Biographies “Film star bios combine brevity, insight - Modesto Bee” plus 4 more |
- Film star bios combine brevity, insight - Modesto Bee
- 2 singular stars get new bios - Honolulu Advertiser
- The future of Europe and an Allied general’s 5 pound at stake - History News Network
- Two Susan Boyle biographies due out in early 2010 - The Independent
- Zimbabwe : Women - Country's Unsung Educators - AllAfrica.com
| Film star bios combine brevity, insight - Modesto Bee Posted: 20 Jan 2010 04:20 AM PST "Ingrid Bergman" By David Thomson; Faber & Faber ($14 each) You can say this for David Thomson - he doesn't rest on his laurels. And he's got a lot of laurels to rest on. Born in 1941, Thomson is one of the world's most prolific and creative writers on film. He writes or posts essays, reviews and rants several times a week for the Guardian and Salon.com and has written more than 20 novels, biographies and film histories, including, at the tail end of last year, "The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder," which argues convincingly that the 1960 horror classic changed moviemaking forever. Thomson has spent much of his career rethinking classic Hollywood, in ways that are both insightful - his "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" is a reference-shelf staple - and infuriating. Some old-movie fans still haven't forgiven him for "Suspects," a 1985 collection of fictional stories about the lives of iconic screen characters after their movie ended. ("Wait - you're saying Rick and Louis become lovers after Ilsa leaves with Laszlo? Are you crazy ?") As a writer and thinker, Thomson likes to dive in the deep end. So why is he starting out 2010 with a seemingly safe quartet of biographies of old Hollywood's most familiar stars? Is there something that we still don't know about Humphrey Bogart or Bette Davis or Gary Cooper or Ingrid Bergman? Thomson says maybe there is. Briskly written, the essay-length biographies - each is 115 to 130 pages long, including a complete filmography - are equal parts life story and screen resume. In all four books, Thomson's riffs on the stars' movies are incisive but erratic; whole chunks of the actors' careers often are omitted because, well, Thomson doesn't find them very interesting. But just as often, Thomson hits the bull's eye. For example, Bogart's ascendancy, going from weaselly gangster to American Hero in just a few movies ("High Sierra," "The Maltese Falcon," "Casablanca"), is expertly presented as a concoction brewed from a mix of ingredients, stirred by the steady hand of writer-director John Huston. While Thomson's perspective on the stars' work and evolving screen personas is generally spot-on, it's often obscured by his obsession with these screen icons' private lives. I now know more than I ever wanted to about Cooper's sex life, Bergman's promiscuity, Davis' serial monogamy and Bogart's henpeckedness. Thomson often mingles the personal with the cinematic, with uneven results. If you're looking for straightforward introductions to Bette, Bogie, Coop or Ingrid, Thomson's monographs - the first in what his publisher calls the Great Stars series - aren't it. In fact, if you're not familiar with the stars' major movies, the narratives can be hard to follow. But if you're a fan of Hollywood's golden age, are looking for some insights into the movies' most famous faces and want to find other classics to DVR, Thomson's mini-biographies are a good start and, as important, a fast, engaging read. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| 2 singular stars get new bios - Honolulu Advertiser Posted: 20 Jan 2010 05:25 AM PST They don't make them like they used to. People often say that about cars and refrigerators. The same can be said of movie stars. Enter Grace Kelly and Clint Eastwood, who are being analyzed in new biographies. For anyone who longs for the day when the word superstar actually meant something, these two books will come as welcome escapes. Ladies first. Most everyone knows the basics of Grace Kelly's life. An extraordinarily beautiful Philadelphian conquers Hollywood — and more than a few men along the way — only to chuck it all to become a princess by marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco. But the fairy tale wasn't all that "happily ever after," and author Donald Spoto in High Society gives readers a fascinating account of Kelly's difficult transition from Hollywood royalty to the real deal. "For a very long time she felt like a displaced person, not just an expatriate," he writes. It took her 11 years, for instance, to change the custom that no man was permitted to visit her in her private apartments. As Kelly said, "I missed the easier American attitude toward things." She also shocked the conservative locals in the 1970s when she finally dismissed her bodyguards and took her children to local cafes and the public beach. There's not all that much new here, but there are worse ways to spend a few hours than with the likes of Grace Kelly, who died in 1982 in a car crash after suffering a stroke while driving on the French Riviera. She was 52. As for Mr. "Make My Day," Eastwood is the rough-and-tumble counterpart to Kelly's gentility: blue collar vs. blue blood. What you get on the screen with Eastwood is pretty much what you get in real life. The "double helix" of Eastwood's creative and real-life DNA is so intertwined, says author Marc Eliot in "American Rebel," it's impossible to separate the private man from his on-screen persona. Notoriously private, Eastwood, 79, rarely talks about his movies, let alone his life, so Eliot concedes that the "clues" to who Eastwood is "had to be found elsewhere." Author of best-selling biographies of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, Eliot wisely decided to spend much of the book on Eastwood's most recent 15 years or so, his most fruitful period, many believe, especially as a director. He has won five Oscars since 1992, and his latest film, "Invictus," is being mentioned as Oscar bait. It's a good decision on the biographer's part, as much of Eastwood's earlier life is well-traveled territory. But yes, the affairs are all here, the seven children by five women, the two marriages. And the one amazing career. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| The future of Europe and an Allied general’s 5 pound at stake - History News Network Posted: 20 Jan 2010 06:29 AM PST Breaking NewsThe future of Europe and an Allied general's 5 pound at stakeSource: Times (UK) (1-20-10) British and American forces were advancing through Italy, the Germans were on the defensive and Allied commanders were under pressure to build on their success, but a pair of generals still found time for a little wager. General Bernard Montgomery paused during his reorganisation of the Eighth Army in Italy to make a bet with General Dwight Eisenhower, who oversaw the Allied invasion of Italy, about when the war would end. Eisenhower reckoned he could march into Berlin by Christmas 1944. Montgomery thought him optimistic. The future of Europe was at stake, but for the two generals £5 (about £170 today) was enough. The wager is documented in biographies of Montgomery and Eisenhower, but the slip of paper that recorded the bet has been hidden until now. The sheet of lined paper, 5in by 3in, hung for more than 30 years on the wall of a Californian flat owned by the widow of one of Eisenhower's staff.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Two Susan Boyle biographies due out in early 2010 - The Independent Posted: 19 Jan 2010 03:56 PM PST Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Zimbabwe : Women - Country's Unsung Educators - AllAfrica.com Posted: 20 Jan 2010 05:25 AM PST Joyce Jenje Makwenda 20 January 2010 opinion Harare — THERE are certain things that we wish to do in our lifetime, but because of circumstances beyond our control, we are sometimes not able to fulfil our dreams. Many women wish they could have had access to formal education, knowledge and skills. This reminds me of one day when I was on my way to Pretoria from Johannesburg. I had decided to take a train and I met immigration officers doing their routine checks. One of them asked me for my passport. I gave him the passport and he checked the visa whose condition was "To Study Masters in Music at Wits". He said: "You are magogo student" (grandmother student). He called some of his colleagues and he said: "Look at magogo student." Some of the officers asked me to sing, but one woman officer who had taken the passport, checked the visa again, while the other officers were asking me to sing. I explained to the other officers that the course was not just about singing. It was broader than they thought and singing/performing was just another component of the course. When I had finished explaining, the female officer who was quiet all along and had evidently travelled to another world although she was looking at my passport asked me: "Do you think it is possible for me that one day I will also be able to go to school and further my education, like you have done? "I have always wished to further my studies but I wonder if that day will ever come." I was touched and I said: "If you really wish to go back to school, yes one day you will." In one of my articles, I mentioned that I came to understand about music education through my parents who recognised my music talent at an early age, they encouraged me to perform and to take a music course on instrument playing at the College of Music, way back in the 1970s, but I did not then. I would have loved to but it was due to circumstances beyond me. In 1984, I was to embark on research and documentation of Zimbabwe township music and my parents gave me all the support as they realised that this was my calling. It is because of the research that I had embarked on, on township music from 1930s to today, that saw me lecturing and giving talks at institutions locally and internationally but I still wanted to further my "education". When the opportunity to go to Wits and read for a masters degree came along I was happy to fulfil my dream, although I continued with lecturing in the music and media studies departments. I am not the only one who has always wanted to go back to school and advance my education, there are many women who have wanted to fulfil their dreams. Littah Hodzi, who went back to school when she was a mother of three, attributes her success to commitment and having focus. She did her Junior Certificate in 1976 and 1977, she had to space the course in order to accommodate her children, in each year she wrote three subjects. She did her Junior Certificate through correspondence, after that she went on to enrol for some courses so that she could be able to get a job, in order to be financially stable. While she was working as a secretary she realised that she needed O-Level qualifications in order for her to climb the corporate ladder. By this time she had eight children, and her three older children had finished their O-Levels, and the children became her teachers. "Tendai taught me English, Tsitsi taught me Shona, and Mildred taught me Commerce and I passed the subjects." It is important for women to associate themselves with people who will support them in order to achieve their goals as surrounding themselves with people who do not support them can bring their spirits down and fail to finish whatever they would have endeavoured to do. Although she went to night school in order to get tuition, for Littah, her children became her "extra lesson teachers". Alternative ways of learning, like night school and distance education can make it possible for women to get education as they will have time to continue with their lives with little interruption. Littah Hodzi did not stop at O-Level but went on to do a Diploma in Personnel Management and another Diploma in Industrial Labour Studies through distance education. Littah Hodzi says she is not going to stop until she gets to university. She had enrolled at one time but had to drop out for reasons beyond her control. Obviously, one of the reasons could have been that she failed to make time for school, since she is employed full- time. What I do not understand with our higher institutions is that an old woman like her (Littah Hodzi) is required to enrol for a three-year degree and sit in class with someone who has just finished her A-Level. This is disrespect by the education system to mothers who have nurtured the nation in order for it to be "educated". What about the knowledge, wisdom, her experience of going to "school" while at the same time raising eight children, cooking, cleaning the house and also going to work outside the home? Is that not a remarkable achievement? Of her eight children, seven of them have degrees and diplomas, and when you talk to them they say that there were inspired by their mother. Is she not a professor? Why throw away the education, wisdom from our mothers, because we want to cling to the male-structured education system? It is the men mothers have raised who, when they are heading these institutions, craft laws which make it difficult for women to be part of. The structuring of our education system is aimed at destroying matriarchal structures by denying women public space, which they can access through high education institutions. Zimbabwe has remained a matriarchal society socially because women still teach in the home, but it has not been able to be a matriarchal society politically because of how women are not part of the important structures that run the country, like the education system. Are we going to deprive ourselves the knowledge that our mothers have because we look at them as not "educated"? This woman is way above the so-called "educated", in terms of knowledge, wisdom and education. Instead she should be teaching in the departments that have to do with her experience or if there are no departments to do with what she has done, they should be created. She and other women should go straight to a masters and on an MA research programme and impart their knowledge through writing a thesis, which will be deposited at the university. They should also be encouraged to do a PhD, which is basically research and writing, and be given a doctorate. This is not affirmative action, nowhere near it, this is what I call "Mothers Taking Back Their Place in Society to Educate and Pass on Knowledge". Their lives are enough research. The wealth of information these women have should benefit the nation through such programmes and also earning them some degrees. To enrol this woman for a three-year bachelor's degree seems disrespectful and demoting them from being educators and mothers of our country who have given life to the nation. While the mothers are at these higher institutions of learning they will pass on knowledge and also acquire knowledge, it should be a two-way process and by so doing they will feel their worth in society. Evangelista Mberi explains education as a basket which includes a whole lot of things, including kukuya dovi (how to make peanut butter from peanuts using a grinding stone). "If you are taught kukuya dovi, then you have been educated in that discipline, that is what education is all about." Our mothers have a basket full of education and knowledge that is waiting to be given away, but they are afraid to "educate" the "educated". The education system should be user-friendly and bring out knowledge from people instead of suppressing it. Be the first to Write a Comment! Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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