For Keeps

Rating:
Summary: An essential for any film buffs shelf
Review: At over 1,200 pages, covering 30 years (from the late 50s to early 90s)this book contains the best of America's most influential and acclaimed film critic's reviews.

...I refer to my book continually, and would be amazed if any film buff did not have this on their shelves, or was not planning to add it to them.

A book that I feel deserves over 5 stars if Amazon.com allowed me to give it!

Rating:
Summary: Cinema's most influential critic.
Review: Love her or hate her (or both), it cannot be denied that Pauline Kael was the most important, witty, insightful, maddening, funny, infuriating, exhilirating and incisive movie critic of all time. For me, the only critic that equals her is her antithesis, the great Stanley Kauffmann. Kael burst upon the scene in the 1960s (though her first review appeared in 1953) and movie criticism has never been the same since. With her conversational, waspish prose style and absolute belief in the rightness of her convictions, Kael had a talent for inspiring both intense debate and intense thought. Her reviews were often more anticipated than the movies she wrote about. Her retirement in 1991 due to Parkinson's was a great loss for both movies and American literature: she was definitely one of the great essayists of the 20th century.

"For Keeps" is the definitive one volume Kael collection. From some of her earliest 1950s reviews to her last reviews for The New Yorker in 1991, virtually every important essay she ever wrote is here. Her most famous and controversial reviews (on "Nashville," "Last Tango in Paris," "The Godfather" and "Stardust Memories") are all included, as well as her legendary "Citizen Kane" essay, "Raising Kane." While Kael was an intellectual, writing for a (presumably) literate and educated audience, she was no cinema snob. Her joy in movies extended from Ingmar Bergman to "The Spy Who Loved Me."

This is one of the great books on film ever published and a must have for any movie fan.

Rating:
Summary: WHY IS THIS OUT OF PRINT?
Review: Omnibus edition spanning the career of our finest film critic. Nearly every major essay Miss Kael ever published is included here, and even though the material towards the end of her New Yorker gig sags somewhat (well, so did the movies she wrote about), FOR KEEPS is still the most important volume of movie writing ever issued in America. You might find yourself in violent disagreement with her in places, and so what? If you love movies and have any sense of history, you'll be engaged waist-deep in this book from the get-go. HOW can this be out of print?