Rating:  Summary: More right wing propoganda Review: Thank God I got this book from the Beverly Hills Library instead of buying it. If I had taken one look at the jacket cover, I wouldn't have even checked it out for free. First thing, one of the authors works for Matt Drudge. Second, one of the reviews on the back cover comes dangerous right-wing schizo Ann Coulter. I made it through about the first 40 pages. It's all typical one-sided Rush Limbaugh-style rhetoric. However you feel about celebrities, this is just a vitriolic hate piece with questionable documentation. If you're a right-wing extremist and you hate celebrities - this is the book for you. Be my guest.
Rating:  Summary: It gets repetitive Review: If you're a right wing crazy who wants to read to support your position on Hollywood and it's seemingly endless collection of airheads with outrageously uninformed opinions, then this is the book for you. All in, it's really what you get when you have uneducated, uninformed, immature people, who have won the movie acting lottery, and who in turn are at the whim of those who Ron Radosh describes in his forthcoming book "Red Star Over Hollywood." Add in all the aberant behavior of people too many of whom have an inordinate need to sabotoge themselves, and that's the book. It could be written in a paragraph except that a lot fewer people would read it. The need to engage in Schadenfreud is too great so this book has sold well to a large audience. And, it is titillating, fun also.
If you like to watch "E-at night" you'll love it.
Rating:  Summary: it is a biased, though fun read Review: This book aims to discredit Hollywood. Chapter by chapter it analyses lives of stars and their dispicable habits, such as neglecting children, doing drugs, voicing unsolicited political opinions. Things we all know or suspect anyways... However occasionally the authors go too far. According to them the most brilliant show to ever hit the TV screen, and to be imitated for its independence of thought and perspective is South Park! Yes, it can be a fun show, but if every show was as unopologetically offensive, most parents would not bother to buy a TV.According to the authors Hollywood is feeding us all the morals. Do not forget however, that Hollywood is a business. If some director goes on and makes a movie for TV where he expressess his, arguably twisted values on family -- most people still watch something else. Yet when it comes to summer blockbusters, the moral values are usually pretty bland, and Hollywood aims to give the viewer what they ask for -- action, love scenes etc. If we as a society truely wanted something else, the theatre/opera/musical/comedy companies wouldn't straggle so hard. Overall the book has more pathos than substance. It takes a few cases and extrapolates them to infinity. Such as taking one disfunctional school (where really, not only Hollywood students go) and talking about all kid's education in general. Or quoting one previously published book for most of the nanny discussion chapter. The bottom line is, if you like reading some tabloids, track some stars but know to take things with a grain of salt -- the book will be an entertaining read. Just don't assume that everything you read is true, or that this is a final stamp on the way the world works. It's just a bit, and it is someone's opinion.
Rating:  Summary: Hollywood dies on the Vine Review: This is a great book that not only says what we New Yorkers have been thinking about Hollywood all the time, it spells our thoughts out in delicious detail. I have yet to read a greater indictment of celebrity culture, and can only look forward to what's next from Breitbart and Ebner.
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