Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion - Hardcover

Leslie Halliwell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684181835 ISBN 13: 9780684181837

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 1984

Synopsis

Halliwell’s – over one hundred years of cinema information and entertainment at your fingertips.

Halliwell’s Film and Video Guide is widely recognised as the biggest and the best film guide available, the undisputed bible for film enthusiasts and trivia buffs everywhere – a must-have for every moviegoer.

Fully revised and updated to include hundreds of new films, it is packed full with cast and credit information and pithy comment on the classics of the silver screen to the latest blockbusters, and eveything in between.

This perennially entertaining, comprehensive and indispensable guide also includes plot synopses and critical evaluations; video cassette, laser disc and DVD availability. Plus reader friendly icons denote films suitable for family viewing, Academy Award Winners and nominees, soundtrack availability and video format compatibility, plus lists of four-star and three-star films by title and year.

About this title

Review:

This monster is quite simply the king of movie guides. Halliwell's Film and Video Guide 2001 contains more than 23,000 entries, creating a competition for space that allows most films only a quick-and-dirty single sentence review. Which is not to say that the book is in any way less than thorough--the terse sentences manage to be enormously telling: (How I Got into College is quietly damned with the description, "Mildly amusing teenage comedy"; Rabbit Test is scorched with "Dreary and tasteless film, the nadir of comedy"; and Strictly Ballroom is lauded with "Exuberant, charming, witty romance acted and directed with style and verve".) As its tendency toward clipped writing may suggest, Halliwell's is no Santa Claus film guide--movies must earn each star awarded. Four stars go only to groundbreaking masterpieces like Rashomon, and one can flip through page after page without seeing a three-star movie. Most of the two-star films are pretty good, just not quite up to this guide's refreshingly exacting standards. For those who want only the best, Halliwell's handily provides lists of three- and four-star films, sorted by both title and year, in the back. One could get an excellent film education simply by working through both lists: the four-star category includes movies as diverse as Pelle the Conqueror, Alien and Duck Soup. Halliwell's pulls no punches with either criticism or praise. It is a must-have for movie lovers. --Ali Davis

Review:

Praise for Halliwell’s Who’s Who in the Movies:

“At the end of the day, Halliwell is top of the pile”
Film Review, 7/99

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0684181835
• ISBN 13: 9780684181837
• Binding: Board book