Karl French on Apocalypse Now (Bloomsbury Movie Guides, 1)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent choice, novel approach
Review: Apocalypse now (BMG #1) is an excellent choice for Bloomsbury to kick off their line of movie guides. It's also good in that it'll tide us over and give us a glimpse into Apocalypse Now Redux (I'm refering to the restored scenes). While the encyclopedic method employed here may turn off some, i find it a novel approach to tackling one of my favorite movies. If nothing else, it'll be easier to look something up at a later date. The 8 pages of color and b&w pictures here were nice but i'm glad to see that Bloomsbury doubled that number by the time Blue Velvet (bmg #3) came out. All in all, this book is a good companion to Peter Cowie's the Apocalypse Now book and Eleanor Coppola's Notes.


Rating:
Summary: The essential a-z of the essential Vietnam war movie
Review: I strongly disagree with one reviewer who said this is hardly worth buying. My advice is: buy it - you'll love it.

OK, I'm probably biased in that I tend to enjoy the 'encyclopaedia' format of books like this. I read one entry, then follow the links to another, and another until I'm totally immersed in the arcane and amazing information on offer. Linear readers might find it a bit annoying, I guess. However, even for them, this book is well worth reading. It's an essential companion to Apocalypse Now, and has certainly enhanced my viewing of the film. I love Karl French's terse, opinionated style.

My only complaint is that with a tiny bit more effort the references could have been complete enough to make this a useful academic work as well as the popular paperback it already is. For example, I would have loved to follow up Nguyen Khac Vien's essay 'Apocalypse Now Viewed by a Vietnamese', quoted on p. 230, but couldn't since it doesn't appear in the bibliography. Having said that, there are plenty of leads here that I *am* going to follow up.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: [e-mail] The author's dictionary format did not suit the ambiguous and anti-establishment setup of the movie at all. Besides the formatting, it does include some ineresting and sometimes deep analysis of the plot, characters and underlying principles. A solid review, but inadequate as a profesional work and hardly worth buying

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: [e-mail] The author's dictionary format did not suit the ambiguous and anti-establishment setup of the movie at all. Besides the formatting, it does include some ineresting and sometimes deep analysis of the plot, characters and underlying principles. A solid review, but inadequate as a profesional work and hardly worth buying

Rating:
Summary: Great entry in the Bloomsbury Series
Review: This first book in Bloomsbury's movie guide series is, so far, the best of the lot. Full of interesting and often hilarious insights and observations, this A to Z guide to the film actually works fairly well as a straight-through read. I particularly enjoyed the references to the place of water buffalo in classical dramatic structure.

Rating:
Summary: Great entry in the Bloomsbury Series
Review: This first book in Bloomsbury's movie guide series is, so far, the best of the lot. Full of interesting and often hilarious insights and observations, this A to Z guide to the film actually works fairly well as a straight-through read. I particularly enjoyed the references to the place of water buffalo in classical dramatic structure.

Rating:
Summary: A good guide to a great film
Review: While French's encyclopedic approach to the story is a bit limiting, overall this is a good introduction to one of the greatest war movies ever made. The mythology surrounding "Apocalypse Now" and its chaotic making could consume several books and has spawned one brilliant documentary. While a chronological telling of the story and more indepth examination of the personalities would have been ideal, this book serves as a good collection of the essential information one would like to know about the film and its genesis. One good feature of this book is its ability to point to certain aspects of the film that may or may not be links or homages to other movies and books. It is literate in its sensibilities and the prose is very crisp. A very good read for the curious moviegoer. I'm anxious to look at the three other movie guides in this Bloomsbury series.

Rating:
Summary: A good guide to a great film
Review: While French's encyclopedic approach to the story is a bit limiting, overall this is a good introduction to one of the greatest war movies ever made. The mythology surrounding "Apocalypse Now" and its chaotic making could consume several books and has spawned one brilliant documentary. While a chronological telling of the story and more indepth examination of the personalities would have been ideal, this book serves as a good collection of the essential information one would like to know about the film and its genesis. One good feature of this book is its ability to point to certain aspects of the film that may or may not be links or homages to other movies and books. It is literate in its sensibilities and the prose is very crisp. A very good read for the curious moviegoer. I'm anxious to look at the three other movie guides in this Bloomsbury series.