Customer Reviews

The Film Snob*s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Filmological Knowledge

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Oh yes, I'm one of those "insufferable" chaps this book takes great aim at. And I enjoyed every moment of it. This is a very amusing little book that manages to serve as a surprisingly decent introduction into the names, faces and works that your basic so called "film snob" holds sacred. At the same time, it's also a painfully funny jab at the admittedly elitist world the "film snob" inhabits. The book was so damn accurate that it sometimes hit too close to home.

If you've ever found yourself driving for over two hours to catch that acclaimed film everyone at Cannes was raving about. If the words "The Criterion Collection" causes your pulse to race with excitement. If you've suddenly found yourself friendless because your buddies got sick and tired of you raving about the latest and greatest Cronenberg film. Or if you find yourself in online arguments about why 'French Connection II' is the better film than the original, then this book is for you.

If you have a friend who is all of the above and who forces you to sit "in the third row" on the left when he drags you to a film, this book is the perfect tool that you can use to keep up with him. Or bring him back down to Earth! A nifty little book.

Oh, and by the way Messers Kamp and Levi, you guys are correct. 'Office Space' really does suck!!!

If you've ever watched Meshes of the Afternoon at Anthology Film Archives on an August day when the air conditioning was broken...or laughed knowingly at Joan Crawford's and Mercedes McCambridge's performances in Johnny Guitar...or refrained from laughing when Annie Lennox inexplicably began warbling "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" during that awful Derek Jarman movie, well, this book is for you. Or maybe it's not-it might hit a little too close to home.

But for everyone else it's really, really funny. Highly recommended. I especially like the guide to determining whether you're watching a "movie" or a "film."

And yes, I do know that the phrase "awful Derek Jarman movie" is oxymoronic.

A true snob, of course, will crack the spine with an eager eye for chinks in the armor. But quit hatin' and start congratulatin' -- this Dictionary is too well-crafted, funny, and steeped in film culture to be dismissed.

Its real significance, though, is the new breed of snob that it represents -- one that can name-drop Cahiers du Cinema and then laugh at its own pretense; one that's at ease with Wire Fu and Bergman both; one that's comfortable enough with its gut reaction to say "Dude, Tarkovsky's kinda boring." Which means you'll get a heavy dose of the canon, along with some serious arcana about the marginalized weirdness that'll wind up in the canon, one day, if these guys have their way.

This compact book is quite amusing for anyone who wants to fancy oneself a cinema aficionado. It takes a certain obsessive nature to collect the inconsequential facts and nurture the exclusionary opinions necessary to be a genuine Film Snob, and Vanity Fair writer David Kamp (author of The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation), along with fellow culture maven Lawrence Levi, do a nifty job within the eminently readable format of a 114-page glossary. They show off a particular gift for smarmy but funny and observant blurbs, for example, in their brief description of 1950's actress-turned-director Ida Lupino, they summarize, "A rare female godhead for the generally estrophobic Snob community". The Criterion Collection is aptly described as an "achingly tasteful video-reissue company that...has found success by recycling old movies as lavish, extras-laden packages for deep-pocketed connoisseurs."

The co-authors also provide guidance on how best to convey the patronizing tone essential to fortify your standing as a Film Snob, for instance, you can explain to your less cinematically evolved friends that "deep focus" is the "fetishized cinematographic technique that enables all the action in a shot, from the foreground to the deep background, to remain sharply focused. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's graceful use of deep focus recalls the work of Yasujiro Ozu, non?" The book opens with a brief introduction as to what makes for a Film Snob, the most stellar example being Quentin Tarantino, who went from geeky video-store clerk to world-renowned filmmaker due to his passion for such details, and most importantly, what separates them from the non-Snobs who worship at the altar of Fellini and Bergman, neither of whom show up as entries in this book.

Make no mistake that this is not a ringer for the nearly 1,000-page resource film historian David Thomson has spent most of his career gathering, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, nor anything Halliwell's has produced over the years. This is just fun stuff with special feature pages included such as "A Guide to Snob Nomenclature ("Marty", never "Martin" Scorsese), the Snob Cheat Sheet for Confusing Similarities (Howard Hawks vs. Henry Hathaway, Britt Ekland vs. Elke Sommer), and Ten Lost Masterpieces (including Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, which subsequent to the book's publishing, has finally become available on DVD...on the Criterion Collection!). It's a quick read in order to impress your friends...or at least alienate them.

While the Rock Snob book was both an interesting encyclopedia and a witty critique of a sub-culture, this just seems like the employees' manual from a slightly above-average video store. It doesn't seem to get the cineastes, the gorehounds, or the fan-boys in it's scope. It just seems a MEDITATION ON the slightly off-beat with a nod toward the classic.

It's probably this year's gift of choice for people you don't want to drop $30 on a Criterion DVD for. But they won't find it amusing.

It's funny 'cause it's true. Tom Servo owns two copies in case one gets lost. If you were born before 1970, I need only say, This Was Written By Two Guys From Spy Magazine. What are you waiting for? Also includes helpful tips on matters such as distinguishing Sydney Pollack from Sidney Lumet, which used to be a problem for me, but no more!

If you like classical cinema, get this funny and intelligent book...
Theoretical definitions are hillarious (Apparatus), biographical entries are clever and sometimes brilliant, the view of "film culture" very insightful (film circles with 19-year olds who have already seen every film, fans with penile defficiencies who like violent films...).

This is a good present for the coming holidays if you have a film buff for a friend or relative (AND it's not expensive...).

A fun, fun, fun flip-through for the cinephillically addicted.

Lives up to its name! No, not offputtingly snobbish. Just in its deep knowledge. Not some glossy rag posing as film experts with obvious familiar trivia.

This is the film book with cred!

Let's stop the snob right here. ENOUGH. I just want to enjoy art without all the pretense of being a so-called insider. The authors are nobodies. They want to be belong to some exclusive club they are not part of. The authors don't appreciate film, they merely compile meaningless trivia, and we are suppossed to feel honored to be part of their insipid pursuit. Sadly, it is compulisvely readable, but I had a dirty hollow feeling afterward. Porn for geeks.

Excellent book. I picked this up because I dug the previous "Rock Snob" book, and it reminded me of this one dude with a Honda Civic who comes into the AutoZone every now and then. We like to pop DVDs into the TV at the customer/desk area. Otherwise, we'd go nuts with customers turning the dial to Judge Judy, Montel or reruns of The Nanny. Anyway, this guy is sitting around while the guys are changing the timing belt on his Civic (they're built like a tank, but Civics can get temperamental if you don't replace the timing belt every 20,000 miles or thereabouts). We're playing True Romance for about the 20th time, and he gives us a tip that we should really check out The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three since it's like this huge influence on Tarantino. Sure enough, it rocks hard. When Mr. Civic comes back a couple of months later for his regular oil change, we thank him, and he turns us on to City On Fire. Another awesome flick, even though we couldn't really understand any of the plot, what with all the Chinese dialogue.

So the next time he comes in with the Civic, we ask him for a list of recommendations. Wes, our transmission expert, picks up a couple of the flicks on his list, and we're psyched to put in the first one, The Seventh Seal. WTF? We had no idea what was going on for the entire movie. A total dud. Next, we tried out The Bicycle Thief. The acting's pretty good, but the production values were really bad, and it looks like they didn't spend more than $1,000 on the whole budget. A real downer of a movie. After that, we just popped in Hunt For Red October and decided to stick with what we know.

Anyway, this book was really funny. Even if I didn't know about most of the movies or people the authors were talking about, I do feel like I know Mr. Civic pretty well.