May 102013
The Film Snob*s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Filmological Knowledge
From the same brain trust that brought you The Rock Snob*s Dictionary, the hilarious, bestselling guide to insiderist rock arcana, comes The Film Snob*s Dictionary, an informative and subversively funny A-to-Z reference guide to all that is held sacred by Film Snobs, those perverse creatures of the repertory cinema. No longer must you suffer silently as some clerk in a “Tod Browning’s Freaks” T-shirt bombards you with baffling allusions to “wire-fu” pictures, “Todd-AO process,” and
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A very funny, deadly accurate book for the film snob in all of us….OK, some of us.,
Oh yes, I’m one of those “insufferable” chaps this book takes great aim at. And I enjoyed every moment of it. This is a very amusing little book that manages to serve as a surprisingly decent introduction into the names, faces and works that your basic so called “film snob” holds sacred. At the same time, it’s also a painfully funny jab at the admittedly elitist world the “film snob” inhabits. The book was so damn accurate that it sometimes hit too close to home.
If you’ve ever found yourself driving for over two hours to catch that acclaimed film everyone at Cannes was raving about. If the words “The Criterion Collection” causes your pulse to race with excitement. If you’ve suddenly found yourself friendless because your buddies got sick and tired of you raving about the latest and greatest Cronenberg film. Or if you find yourself in online arguments about why ‘French Connection II’ is the better film than the original, then this book is for you.
If you have a friend who is all of the above and who forces you to sit “in the third row” on the left when he drags you to a film, this book is the perfect tool that you can use to keep up with him. Or bring him back down to Earth! A nifty little book.
Oh, and by the way Messers Kamp and Levi, you guys are correct. ‘Office Space’ really does suck!!!
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You know who you are…,
If you’ve ever watched Meshes of the Afternoon at Anthology Film Archives on an August day when the air conditioning was broken…or laughed knowingly at Joan Crawford’s and Mercedes McCambridge’s performances in Johnny Guitar…or refrained from laughing when Annie Lennox inexplicably began warbling “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” during that awful Derek Jarman movie, well, this book is for you. Or maybe it’s not-it might hit a little too close to home.
But for everyone else it’s really, really funny. Highly recommended. I especially like the guide to determining whether you’re watching a “movie” or a “film.”
And yes, I do know that the phrase “awful Derek Jarman movie” is oxymoronic.
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Unlikely to appear on the Book Snob*s list of great sequels,
While the Rock Snob book was both an interesting encyclopedia and a witty critique of a sub-culture, this just seems like the employees’ manual from a slightly above-average video store. It doesn’t seem to get the cineastes, the gorehounds, or the fan-boys in it’s scope. It just seems a MEDITATION ON the slightly off-beat with a nod toward the classic.
It’s probably this year’s gift of choice for people you don’t want to drop $30 on a Criterion DVD for. But they won’t find it amusing.
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