Book Review: Little Horrors

little-horrorsLittle Horrors: How Cinema’s Evil Children Play on Our Guilt
By T.S. Kord
Published by McFarland, 2016. 228 pages.

I first became aware of this book from my friend Gavin Schmitt’s review, which immediately grabbed my attention at the author’s introduction and her feelings towards some of the more scholarly reference books. When writing this book, she was told on more than one occasion that it wasn’t academic enough. But Kord didn’t care and states that “they failed to convince me that a good idea is worth less because it’s expressed clearly, and I’ve never been a fan of the academic credo that if a book is comprehensible to more than three people, the author must have sold out.” For that, this author has my undying attention and praise! That is exactly the problem I have with a lot of these film theory books, that it seems more important to them to talk over their audience than to actually get down to their level to get their point across. So major kudos to Kord for standing by her thoughts on this subject and not be swayed to change it just to get published.

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Book Review: The Art of the B Movie Poster

b-movie-poster-book

The Art of the B Movie Poster
Edited by Adam Newell
Published by Gingko Press, 2016. 320 pages.

I’ve got a confession to make: I’m a sucker for poster books. I truly believe that movie poster art really is just that…artwork. It is also something that should be treated as such, meaning it should be saved and displayed. But most importantly though, it should be remembered, since there are hundreds of talented artists that put their soul into these and got little or no fanfare, let alone getting paid a decent price. It was because of the hard work of these artists put into these designs that made us go to the theater to see the film, sometimes solely based on what the poster showed them. As Pete Tombs writes in his wonderful introduction here about what this kind of art should be doing…”move, inspire, and entertain – and occasionally startle too, for that’s all part of the plan.”

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Book Review: It Came from the 80s!

it-came-from-the-80sIt Came from the 80s!
By Francesco Borseti
Published by McFarland, 2016. 294 pages.

Why are there not more books like this? With all the low budget films that were made in the 80s, there has to be an over abundance of incredible and fascinating stories that us movie nerds would eat up, from the high stress levels and time constraints, to no money, to dealing with once popular actors on their way down and young ones fighting their way up, to so many other things that were just a normal part of that kind of guerilla-style of filmmaking. But thankfully for us, Francesco Borseti has given us a chance to revisit some of these films, and hear from some of the different people behind them. Each chapter will cover one specific movie that will have different input from several people from the film. Might be the screenwriter, director, cameraman, effects artists, or all of the above, with each one giving their thoughts and memories of working on that particular title.

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