of politics." (Forrest Gump). Or this "Lang's method was always to stage every event as if he were quoting it from the scrapbook of dream images - what I mean by that is that the brilliant compositions always underline themselves; they are in italic, and thus a touch suspect, more haunting than reliable." (Woman in the Window). If you unpick these sentences you are (or more precisely, I am) not really any wiser than I was before I read them. There's plenty of this sort of stuff here, as there is in all his books (at least the ones I've read) so that one has to embark on a sifting exercise to pan for meaning in the same way Bogart, Huston and Holt do for nuggets of gold in the Sierra Madre. Compare such passages with V F Perkins book on The Magnificent Ambersons in the BFI Classics series (in my view the greatest `intense and reverend scrutiny'of a single film available). Next to Perkin's limpid and precise approach Thomson's prose is often like lumpy mist, heavy and yet insubstantial. An unfair comparison perhaps as Thomson has jut 500 words on many films and Perkins several thousand on just the one, but I maintain my core point about Thomson's fuzziness.

OK, that's enough carping, let's skip to the positive stuff. Firstly Thomson isn't Barry Norman, that is to say he doesn't peddle consenus views of what the great films are or why they are interesting, he doesn't resort to the tired recycling of critical orthodoxy, nor the dreary plot synopses that plague many books on film. His approach is fresh and unawed and both visceral and intellectual. There is the awareness of how one's response to films and cinema is fluid and shifting both over time (see his entry on Paris Texas) and also during the actual viewing of any individual film (see his entry on Broadway Melody of 1940). He notes that some films are worth recalling in total whereas others are precious for one particular scene or performance or a fleeting mood; in our digital age we can choose to watch favourite sequences without having to sit through the whole film, even make the equivalent of movie `mix tapes'. He knows that our response is also shaped by the circumstances in which we watched it, and by our interest and knowledge (or lack of these) of other films of the same genre or director or studio. One of the key points Thomson makes is the factor of chance and serendipity in the making of movies, the many variables at play, the dropping out or unavailability of a particular director or writer or star allowing someone else to step into the breach changing the course of the project from the moon to the stars, or from the stars into the gutter. This is where Thomson is at his most persuasive and is the practical result of his stated area of interest, i.e. in how and why films are made rather than whether individual films are good or bad.

Finally then, Thomson's wayward, disgruntled, wistful and sniffy judgements are not for your average multiplex audience. This book, like his others, is indeed provocative and aggravating. I am sure I will return to it again and again, as I do to the Dictionary and Rosebud. And it will be in the same way and for the same reasons that I go back to those other books; they insist that I sharpen my own views and attitudes. And, if you've made it this far and are asking if this review is a recommendation or a warning, it is the former; I do think it is a wonderful book, rich and fascinating and challenging and revealing and of course it prompts and nudges you to see or re-view many many films including those you would normally avoid. But it is also exasperating, infuriating and sometimes plain incomprehensible. It comes with a health warning: Addictive (and slamming it shut in consternation may not necessarily help).

(Incidentally I hope that Amazon will allow the indulgence of this lengthy review - my original version was twice as long, a reflection I guess of just how provoking Thomson is.)

Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your library to. (also, if you have the money and the inclination, get Rosebud, The Whole Equation, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film too.)

seems as if tony floyd has it about right, 19 Oct 2008
l haven't read the book (yet!) but have just read a review in the Telegraph by one of its film critics Jenny McCartney, whose review is along the same lines. Thanks Mr Floyd; I shall be ordering this book for sure.

Robert Mitchum's knuckles, 03 Oct 2008
"Early on as I watched films and tried to read about them, I found that I valued broad comments on the medium...more than intense and reverend scrutiny of particular films composed by critics who treated a Nicholas Ray film as if it might have been a sculpture by Bernini, or Hamlet."

How odd that in the month that Sight and Sound (in its Who Needs Critics issue) includes this comment from David Thomson, his new book is published, a book that consists of "a personal introduction to 1,000 films" or in other words a not quite reverend but certainly intense scrutiny of particular films.

Having made that snidey point, what does the book do and who is it for? Well, each of Thomson's chosen films has one page to itself and approximately 500 words, but no pictures. The period covered is 1895 to 2007. Even though limited to fiction films (with some borderline exceptions like Man With A Movie Camera, F For Fake) the range covered is tremendous. There are intriguing and bizarre juxtapositions, quality rubs up against trash (but not too much of the latter), Tom and Jerry appear between films by two Jacques (Becker and Tourneur), one could go on and on. It's perfect for dipping into and skimming over, though one's eyes are caught by titles and phrases so you keep stopping to read that or this entry; there are great opening lines, to hook you: "Eddie Constantine was forty-eight in 1965, but he looks like a thousand-year-old lizard in Alphaville"; "The starting point of The Lavender Hill Mob is when a man who wears a bowler hat meets a fellow given to bow ties."; "Has anybody made a voluntary decision to see Heston's Ben-Hur in recent years?". As to who it's for, I'd say the knowledgeable and curious cineaste or buff and not your regular multiplex popcorn munching Vin Diesel connoisseur (though a Vin Diesel film is in here, or rather a film with Vin Diesel in it).

However as a born quibbler of course I have reservations, concerns and criticisms. To state my view clearly: I love this book but David Thomson drives me to distraction.

I have often wondered why Thomson has devoted the majority of his writing career to cinema when it increasingly seems to cause him so much distress - about its worthiness to be taken seriously at all, about its infantilisation, its obsession with CGI spectacle, etc. All of his criticisms are true - to an extent. We acknowledge, and by we I mean the sort of person likely to buy and read this book, that movies are created by committee, diluted by collaboration, blunted by compromise, emasculated by censorship, crippled by hypocrisy, tainted by commercialism but despite these restrictions and sometimes because of them, movies do get made that can be called masterpieces, or great, or minor triumphs or that are just worthy of our time and attention.

This dismay with the state and status of film feeds into Thomsons'other recurring concern that watching films, studying them, talking about them and so on takes up precious time that could be devoted to other less demeaning pursuits. He suggests that the failure of many modern films is that they are made by and for people who know too much about movies and not enough about life. This attitude is often viewed as one of his strengths: the following ridiculous comment exemplifies this (in an overall excellent review of Thomson's The Whole Equation): "It is the work of a man who has read novels, listened to Mahler, fathered children and so while knowing perfectly well ...just how big cinema is, never loses sight of the fact that there are still-biggger things in the world." I like the implication that reading books and raising family are exotic achievements available only to a few rarefied individuals - or are they just unusual for film fans. Well, I have done all those things too and I would beg to disagree with the original assumption that devotion to and passion for something (be it film, skiing, butterflies, astrophysics) means that it is exclusive or results in one being diverted from an engagement with the real world. It is usually quite the opposite, I would suggest (though I appreciate certain hobbies are often used as a refuge from it). Stupid people - like fans of The Sound of Music for example (this is Thomson's opinion, by the way) - are usually uninterested in anything. The truth is surely that for the committed, engaged, intelligent viewer cinema feeds into other passions, and informs and stimulates and is enhanced by other interests that are pursued elsewhere. In the real world even.

Thomson's reputation is that he is the most insightful, illuminating and provocative writer on film today. The sort of writer you read not necessarily because of his subject matter but because of his prose style, so suggestive, allusive, nuanced that it enters the realm of literature. Well, I do enjoy reading his books, a particular favourite is Rosebud, about Orson Welles (though I am not remotely convinced by the portrait of Welles that it paints), and there is also the unavoidable and highly regarded Biographical Dictionary of Film. But I also find his style stern, gnomish, aggravating, pretentious. It's often so circumlocutory, so hesitant, so couched in broad strokes and `poetic' generalisations that you finish reading and wonder, does he like the film or not, is this a recommendation or a kicking? I offer as examples: "And it's only when peril gets neurotic, and comic, that people start to smoke". What people? Real people? Movie characters? It's nonsense, David. On Hollywood's vaguely liberal Democrat voting persuasion: "But the allegiance is so unreliable when the custard philosophy is hiding or denying the real muscular differences and antagonisms of politics." (Forrest Gump). Or this "Lang's method was always to stage every event as if he were quoting it from the scrapbook of dream images - what I mean by that is that the brilliant compositions always underline themselves; they are in italic, and thus a touch suspect, more haunting than reliable." (Woman in the Window). If you unpick these sentences you are (or more precisely, I am) not really any wiser than I was before I read them. There's plenty of this sort of stuff here, as there is in all his books (at least the ones I've read) so that one has to embark on a sifting exercise to pan for meaning in the same way Bogart, Huston and Holt do for nuggets of gold in the Sierra Madre. Compare such passages with V F Perkins book on The Magnificent Ambersons in the BFI Classics series (in my view the greatest `intense and reverend scrutiny'of a single film available). Next to Perkin's limpid and precise approach Thomson's prose is often like lumpy mist, heavy and yet insubstantial. An unfair comparison perhaps as Thomson has jut 500 words on many films and Perkins several thousand on just the one, but I maintain my core point about Thomson's fuzziness.

OK, that's enough carping, let's skip to the positive stuff. Firstly Thomson isn't Barry Norman, that is to say he doesn't peddle consenus views of what the great films are or why they are interesting, he doesn't resort to the tired recycling of critical orthodoxy, nor the dreary plot synopses that plague many books on film. His approach is fresh and unawed and both visceral and intellectual. There is the awareness of how one's response to films and cinema is fluid and shifting both over time (see his entry on Paris Texas) and also during the actual viewing of any individual film (see his entry on Broadway Melody of 1940). He notes that some films are worth recalling in total whereas others are precious for one particular scene or performance or a fleeting mood; in our digital age we can choose to watch favourite sequences without having to sit through the whole film, even make the equivalent of movie `mix tapes'. He knows that our response is also shaped by the circumstances in which we watched it, and by our interest and knowledge (or lack of these) of other films of the same genre or director or studio. One of the key points Thomson makes is the factor of chance and serendipity in the making of movies, the many variables at play, the dropping out or unavailability of a particular director or writer or star allowing someone else to step into the breach changing the course of the project from the moon to the stars, or from the stars into the gutter. This is where Thomson is at his most persuasive and is the practical result of his stated area of interest, i.e. in how and why films are made rather than whether individual films are good or bad.

Finally then, Thomson's wayward, disgruntled, wistful and sniffy judgements are not for your average multiplex audience. This book, like his others, is indeed provocative and aggravating. I am sure I will return to it again and again, as I do to the Dictionary and Rosebud. And it will be in the same way and for the same reasons that I go back to those other books; they insist that I sharpen my own views and attitudes. And, if you've made it this far and are asking if this review is a recommendation or a warning, it is the former; I do think it is a wonderful book, rich and fascinating and challenging and revealing and of course it prompts and nudges you to see or re-view many many films including those you would normally avoid. But it is also exasperating, infuriating and sometimes plain incomprehensible. It comes with a health warning: Addictive (and slamming it shut in consternation may not necessarily help).

(Incidentally I hope that Amazon will allow the indulgence of this lengthy review - my original version was twice as long, a reflection I guess of just how provoking Thomson is.)


Good Introduction.., 20 Sep 2008
It is a good book to get you started. Covers alot of the models in NLP and is set out so its easy to read and understand. But as i said a very basic book.

If you want some good advice as a rule of thumb on getting books on NLP avoid the new stuff. Stick to the earlier books by Bandler preferably the first ones for e.g 'From Frogs to Princes ( is a must if your serious about this subject ) not only are they humerous but are like the bible of the subject and come from the pioneers, the fountain of knowledge. Derren Brown will even give you this advise also.

Fantastic layout, imple, yet effective, 17 Aug 2008
At first I thought NLP was some hocus-pocus magic stuff, that didn't really work, but boy did it! I am now able to easiloy create rapport, and I find I communicate a hell of a lot more easily... You have inspired me...!!!!!

Better than I thought it would be, 05 Aug 2008
I started this book with a very cynical view thinking it wouldnt be that good. I was pleasantly surprised though to find it is in fact quite interesting and has many helpful ideas.

The page on looking at a persons eyes to see if they are thinking about the past, present, remembering etc is very accurate. I tried it myself and it seems to work.

Definately a useful book to read and find out more about NLP.

Excellent introduction , 07 Jul 2008
This book is an excellent introduction to NLP and presents all the core concepts in an accurate way. NLP is a very wide-ranging theory but this author has managed to introduce the core framework very cogently. Perhaps there could have been more diagrams and illustrations, and perhaps a little less jargon too - but as NLP has so much of its own terminology it's difficult to see how this could be avoided. I would have liked to read a little more about time perception too, after reading Steve Taylor's excellent book Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which looks at why time seems to speed up and slow down (and even completely disappear) in different situations.





Too much detail and not enough 'how to practicality'., 12 May 2008
If u enjoy reading science textbooks or biology books or pages and pages of jargon and talking, then this is for u.if like me ur intrigued by NLP and want a few 'how to' tips then find something more practical. A waste of money.Minimum info on reading body language. A BIG disappointment.

Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your library to. (also, if you have the money and the inclination, get Rosebud, The Whole Equation, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film too.)

seems as if tony floyd has it about right, 19 Oct 2008
l haven't read the book (yet!) but have just read a review in the Telegraph by one of its film critics Jenny McCartney, whose review is along the same lines. Thanks Mr Floyd; I shall be ordering this book for sure.

Robert Mitchum's knuckles, 03 Oct 2008
"Early on as I watched films and tried to read about them, I found that I valued broad comments on the medium...more than intense and reverend scrutiny of particular films composed by critics who treated a Nicholas Ray film as if it might have been a sculpture by Bernini, or Hamlet."

How odd that in the month that Sight and Sound (in its Who Needs Critics issue) includes this comment from David Thomson, his new book is published, a book that consists of "a personal introduction to 1,000 films" or in other words a not quite reverend but certainly intense scrutiny of particular films.

Having made that snidey point, what does the book do and who is it for? Well, each of Thomson's chosen films has one page to itself and approximately 500 words, but no pictures. The period covered is 1895 to 2007. Even though limited to fiction films (with some borderline exceptions like Man With A Movie Camera, F For Fake) the range covered is tremendous. There are intriguing and bizarre juxtapositions, quality rubs up against trash (but not too much of the latter), Tom and Jerry appear between films by two Jacques (Becker and Tourneur), one could go on and on. It's perfect for dipping into and skimming over, though one's eyes are caught by titles and phrases so you keep stopping to read that or this entry; there are great opening lines, to hook you: "Eddie Constantine was forty-eight in 1965, but he looks like a thousand-year-old lizard in Alphaville"; "The starting point of The Lavender Hill Mob is when a man who wears a bowler hat meets a fellow given to bow ties."; "Has anybody made a voluntary decision to see Heston's Ben-Hur in recent years?". As to who it's for, I'd say the knowledgeable and curious cineaste or buff and not your regular multiplex popcorn munching Vin Diesel connoisseur (though a Vin Diesel film is in here, or rather a film with Vin Diesel in it).

However as a born quibbler of course I have reservations, concerns and criticisms. To state my view clearly: I love this book but David Thomson drives me to distraction.

I have often wondered why Thomson has devoted the majority of his writing career to cinema when it increasingly seems to cause him so much distress - about its worthiness to be taken seriously at all, about its infantilisation, its obsession with CGI spectacle, etc. All of his criticisms are true - to an extent. We acknowledge, and by we I mean the sort of person likely to buy and read this book, that movies are created by committee, diluted by collaboration, blunted by compromise, emasculated by censorship, crippled by hypocrisy, tainted by commercialism but despite these restrictions and sometimes because of them, movies do get made that can be called masterpieces, or great, or minor triumphs or that are just worthy of our time and attention.

This dismay with the state and status of film feeds into Thomsons'other recurring concern that watching films, studying them, talking about them and so on takes up precious time that could be devoted to other less demeaning pursuits. He suggests that the failure of many modern films is that they are made by and for people who know too much about movies and not enough about life. This attitude is often viewed as one of his strengths: the following ridiculous comment exemplifies this (in an overall excellent review of Thomson's The Whole Equation): "It is the work of a man who has read novels, listened to Mahler, fathered children and so while knowing perfectly well ...just how big cinema is, never loses sight of the fact that there are still-biggger things in the world." I like the implication that reading books and raising family are exotic achievements available only to a few rarefied individuals - or are they just unusual for film fans. Well, I have done all those things too and I would beg to disagree with the original assumption that devotion to and passion for something (be it film, skiing, butterflies, astrophysics) means that it is exclusive or results in one being diverted from an engagement with the real world. It is usually quite the opposite, I would suggest (though I appreciate certain hobbies are often used as a refuge from it). Stupid people - like fans of The Sound of Music for example (this is Thomson's opinion, by the way) - are usually uninterested in anything. The truth is surely that for the committed, engaged, intelligent viewer cinema feeds into other passions, and informs and stimulates and is enhanced by other interests that are pursued elsewhere. In the real world even.

Thomson's reputation is that he is the most insightful, illuminating and provocative writer on film today. The sort of writer you read not necessarily because of his subject matter but because of his prose style, so suggestive, allusive, nuanced that it enters the realm of literature. Well, I do enjoy reading his books, a particular favourite is Rosebud, about Orson Welles (though I am not remotely convinced by the portrait of Welles that it paints), and there is also the unavoidable and highly regarded Biographical Dictionary of Film. But I also find his style stern, gnomish, aggravating, pretentious. It's often so circumlocutory, so hesitant, so couched in broad strokes and `poetic' generalisations that you finish reading and wonder, does he like the film or not, is this a recommendation or a kicking? I offer as examples: "And it's only when peril gets neurotic, and comic, that people start to smoke". What people? Real people? Movie characters? It's nonsense, David. On Hollywood's vaguely liberal Democrat voting persuasion: "But the allegiance is so unreliable when the custard philosophy is hiding or denying the real muscular differences and antagonisms of politics." (Forrest Gump). Or this "Lang's method was always to stage every event as if he were quoting it from the scrapbook of dream images - what I mean by that is that the brilliant compositions always underline themselves; they are in italic, and thus a touch suspect, more haunting than reliable." (Woman in the Window). If you unpick these sentences you are (or more precisely, I am) not really any wiser than I was before I read them. There's plenty of this sort of stuff here, as there is in all his books (at least the ones I've read) so that one has to embark on a sifting exercise to pan for meaning in the same way Bogart, Huston and Holt do for nuggets of gold in the Sierra Madre. Compare such passages with V F Perkins book on The Magnificent Ambersons in the BFI Classics series (in my view the greatest `intense and reverend scrutiny'of a single film available). Next to Perkin's limpid and precise approach Thomson's prose is often like lumpy mist, heavy and yet insubstantial. An unfair comparison perhaps as Thomson has jut 500 words on many films and Perkins several thousand on just the one, but I maintain my core point about Thomson's fuzziness.

OK, that's enough carping, let's skip to the positive stuff. Firstly Thomson isn't Barry Norman, that is to say he doesn't peddle consenus views of what the great films are or why they are interesting, he doesn't resort to the tired recycling of critical orthodoxy, nor the dreary plot synopses that plague many books on film. His approach is fresh and unawed and both visceral and intellectual. There is the awareness of how one's response to films and cinema is fluid and shifting both over time (see his entry on Paris Texas) and also during the actual viewing of any individual film (see his entry on Broadway Melody of 1940). He notes that some films are worth recalling in total whereas others are precious for one particular scene or performance or a fleeting mood; in our digital age we can choose to watch favourite sequences without having to sit through the whole film, even make the equivalent of movie `mix tapes'. He knows that our response is also shaped by the circumstances in which we watched it, and by our interest and knowledge (or lack of these) of other films of the same genre or director or studio. One of the key points Thomson makes is the factor of chance and serendipity in the making of movies, the many variables at play, the dropping out or unavailability of a particular director or writer or star allowing someone else to step into the breach changing the course of the project from the moon to the stars, or from the stars into the gutter. This is where Thomson is at his most persuasive and is the practical result of his stated area of interest, i.e. in how and why films are made rather than whether individual films are good or bad.

Finally then, Thomson's wayward, disgruntled, wistful and sniffy judgements are not for your average multiplex audience. This book, like his others, is indeed provocative and aggravating. I am sure I will return to it again and again, as I do to the Dictionary and Rosebud. And it will be in the same way and for the same reasons that I go back to those other books; they insist that I sharpen my own views and attitudes. And, if you've made it this far and are asking if this review is a recommendation or a warning, it is the former; I do think it is a wonderful book, rich and fascinating and challenging and revealing and of course it prompts and nudges you to see or re-view many many films including those you would normally avoid. But it is also exasperating, infuriating and sometimes plain incomprehensible. It comes with a health warning: Addictive (and slamming it shut in consternation may not necessarily help).

(Incidentally I hope that Amazon will allow the indulgence of this lengthy review - my original version was twice as long, a reflection I guess of just how provoking Thomson is.)


Good Introduction.., 20 Sep 2008
It is a good book to get you started. Covers alot of the models in NLP and is set out so its easy to read and understand. But as i said a very basic book.

If you want some good advice as a rule of thumb on getting books on NLP avoid the new stuff. Stick to the earlier books by Bandler preferably the first ones for e.g 'From Frogs to Princes ( is a must if your serious about this subject ) not only are they humerous but are like the bible of the subject and come from the pioneers, the fountain of knowledge. Derren Brown will even give you this advise also.

Fantastic layout, imple, yet effective, 17 Aug 2008
At first I thought NLP was some hocus-pocus magic stuff, that didn't really work, but boy did it! I am now able to easiloy create rapport, and I find I communicate a hell of a lot more easily... You have inspired me...!!!!!

Better than I thought it would be, 05 Aug 2008
I started this book with a very cynical view thinking it wouldnt be that good. I was pleasantly surprised though to find it is in fact quite interesting and has many helpful ideas.

The page on looking at a persons eyes to see if they are thinking about the past, present, remembering etc is very accurate. I tried it myself and it seems to work.

Definately a useful book to read and find out more about NLP.

Excellent introduction , 07 Jul 2008
This book is an excellent introduction to NLP and presents all the core concepts in an accurate way. NLP is a very wide-ranging theory but this author has managed to introduce the core framework very cogently. Perhaps there could have been more diagrams and illustrations, and perhaps a little less jargon too - but as NLP has so much of its own terminology it's difficult to see how this could be avoided. I would have liked to read a little more about time perception too, after reading Steve Taylor's excellent book Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which looks at why time seems to speed up and slow down (and even completely disappear) in different situations.





Too much detail and not enough 'how to practicality'., 12 May 2008
If u enjoy reading science textbooks or biology books or pages and pages of jargon and talking, then this is for u.if like me ur intrigued by NLP and want a few 'how to' tips then find something more practical. A waste of money.Minimum info on reading body language. A BIG disappointment.

Start talking, 14 Nov 2008
This book is a delight. Refreshing, informative and full of entertaining and interesting quotations. If I was Cary Grant attempting to entertain Audrey Hepburn, after reading this book I would have no inhibitions. It is almost like Dorothy Parker having a drink with Joan Rivers at the Dorchester but without the venom. A book to read before you fall asleep! It is never dull, and a great read on a ski lift.

Michael Day

Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your library to. (also, if you have the money and the inclination, get Rosebud, The Whole Equation, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film too.)

seems as if tony floyd has it about right, 19 Oct 2008
l haven't read the book (yet!) but have just read a review in the Telegraph by one of its film critics Jenny McCartney, whose review is along the same lines. Thanks Mr Floyd; I shall be ordering this book for sure.

Robert Mitchum's knuckles, 03 Oct 2008
"Early on as I watched films and tried to read about them, I found that I valued broad comments on the medium...more than intense and reverend scrutiny of particular films composed by critics who treated a Nicholas Ray film as if it might have been a sculpture by Bernini, or Hamlet."

How odd that in the month that Sight and Sound (in its Who Needs Critics issue) includes this comment from David Thomson, his new book is published, a book that consists of "a personal introduction to 1,000 films" or in other words a not quite reverend but certainly intense scrutiny of particular films.

Having made that snidey point, what does the book do and who is it for? Well, each of Thomson's chosen films has one page to itself and approximately 500 words, but no pictures. The period covered is 1895 to 2007. Even though limited to fiction films (with some borderline exceptions like Man With A Movie Camera, F For Fake) the range covered is tremendous. There are intriguing and bizarre juxtapositions, quality rubs up against trash (but not too much of the latter), Tom and Jerry appear between films by two Jacques (Becker and Tourneur), one could go on and on. It's perfect for dipping into and skimming over, though one's eyes are caught by titles and phrases so you keep stopping to read that or this entry; there are great opening lines, to hook you: "Eddie Constantine was forty-eight in 1965, but he looks like a thousand-year-old lizard in Alphaville"; "The starting point of The Lavender Hill Mob is when a man who wears a bowler hat meets a fellow given to bow ties."; "Has anybody made a voluntary decision to see Heston's Ben-Hur in recent years?". As to who it's for, I'd say the knowledgeable and curious cineaste or buff and not your regular multiplex popcorn munching Vin Diesel connoisseur (though a Vin Diesel film is in here, or rather a film with Vin Diesel in it).

However as a born quibbler of course I have reservations, concerns and criticisms. To state my view clearly: I love this book but David Thomson drives me to distraction.

I have often wondered why Thomson has devoted the majority of his writing career to cinema when it increasingly seems to cause him so much distress - about its worthiness to be taken seriously at all, about its infantilisation, its obsession with CGI spectacle, etc. All of his criticisms are true - to an extent. We acknowledge, and by we I mean the sort of person likely to buy and read this book, that movies are created by committee, diluted by collaboration, blunted by compromise, emasculated by censorship, crippled by hypocrisy, tainted by commercialism but despite these restrictions and sometimes because of them, movies do get made that can be called masterpieces, or great, or minor triumphs or that are just worthy of our time and attention.

This dismay with the state and status of film feeds into Thomsons'other recurring concern that watching films, studying them, talking about them and so on takes up precious time that could be devoted to other less demeaning pursuits. He suggests that the failure of many modern films is that they are made by and for people who know too much about movies and not enough about life. This attitude is often viewed as one of his strengths: the following ridiculous comment exemplifies this (in an overall excellent review of Thomson's The Whole Equation): "It is the work of a man who has read novels, listened to Mahler, fathered children and so while knowing perfectly well ...just how big cinema is, never loses sight of the fact that there are still-biggger things in the world." I like the implication that reading books and raising family are exotic achievements available only to a few rarefied individuals - or are they just unusual for film fans. Well, I have done all those things too and I would beg to disagree with the original assumption that devotion to and passion for something (be it film, skiing, butterflies, astrophysics) means that it is exclusive or results in one being diverted from an engagement with the real world. It is usually quite the opposite, I would suggest (though I appreciate certain hobbies are often used as a refuge from it). Stupid people - like fans of The Sound of Music for example (this is Thomson's opinion, by the way) - are usually uninterested in anything. The truth is surely that for the committed, engaged, intelligent viewer cinema feeds into other passions, and informs and stimulates and is enhanced by other interests that are pursued elsewhere. In the real world even.

Thomson's reputation is that he is the most insightful, illuminating and provocative writer on film today. The sort of writer you read not necessarily because of his subject matter but because of his prose style, so suggestive, allusive, nuanced that it enters the realm of literature. Well, I do enjoy reading his books, a particular favourite is Rosebud, about Orson Welles (though I am not remotely convinced by the portrait of Welles that it paints), and there is also the unavoidable and highly regarded Biographical Dictionary of Film. But I also find his style stern, gnomish, aggravating, pretentious. It's often so circumlocutory, so hesitant, so couched in broad strokes and `poetic' generalisations that you finish reading and wonder, does he like the film or not, is this a recommendation or a kicking? I offer as examples: "And it's only when peril gets neurotic, and comic, that people start to smoke". What people? Real people? Movie characters? It's nonsense, David. On Hollywood's vaguely liberal Democrat voting persuasion: "But the allegiance is so unreliable when the custard philosophy is hiding or denying the real muscular differences and antagonisms of politics." (Forrest Gump). Or this "Lang's method was always to stage every event as if he were quoting it from the scrapbook of dream images - what I mean by that is that the brilliant compositions always underline themselves; they are in italic, and thus a touch suspect, more haunting than reliable." (Woman in the Window). If you unpick these sentences you are (or more precisely, I am) not really any wiser than I was before I read them. There's plenty of this sort of stuff here, as there is in all his books (at least the ones I've read) so that one has to embark on a sifting exercise to pan for meaning in the same way Bogart, Huston and Holt do for nuggets of gold in the Sierra Madre. Compare such passages with V F Perkins book on The Magnificent Ambersons in the BFI Classics series (in my view the greatest `intense and reverend scrutiny'of a single film available). Next to Perkin's limpid and precise approach Thomson's prose is often like lumpy mist, heavy and yet insubstantial. An unfair comparison perhaps as Thomson has jut 500 words on many films and Perkins several thousand on just the one, but I maintain my core point about Thomson's fuzziness.

OK, that's enough carping, let's skip to the positive stuff. Firstly Thomson isn't Barry Norman, that is to say he doesn't peddle consenus views of what the great films are or why they are interesting, he doesn't resort to the tired recycling of critical orthodoxy, nor the dreary plot synopses that plague many books on film. His approach is fresh and unawed and both visceral and intellectual. There is the awareness of how one's response to films and cinema is fluid and shifting both over time (see his entry on Paris Texas) and also during the actual viewing of any individual film (see his entry on Broadway Melody of 1940). He notes that some films are worth recalling in total whereas others are precious for one particular scene or performance or a fleeting mood; in our digital age we can choose to watch favourite sequences without having to sit through the whole film, even make the equivalent of movie `mix tapes'. He knows that our response is also shaped by the circumstances in which we watched it, and by our interest and knowledge (or lack of these) of other films of the same genre or director or studio. One of the key points Thomson makes is the factor of chance and serendipity in the making of movies, the many variables at play, the dropping out or unavailability of a particular director or writer or star allowing someone else to step into the breach changing the course of the project from the moon to the stars, or from the stars into the gutter. This is where Thomson is at his most persuasive and is the practical result of his stated area of interest, i.e. in how and why films are made rather than whether individual films are good or bad.

Finally then, Thomson's wayward, disgruntled, wistful and sniffy judgements are not for your average multiplex audience. This book, like his others, is indeed provocative and aggravating. I am sure I will return to it again and again, as I do to the Dictionary and Rosebud. And it will be in the same way and for the same reasons that I go back to those other books; they insist that I sharpen my own views and attitudes. And, if you've made it this far and are asking if this review is a recommendation or a warning, it is the former; I do think it is a wonderful book, rich and fascinating and challenging and revealing and of course it prompts and nudges you to see or re-view many many films including those you would normally avoid. But it is also exasperating, infuriating and sometimes plain incomprehensible. It comes with a health warning: Addictive (and slamming it shut in consternation may not necessarily help).

(Incidentally I hope that Amazon will allow the indulgence of this lengthy review - my original version was twice as long, a reflection I guess of just how provoking Thomson is.)


Good Introduction.., 20 Sep 2008
It is a good book to get you started. Covers alot of the models in NLP and is set out so its easy to read and understand. But as i said a very basic book.

If you want some good advice as a rule of thumb on getting books on NLP avoid the new stuff. Stick to the earlier books by Bandler preferably the first ones for e.g 'From Frogs to Princes ( is a must if your serious about this subject ) not only are they humerous but are like the bible of the subject and come from the pioneers, the fountain of knowledge. Derren Brown will even give you this advise also.

Fantastic layout, imple, yet effective, 17 Aug 2008
At first I thought NLP was some hocus-pocus magic stuff, that didn't really work, but boy did it! I am now able to easiloy create rapport, and I find I communicate a hell of a lot more easily... You have inspired me...!!!!!

Better than I thought it would be, 05 Aug 2008
I started this book with a very cynical view thinking it wouldnt be that good. I was pleasantly surprised though to find it is in fact quite interesting and has many helpful ideas.

The page on looking at a persons eyes to see if they are thinking about the past, present, remembering etc is very accurate. I tried it myself and it seems to work.

Definately a useful book to read and find out more about NLP.

Excellent introduction , 07 Jul 2008
This book is an excellent introduction to NLP and presents all the core concepts in an accurate way. NLP is a very wide-ranging theory but this author has managed to introduce the core framework very cogently. Perhaps there could have been more diagrams and illustrations, and perhaps a little less jargon too - but as NLP has so much of its own terminology it's difficult to see how this could be avoided. I would have liked to read a little more about time perception too, after reading Steve Taylor's excellent book Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which looks at why time seems to speed up and slow down (and even completely disappear) in different situations.





Too much detail and not enough 'how to practicality'., 12 May 2008
If u enjoy reading science textbooks or biology books or pages and pages of jargon and talking, then this is for u.if like me ur intrigued by NLP and want a few 'how to' tips then find something more practical. A waste of money.Minimum info on reading body language. A BIG disappointment.

Start talking, 14 Nov 2008
This book is a delight. Refreshing, informative and full of entertaining and interesting quotations. If I was Cary Grant attempting to entertain Audrey Hepburn, after reading this book I would have no inhibitions. It is almost like Dorothy Parker having a drink with Joan Rivers at the Dorchester but without the venom. A book to read before you fall asleep! It is never dull, and a great read on a ski lift.

Michael Day










Invaluable, 14 Nov 2008
A copy of this book should be put in the hands of every man, woman, child, cat and dog on the planet. We are being drowned in a sea of rolling news, breaking news, 'keeping you updated', etc etc - and it's all crap. Many of us knew the news has been distorted for years, but as Nick Davies proves the modern media can now only produce hogwash (actually, that's an insult to hogwash). At a time when we need a proper Fourth Estate we get junk. There are faults with the book: it's probably overlong and the author mentions only in passing that PR is full of journalists, most of whom would work for whoever pays them and say what they're paid to. But enough of that. That modern news is hype, hysteria and hopeless is proved beyond doubt in page after page of Davies' breathtaking catalogue of examples.

Potentially important book, but fatally flawed, 11 Sep 2008
The cover of this book is splattered with quotes saying how important this book is, and they're sort of right. Davies looks with a piercing insiders eye at why the news reported to us -- even from "heavyweight" sources -- is even less dependable than even cynics think. The book clearly shows how commercial factors have all but eliminated any checking of stories, so the media are almost completely at the mercy of PR generated by vested interests.

The problem -- and it's a big one -- is that the book risks being tarred with the same brush (because of carelessness, I hope, and not because Davies sources really are poor). Davies repeatedly quotes the figure of only 12% original input from newsrooms, but only once mentions that there's another 8% that's uncertain so the actual figure is somewhere betweeen 12% and 20%. Responsible reporting would say 16% +/- 4%, or just 16%; by choosing the worst extreme of the range Davies is sensationalising the data. Even worse, the figure of 12% comes from a single study, and no reference is given for the study, so readers cannot check the data. What was the methodology? Was the study ever peer reviewed? In fact, no references are given for anything at all; we have to take Davies' word for everything he says. That's the very thing he complains about journalists doing, the very thing that leads to flat-earth journalism, the very problem he is trying to highlight. Sure, some of his sources would want to remain anonymous, but the total lack of any references at all in a book of this type is completely unforgiveable. And does he have a vested interest? Well, he's a journalist, complaining about massive cuts in employment of journalism, massive cuts in journalists' pay, and massive deterioration in journalists' working conditions: it looks like a vested interest to me (and he admits in part to this at the outset).

If we take the message of this book at all seriously then we can't trust this book at all. That's a real pity, because I think it deals with crucially important issues and Davies may well actually be correct in his allegations. It may just have been a foolish decision -- not to reference anything -- that holed this book beneath the waterline. But with that flaw, the book is sunk.

Establishment journalist turns tables and burns bridges, 07 Sep 2008
Nick Davies used to be a professional journalist. Flat Earth News has to stand as one of the most intensive episodes of bridge-burning in recent writing. Davies turned his focus on his own industry and has produced a highly readable account of how, in his own words, he worked in a, "...corrupted profession."

This isn't a fish-shooting exercise in why tabloid journalism isn't to be trusted; after all, surely nobody reads the gutter press expecting to actually learn something about the world. The red-tops are all about sex, celebrity, sport, trivia - a companion to the fool's lantern. Flat Earth News goes hunting for bigger beasts: the so-called quality press. Neither is this book about which is better, left or right-wing journalism. Davies has both targets in his sites.

Flat Earth News starts with an examination of the Millennium Bug story (remember that?): how certain portions of the world were whipped up into a fear that as the year 1999 rolled over into the year 2000, planes would fall out the sky, prison doors would swing open and all sorts of calamities would happen because most computers weren't equipped to recognise that the date "00" was "2000" and not "1900." As we all know now, none of these predictions of apocalypse came to pass. Davies analyses how one very cautious prediction was picked up and manufactured into something that the original story's author and subject wouldn't have recognised.

Davies then goes further and re-investigates other stories, going back to the people who were meant to have given the quotes and finding that either the stories were misquoting the source, the journalists hadn't even spoken directly to the people involved or that the stories were simply recycling Public Relations hand-outs, designed to promote a person, product or policy. This pattern turned out to be consistent across the board, from The Observer newspaper to The Daily Mail.

Nick Davies' book discusses why journalists are content to take PR propaganda, whether corporate or governmental, and pass it off as their own work - they have so much space to fill and such limited time to research and write, that rules of production demand that they simply churn out a steady stream of articles, using 'safe' sources that are 'official' and 'reliable' rather than using dissident sources that are, by dogmatic definition, 'unreliable' and therefore more time consuming to research.

Other parts of the book discuss media hypocrisy: journalists mouthing off about "law and order" but paying corrupt police and civil servants to illegally source information. Another section provides a case study as to how a left-of-center newspaper (The Observer) became a willing conduit for an illegal pro-war message. Another piece looks at how The Times Insight team, one of Fleet Street's finest, were reduced to inconsequential fluff. Other case studies and content analysis further substantiate Nick Davies contention that the mainstream print media in the U.K. has simply lost its' credibility, despite the best efforts of a handful of dedicated journalists, swimming against the tide.

At best, most journalists are neutral and not objective: two people go off to a field and then return, one claims that they cut all the grass and the other claims that they didn't touch a single blade. Clearly, they both can't be telling the truth, one of them has to be lying. If the journalist reports both positions with equal weight, this is neutrality, not objectivity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with truth but merely the appearance of impartiality. And this - neutrality - is the best we can hope for, a few honourable exceptions aside.

This book should be required reading not only for practicing and trainee journalists but for anybody who still consumes the secular priesthood that is the so-called 'quality press.' Whether your own personal political bias tilts to the right or the left, this book should provide the evidence that the news factory is not only selling consumers to advertisers but that it is selling Public Relations propaganda under the guise of independent research.

., 30 Jul 2008
I'd always had a feeling that I was being misled by the mainstream media, but never really knew how it came about. This book went a long way to answering that question, and I now understand how the media is manipulated by a variety of sources so that what gets presented is very rarely the news as it happened.

My only criticism of the book is its coverage of the propaganda war in Iraq. It's undoubtedly all true, and relevant to the book, but I found that the middle of the book onwards was almost totally devoted to it, and it just turned me off a bit. It felt at times like the real message of the book was a criticism of Blair and Bush and that the stuff about the press was merely to illustrate that point, rather than the other way round.

The rise and rise of 'churnalism', 08 Jul 2008
Today newspapers are run purely for profit. This means that numbers of reporters are being cut. This means that they can't get out into the world and build contacts that will help them unearth stories. This means that, by and large, they have time to just sit at a desk and recycle (sometimes just plain re-use) stories from:
1. News agencies, who feel it's not their job to interpret anything, merely report it, so no fact checking. This stuff goes straight into papers and broadcast media without being checked.
2. PR. PR agencies who work for organisations send out press releases, which by definition will not be fair or balanced. And that goes straight into the news too. Interestingly, there's also the issue of 'Astroturf' groups: supposedly 'grass-roots' movements and organisations that produce 'independent' reports, except they're no such thing; they're just a front for big business to put out press releases from an apparently independent source. And it's not just global warming or the millennium bug where we're being misled; there are apparently Astroturf organisations sending us reports, towing the government line, from Iraq! SO next time you hear about the publication of a report from some think tank, ask yourself who's paying for that report?
3. Each other. If one paper has picked up on a story, rather than (a) check it or (b) get left behind, they recycle the same stuff. It seems that each paper goes through every other paper checking for stories.

Anyone who reads a paper or listens to the news in any way shape or form should read this book.

Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your library to. (also, if you have the money and the inclination, get Rosebud, The Whole Equation, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film too.)

seems as if tony floyd has it about right, 19 Oct 2008
l haven't read the book (yet!) but have just read a review in the Telegraph by one of its film critics Jenny McCartney, whose review is along the same lines. Thanks Mr Floyd; I shall be ordering this book for sure.

Robert Mitchum's knuckles, 03 Oct 2008
"Early on as I watched films and tried to read about them, I found that I valued broad comments on the medium...more than intense and reverend scrutiny of particular films composed by critics who treated a Nicholas Ray film as if it might have been a sculpture by Bernini, or Hamlet."

How odd that in the month that Sight and Sound (in its Who Needs Critics issue) includes this comment from David Thomson, his new book is published, a book that consists of "a personal introduction to 1,000 films" or in other words a not quite reverend but certainly intense scrutiny of particular films.

Having made that snidey point, what does the book do and who is it for? Well, each of Thomson's chosen films has one page to itself and approximately 500 words, but no pictures. The period covered is 1895 to 2007. Even though limited to fiction films (with some borderline exceptions like Man With A Movie Camera, F For Fake) the range covered is tremendous. There are intriguing and bizarre juxtapositions, quality rubs up against trash (but not too much of the latter), Tom and Jerry appear between films by two Jacques (Becker and Tourneur), one could go on and on. It's perfect for dipping into and skimming over, though one's eyes are caught by titles and phrases so you keep stopping to read that or this entry; there are great opening lines, to hook you: "Eddie Constantine was forty-eight in 1965, but he looks like a thousand-year-old lizard in Alphaville"; "The starting point of The Lavender Hill Mob is when a man who wears a bowler hat meets a fellow given to bow ties."; "Has anybody made a voluntary decision to see Heston's Ben-Hur in recent years?". As to who it's for, I'd say the knowledgeable and curious cineaste or buff and not your regular multiplex popcorn munching Vin Diesel connoisseur (though a Vin Diesel film is in here, or rather a film with Vin Diesel in it).

However as a born quibbler of course I have reservations, concerns and criticisms. To state my view clearly: I love this book but David Thomson drives me to distraction.

I have often wondered why Thomson has devoted the majority of his writing career to cinema when it increasingly seems to cause him so much distress - about its worthiness to be taken seriously at all, about its infantilisation, its obsession with CGI spectacle, etc. All of his criticisms are true - to an extent. We acknowledge, and by we I mean the sort of person likely to buy and read this book, that movies are created by committee, diluted by collaboration, blunted by compromise, emasculated by censorship, crippled by hypocrisy, tainted by commercialism but despite these restrictions and sometimes because of them, movies do get made that can be called masterpieces, or great, or minor triumphs or that are just worthy of our time and attention.

This dismay with the state and status of film feeds into Thomsons'other recurring concern that watching films, studying them, talking about them and so on takes up precious time that could be devoted to other less demeaning pursuits. He suggests that the failure of many modern films is that they are made by and for people who know too much about movies and not enough about life. This attitude is often viewed as one of his strengths: the following ridiculous comment exemplifies this (in an overall excellent review of Thomson's The Whole Equation): "It is the work of a man who has read novels, listened to Mahler, fathered children and so while knowing perfectly well ...just how big cinema is, never loses sight of the fact that there are still-biggger things in the world." I like the implication that reading books and raising family are exotic achievements available only to a few rarefied individuals - or are they just unusual for film fans. Well, I have done all those things too and I would beg to disagree with the original assumption that devotion to and passion for something (be it film, skiing, butterflies, astrophysics) means that it is exclusive or results in one being diverted from an engagement with the real world. It is usually quite the opposite, I would suggest (though I appreciate certain hobbies are often used as a refuge from it). Stupid people - like fans of The Sound of Music for example (this is Thomson's opinion, by the way) - are usually uninterested in anything. The truth is surely that for the committed, engaged, intelligent viewer cinema feeds into other passions, and informs and stimulates and is enhanced by other interests that are pursued elsewhere. In the real world even.

Thomson's reputation is that he is the most insightful, illuminating and provocative writer on film today. The sort of writer you read not necessarily because of his subject matter but because of his prose style, so suggestive, allusive, nuanced that it enters the realm of literature. Well, I do enjoy reading his books, a particular favourite is Rosebud, about Orson Welles (though I am not remotely convinced by the portrait of Welles that it paints), and there is also the unavoidable and highly regarded Biographical Dictionary of Film. But I also find his style stern, gnomish, aggravating, pretentious. It's often so circumlocutory, so hesitant, so couched in broad strokes and `poetic' generalisations that you finish reading and wonder, does he like the film or not, is this a recommendation or a kicking? I offer as examples: "And it's only when peril gets neurotic, and comic, that people start to smoke". What people? Real people? Movie characters? It's nonsense, David. On Hollywood's vaguely liberal Democrat voting persuasion: "But the allegiance is so unreliable when the custard philosophy is hiding or denying the real muscular differences and antagonisms of politics." (Forrest Gump). Or this "Lang's method was always to stage every event as if he were quoting it from the scrapbook of dream images - what I mean by that is that the brilliant compositions always underline themselves; they are in italic, and thus a touch suspect, more haunting than reliable." (Woman in the Window). If you unpick these sentences you are (or more precisely, I am) not really any wiser than I was before I read them. There's plenty of this sort of stuff here, as there is in all his books (at least the ones I've read) so that one has to embark on a sifting exercise to pan for meaning in the same way Bogart, Huston and Holt do for nuggets of gold in the Sierra Madre. Compare such passages with V F Perkins book on The Magnificent Ambersons in the BFI Classics series (in my view the greatest `intense and reverend scrutiny'of a single film available). Next to Perkin's limpid and precise approach Thomson's prose is often like lumpy mist, heavy and yet insubstantial. An unfair comparison perhaps as Thomson has jut 500 words on many films and Perkins several thousand on just the one, but I maintain my core point about Thomson's fuzziness.

OK, that's enough carping, let's skip to the positive stuff. Firstly Thomson isn't Barry Norman, that is to say he doesn't peddle consenus views of what the great films are or why they are interesting, he doesn't resort to the tired recycling of critical orthodoxy, nor the dreary plot synopses that plague many books on film. His approach is fresh and unawed and both visceral and intellectual. There is the awareness of how one's response to films and cinema is fluid and shifting both over time (see his entry on Paris Texas) and also during the actual viewing of any individual film (see his entry on Broadway Melody of 1940). He notes that some films are worth recalling in total whereas others are precious for one particular scene or performance or a fleeting mood; in our digital age we can choose to watch favourite sequences without having to sit through the whole film, even make the equivalent of movie `mix tapes'. He knows that our response is also shaped by the circumstances in which we watched it, and by our interest and knowledge (or lack of these) of other films of the same genre or director or studio. One of the key points Thomson makes is the factor of chance and serendipity in the making of movies, the many variables at play, the dropping out or unavailability of a particular director or writer or star allowing someone else to step into the breach changing the course of the project from the moon to the stars, or from the stars into the gutter. This is where Thomson is at his most persuasive and is the practical result of his stated area of interest, i.e. in how and why films are made rather than whether individual films are good or bad.

Finally then, Thomson's wayward, disgruntled, wistful and sniffy judgements are not for your average multiplex audience. This book, like his others, is indeed provocative and aggravating. I am sure I will return to it again and again, as I do to the Dictionary and Rosebud. And it will be in the same way and for the same reasons that I go back to those other books; they insist that I sharpen my own views and attitudes. And, if you've made it this far and are asking if this review is a recommendation or a warning, it is the former; I do think it is a wonderful book, rich and fascinating and challenging and revealing and of course it prompts and nudges you to see or re-view many many films including those you would normally avoid. But it is also exasperating, infuriating and sometimes plain incomprehensible. It comes with a health warning: Addictive (and slamming it shut in consternation may not necessarily help).

(Incidentally I hope that Amazon will allow the indulgence of this lengthy review - my original version was twice as long, a reflection I guess of just how provoking Thomson is.)


Good Introduction.., 20 Sep 2008
It is a good book to get you started. Covers alot of the models in NLP and is set out so its easy to read and understand. But as i said a very basic book.

If you want some good advice as a rule of thumb on getting books on NLP avoid the new stuff. Stick to the earlier books by Bandler preferably the first ones for e.g 'From Frogs to Princes ( is a must if your serious about this subject ) not only are they humerous but are like the bible of the subject and come from the pioneers, the fountain of knowledge. Derren Brown will even give you this advise also.

Fantastic layout, imple, yet effective, 17 Aug 2008
At first I thought NLP was some hocus-pocus magic stuff, that didn't really work, but boy did it! I am now able to easiloy create rapport, and I find I communicate a hell of a lot more easily... You have inspired me...!!!!!

Better than I thought it would be, 05 Aug 2008
I started this book with a very cynical view thinking it wouldnt be that good. I was pleasantly surprised though to find it is in fact quite interesting and has many helpful ideas.

The page on looking at a persons eyes to see if they are thinking about the past, present, remembering etc is very accurate. I tried it myself and it seems to work.

Definately a useful book to read and find out more about NLP.

Excellent introduction , 07 Jul 2008
This book is an excellent introduction to NLP and presents all the core concepts in an accurate way. NLP is a very wide-ranging theory but this author has managed to introduce the core framework very cogently. Perhaps there could have been more diagrams and illustrations, and perhaps a little less jargon too - but as NLP has so much of its own terminology it's difficult to see how this could be avoided. I would have liked to read a little more about time perception too, after reading Steve Taylor's excellent book Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which looks at why time seems to speed up and slow down (and even completely disappear) in different situations.





Too much detail and not enough 'how to practicality'., 12 May 2008
If u enjoy reading science textbooks or biology books or pages and pages of jargon and talking, then this is for u.if like me ur intrigued by NLP and want a few 'how to' tips then find something more practical. A waste of money.Minimum info on reading body language. A BIG disappointment.

Start talking, 14 Nov 2008
This book is a delight. Refreshing, informative and full of entertaining and interesting quotations. If I was Cary Grant attempting to entertain Audrey Hepburn, after reading this book I would have no inhibitions. It is almost like Dorothy Parker having a drink with Joan Rivers at the Dorchester but without the venom. A book to read before you fall asleep! It is never dull, and a great read on a ski lift.

Michael Day










Invaluable, 14 Nov 2008
A copy of this book should be put in the hands of every man, woman, child, cat and dog on the planet. We are being drowned in a sea of rolling news, breaking news, 'keeping you updated', etc etc - and it's all crap. Many of us knew the news has been distorted for years, but as Nick Davies proves the modern media can now only produce hogwash (actually, that's an insult to hogwash). At a time when we need a proper Fourth Estate we get junk. There are faults with the book: it's probably overlong and the author mentions only in passing that PR is full of journalists, most of whom would work for whoever pays them and say what they're paid to. But enough of that. That modern news is hype, hysteria and hopeless is proved beyond doubt in page after page of Davies' breathtaking catalogue of examples.

Potentially important book, but fatally flawed, 11 Sep 2008
The cover of this book is splattered with quotes saying how important this book is, and they're sort of right. Davies looks with a piercing insiders eye at why the news reported to us -- even from "heavyweight" sources -- is even less dependable than even cynics think. The book clearly shows how commercial factors have all but eliminated any checking of stories, so the media are almost completely at the mercy of PR generated by vested interests.

The problem -- and it's a big one -- is that the book risks being tarred with the same brush (because of carelessness, I hope, and not because Davies sources really are poor). Davies repeatedly quotes the figure of only 12% original input from newsrooms, but only once mentions that there's another 8% that's uncertain so the actual figure is somewhere betweeen 12% and 20%. Responsible reporting would say 16% +/- 4%, or just 16%; by choosing the worst extreme of the range Davies is sensationalising the data. Even worse, the figure of 12% comes from a single study, and no reference is given for the study, so readers cannot check the data. What was the methodology? Was the study ever peer reviewed? In fact, no references are given for anything at all; we have to take Davies' word for everything he says. That's the very thing he complains about journalists doing, the very thing that leads to flat-earth journalism, the very problem he is trying to highlight. Sure, some of his sources would want to remain anonymous, but the total lack of any references at all in a book of this type is completely unforgiveable. And does he have a vested interest? Well, he's a journalist, complaining about massive cuts in employment of journalism, massive cuts in journalists' pay, and massive deterioration in journalists' working conditions: it looks like a vested interest to me (and he admits in part to this at the outset).

If we take the message of this book at all seriously then we can't trust this book at all. That's a real pity, because I think it deals with crucially important issues and Davies may well actually be correct in his allegations. It may just have been a foolish decision -- not to reference anything -- that holed this book beneath the waterline. But with that flaw, the book is sunk.

Establishment journalist turns tables and burns bridges, 07 Sep 2008
Nick Davies used to be a professional journalist. Flat Earth News has to stand as one of the most intensive episodes of bridge-burning in recent writing. Davies turned his focus on his own industry and has produced a highly readable account of how, in his own words, he worked in a, "...corrupted profession."

This isn't a fish-shooting exercise in why tabloid journalism isn't to be trusted; after all, surely nobody reads the gutter press expecting to actually learn something about the world. The red-tops are all about sex, celebrity, sport, trivia - a companion to the fool's lantern. Flat Earth News goes hunting for bigger beasts: the so-called quality press. Neither is this book about which is better, left or right-wing journalism. Davies has both targets in his sites.

Flat Earth News starts with an examination of the Millennium Bug story (remember that?): how certain portions of the world were whipped up into a fear that as the year 1999 rolled over into the year 2000, planes would fall out the sky, prison doors would swing open and all sorts of calamities would happen because most computers weren't equipped to recognise that the date "00" was "2000" and not "1900." As we all know now, none of these predictions of apocalypse came to pass. Davies analyses how one very cautious prediction was picked up and manufactured into something that the original story's author and subject wouldn't have recognised.

Davies then goes further and re-investigates other stories, going back to the people who were meant to have given the quotes and finding that either the stories were misquoting the source, the journalists hadn't even spoken directly to the people involved or that the stories were simply recycling Public Relations hand-outs, designed to promote a person, product or policy. This pattern turned out to be consistent across the board, from The Observer newspaper to The Daily Mail.

Nick Davies' book discusses why journalists are content to take PR propaganda, whether corporate or governmental, and pass it off as their own work - they have so much space to fill and such limited time to research and write, that rules of production demand that they simply churn out a steady stream of articles, using 'safe' sources that are 'official' and 'reliable' rather than using dissident sources that are, by dogmatic definition, 'unreliable' and therefore more time consuming to research.

Other parts of the book discuss media hypocrisy: journalists mouthing off about "law and order" but paying corrupt police and civil servants to illegally source information. Another section provides a case study as to how a left-of-center newspaper (The Observer) became a willing conduit for an illegal pro-war message. Another piece looks at how The Times Insight team, one of Fleet Street's finest, were reduced to inconsequential fluff. Other case studies and content analysis further substantiate Nick Davies contention that the mainstream print media in the U.K. has simply lost its' credibility, despite the best efforts of a handful of dedicated journalists, swimming against the tide.

At best, most journalists are neutral and not objective: two people go off to a field and then return, one claims that they cut all the grass and the other claims that they didn't touch a single blade. Clearly, they both can't be telling the truth, one of them has to be lying. If the journalist reports both positions with equal weight, this is neutrality, not objectivity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with truth but merely the appearance of impartiality. And this - neutrality - is the best we can hope for, a few honourable exceptions aside.

This book should be required reading not only for practicing and trainee journalists but for anybody who still consumes the secular priesthood that is the so-called 'quality press.' Whether your own personal political bias tilts to the right or the left, this book should provide the evidence that the news factory is not only selling consumers to advertisers but that it is selling Public Relations propaganda under the guise of independent research.

., 30 Jul 2008
I'd always had a feeling that I was being misled by the mainstream media, but never really knew how it came about. This book went a long way to answering that question, and I now understand how the media is manipulated by a variety of sources so that what gets presented is very rarely the news as it happened.

My only criticism of the book is its coverage of the propaganda war in Iraq. It's undoubtedly all true, and relevant to the book, but I found that the middle of the book onwards was almost totally devoted to it, and it just turned me off a bit. It felt at times like the real message of the book was a criticism of Blair and Bush and that the stuff about the press was merely to illustrate that point, rather than the other way round.

The rise and rise of 'churnalism', 08 Jul 2008
Today newspapers are run purely for profit. This means that numbers of reporters are being cut. This means that they can't get out into the world and build contacts that will help them unearth stories. This means that, by and large, they have time to just sit at a desk and recycle (sometimes just plain re-use) stories from:
1. News agencies, who feel it's not their job to interpret anything, merely report it, so no fact checking. This stuff goes straight into papers and broadcast media without being checked.
2. PR. PR agencies who work for organisations send out press releases, which by definition will not be fair or balanced. And that goes straight into the news too. Interestingly, there's also the issue of 'Astroturf' groups: supposedly 'grass-roots' movements and organisations that produce 'independent' reports, except they're no such thing; they're just a front for big business to put out press releases from an apparently independent source. And it's not just global warming or the millennium bug where we're being misled; there are apparently Astroturf organisations sending us reports, towing the government line, from Iraq! SO next time you hear about the publication of a report from some think tank, ask yourself who's paying for that report?
3. Each other. If one paper has picked up on a story, rather than (a) check it or (b) get left behind, they recycle the same stuff. It seems that each paper goes through every other paper checking for stories.

Anyone who reads a paper or listens to the news in any way shape or form should read this book.

Needs to get back on track , 29 Apr 2008
As someone who has been buying and devouring Halliwell's since the first edition back in 1977, I find it disappointing to see Walker requesting that his name is removed from the credits - almost as disappointing as the disdain with which the publishers increasingly treat this once great movie bible. The two elements that set Halliwell's apart from the rest are the star rating system and the use of italics to denote outstanding performance. In the latest edition, the former is ill-used and the latter is dispensed with altogether.

Yes, Leslie Halliwell was a reactionary old grump who hated pretty much everything post 1969, but that was part of his charm, bless 'im. History has shown that he unfairly undervalued much of the 70s/80s output and John Walker's revisions were pretty welcome after Halliwell's untimely death. As an example, it was Walker who converted the superb 'Southern Comfort' from 0-star to 4-star rating, thus restoring some sanity. Like Halliwell, Walker's reviews were sharp and pithy and, other than the aforementioned sensible revisions, he tried to keep the spirit of Halliwell alive. The new reviewer is far more verbose and some of his decisions are questionable but I guess that's his prerogative.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that recent editions have tinkered with the format feverishly and taken away much of what made this guide something to be eagerly anticipated each year. The silly introduction of coloured film titles, the unhelpful addition of character names after each actor's name and the italicisation of the review section to distinguish it from the plot paragraph are all gimmicks too far. None have added any real value - quite the opposite.

But, above all, italicisation to reward outstanding performances by actors or creators is something that defines Halliwell's. With the 2008 edition, it appears even that sacred cow can be put out to pasture.

After thirty years, it could be time to find a new guide.


real signs of improvement, 05 Jan 2008
I think Halliwell's is gradually starting to move with the times. Having had the latest edition now for a fortnight, I like the slightly longer reviews for the more important new films. The new editor writes well enough, and he even has a sense of humour which was never evident in this guide before. His introduction is sound, and he gives the impression of having seen every film he writes about. My reservation about the volume is the opinions expressed by the great Halliwell himself, many of which seem dismissive, reactionary or just plain out of date. He under-valued so many significant films from the 70s and 80s.

Misleading reviews and descriptions. Needs a total re-write, 16 Dec 2007
Each listing includes title, year, abbreviated credits, the film's plot in one sentence, and a review of the film in one sentence.
You should see this before you buy it and make your own mind up.

As a basic listing book it is fine . It contains thousands of entries. But other basic information is welcome. For example, how much did the film cost on the balance sheet? Notable facts like that.

As a film guide [i.e. what it claims to be] it is thoroughly apalling and needs a thorough rewrite. The italicised reviews and the plot summaries are so misleading they are sometimes wrong. The original review of Jaws (1976) is typical. Try to read this slowly: `...despite genuinely suspenseful and frightening sequences, it is a slackly narrated and sometimes flatly handled thriller with an over-abundance of dialogue and, when it finally appears, a pretty unconvincing monster.' What does it mean to 'slackly' narrate a film? The authors can't tell you what they mean either cos it doesn't make any sense! How is it possible to 'flatly handle' a film? As opposed to do what? The pretentious criticism of films throughout the book, shoved down your throat, is off putting.

It does not seem to do what I thought it would, which is enlighten readers and give an insight into the 'construction' of each film listed. That is my definition of a good film guide, so I was very disappointed.

It should speak in plain English and not be so pretentious. Throughout Halliwell's there is overembellished language. It appears the authors merely want to be provacative for their own reputational gain, but they merely baffle and confuse readers with their comments which are almost always off the point and shoved down your throat.

Of course, some like having loads of dumb puerile comments shoved down your throat in a somewhat patronising way. But the approach is totally unecessary. The author should consult the Radio Times Film Guide to see one way how Halliwell's could be bettered.

In short, "totally absurd, poorly contrived, hilariously overwritten".

The juries still out on this one., 08 Dec 2007
As a massive fan of the Halliwell's Film, Video and DVD Guide series, when I saw the slap-dash black sticker bearing David Gritten's name hastily stuck over former editor John Walker's name, I opened it with a certain sense of trepidation. Upon reading the introduction I was somewhat nonplused to see Babel and The Last King of Scotland cited as movies of the year, two films that I had found somewhat disappointing; yet pleasantly suprised to see Children Of Men and The Departed get a mention. As I turned to the back pages to see the three and four star films listed alphabetically my bemusement grew. Seeing The Good Shepherd amongst the three star films was the biggest shock, as this was a film that, although interesting and well shot, was in dire need of better editing and more suitable casting. Other suprise recipients of the three star award include Meet the Robinsons and The Host, perfectly good films on their own terms, but of great historical significance? I think not. While some films were rightly lauded: The Lives of Others is deservedly awarded the sole four star rating, and Pan's Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine and Volver all get the three stars that they merit; some of the most remarkable films of the year get sadly overlooked: Apocalypto, 28 Weeks Later and Zodiac share only two stars amonsts them. Further to this, Gritten has failed to honour stand-out performances by representing the actors name in italics.
Yet despite these criticisms, I feel that Gritten has managed to retain in some measure the essence of what makes Halliwell's a superior film guide. The list of noteworthy movies of the year is characteristically short, the intoduction is interesting and relevant and the reviews, although not always as pithy, are informative and well written. To his credit Gritten justifies the length of some reviews in the introduction and I feel the lengthier reviews for notable movies may well prove a notable addition to the guide.
A final word on John Walker. While it was apparent that his tastes were becomming slightly broader in the last two editions, with the suprise three star awarding of Peter Jackson's King Kong, and over-generous revisions of Leslie Halliwell's reviews; he was for the most part consistent and reliable in his assessment of the numerous films reviewed and for this reason he will be sorely missed by lovers of the guide. It remains to seen whether or not the new look guide is in safe hands, but lovers of the old guide will be hoping that a "Johnn Walker's Film Guide" won't be too far away.

Orange?, 11 Nov 2007
I usually update my Halliwell's film guide every two years. Haven't seen the 2007 edition but I hope the 2008 edition hasn't persisted with the orange lettering for the film titles! Ever tried reading entries in a subdued, film viewing, evening light? Near impossible. Is there a better guide out there though?

Perceptive,interesting - and not too high-brow, 29 Oct 2008

Manages to add something to your appreciation of films you know and intrigue your interest in films you don't. Best of all, it's not too intellectual or cinephile in its tone. Like a partisan version (and a good companion piece) to "1001 Films To See Before You Die"

"One has to do something", 22 Oct 2008
I havent read this from cover to cover, but i've been dipping in for the past three weeks (which i think is the best way to read it). So far it seems like a companion piece to The Biographical Dictionary of Film, another essential book by Thomson.

Everytime i read a new entry i just get goosebumps, hes so passionate, so dissillusioned (thats not spelt right..), so intelligent, that i struggle to understand how such a person can be alive in our time. Or rather, i get so much from his books, that my standards for film/art criticism/writing have been raised, and nearly everybody else falls short.

Buy it, or get your