Customer Reviews

70 Not Out: The Biography of Sir Michael Caine

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I thought this book was especially good for letting us know the real Michael Caine - his East London background, his dogged determination to succeed and his progression towards becoming an icon in the movie industry. The revelation about his unknown long lost brother was a surprise. Overall well worth reading.

Oh.... (yawn).... a biography of Michael Caine, hmm? Instead of remembering him for his films or even for this questionable biography -- and due strictly to Caine's own very telling choices -- we now remember Michael Caine for far & away the most revealing work of his entire career. To wit: besides its superb 2-hour documentaries on the most important actors & artists in film history, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) also inserts 5-minute mini-salutes to some of these same Greats in between TCM's various movie broadcasts each week. And several years ago, for some odd reason TCM chose Michael Caine to narrate its latest 5 minute mini-salute to Cary Grant: Grant, the greatest film actor of the 20th Century, as even the most stringent critics now agree. Yet for 5 painfully long minutes Michael Caine salutes ONLY Michael Caine, not Cary Grant -- & indeed, even repeatedly emphasizes his adamant opinion that Cary Grant is entirely forgettable when compared to the likes of Caine! The astonishing egomania of this pathetic act is so appalling that in 2007 TCM finally axed it entirely and, in creating a new mini-salute to Grant, found another star far more famous than Caine who was also -- refreshingly -- a true gentleman rather than one in name only; & thus who readily demonstrated he knew how to remember someone other than himself. Alas, reading William Hall's biography of "Sir" Michael Caine does nothing other than confirm the very same self-obsession of this empty man. Hence just like too many of Caine's movies, this tale's a complete waste of time.