Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood

Rating:
Summary: A little too clinical
Review: This book probably falls more in the 3 and a half star category, because Bernard Dick does do a good job of laying out the narrative regarding Hollywood's turn toward the "dark side", becoming less about entertainment and more about business. He is thorough and meticulous.

However, the book reads a bit too much like a college text. Professor Dick's last book about a studio, City of Dreams, was a blow-by-blow history of Universal and he references his studies for that book a bit too much here. Clearly there was plenty of original research done, but it seems like some of it is missing. Also, with the exception of the passages pertaining to The Godfather, the examples (perhaps case-studies is a better term) don't really make the point I think the book is trying to make, namely that the film community is most definitely the worse off for having gone down the road of textiles, electronics, and other mainstream industries.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a die hard Hollywood historian or movie fan, but others might be left a bit put off.

Rating:
Summary: A little too clinical
Review: This book probably falls more in the 3 and a half star category, because Bernard Dick does do a good job of laying out the narrative regarding Hollywood's turn toward the "dark side", becoming less about entertainment and more about business. He is thorough and meticulous.

However, the book reads a bit too much like a college text. Professor Dick's last book about a studio, City of Dreams, was a blow-by-blow history of Universal and he references his studies for that book a bit too much here. Clearly there was plenty of original research done, but it seems like some of it is missing. Also, with the exception of the passages pertaining to The Godfather, the examples (perhaps case-studies is a better term) don't really make the point I think the book is trying to make, namely that the film community is most definitely the worse off for having gone down the road of textiles, electronics, and other mainstream industries.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a die hard Hollywood historian or movie fan, but others might be left a bit put off.