Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever 2008 (Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever Series) [Paperback]

Jim Craddock (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 13, 2007

With 27,000 on-the-money reviews between its covers, the 2008 VIDEOHOUND lives up to its reputation for putting out the movie review guide fans desire. Always popular with 9 Indexes: Videos A-Z; Category Index; Kibbles & Series Index; Awards Index; Cast Index; Director Index; Writer Index; Cinematographer Index; And Composer Index

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As short a time ago as 1994, Leonard Maltin's movie guide could boast of "more than 19,000 entries, with 300 new titles!" But with 500-plus movies jostling into theaters every year, the pocket-size, curl-up-with-it film guide has become a relic. Nowadays, film books are faintly scholarly word-hoards with three OED-style columns, a trade-size format, and a heft that calls for your sitting pants. Videohound's 1,700-page edition sasses the new millennium ("Covering 1,000 years of Movie Making Magic!" the cover says), but its girth heralds the day when all such guides will be swallowed up by some vast digital database. Until then, there's this bright book, with its uncalculated number (a hasty guess would be 26,000) of reviews of movies on video, Laserdisc, DVD, and TV, and its massive cross-listings by star, director, writer, and cinematographer (cinematographer!). Retailing itself as an irreverent tour for movie lovers, the book has surprising range, with an equal appetite for difficult, small, and foreign films and Hollywood fare. Some inconsistencies? Yep, and that's what makes guides like this fun. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is hailed as a "masterpiece" and rewarded an admiring four bones (out of four), while the superbly Heideggerian Wings of Desire, also a "masterpiece," is equivocated to three and a half. The woof-worthy The Wedding Singer gets the same two and a half bones that they give Wes Anderson's estimably giggly debut, Bottle Rocket. Terry Zwigoff's lovely Crumb is M.I.A., and there's a tendency to eschew analysis for plot summary, but Videohound has encyclopedic breadth and does the undeclared job it sets out to accomplish: entertain, inform, and give readers a giant list of movies to watch next year. --Lyall Bush --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

If you're going to purchase one video guide for your home or library, this is it. Reviewing 24,000 films, GMR 2000 is certainly one of the largest and definitely the most irreverent of the paperback guides published annually (e.g., Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide). The concise but pithy reviews are arranged alphabetically, with each entry noting format availability (tape, DVD), principal cast and crew, MPAA rating, awards, and alternate titles. But it is the inclusion of ten separate indexes, including casts, crews, web sites, and the hysterical "Category Index," that push this work to Number One. For lengthier but fewer reviews, one should turn to Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2000 (Andrews McMeel, 1999) or Video Companion 1998 (Andrews McMeel, 1997). Highly recommended for all academic and public libraries.
-Anthony J. Adam, Prairie View A&M Univ. Lib., TX
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 701 pages
• Publisher: Gale Group (July 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787689815
• ISBN-13: 978-0787689810
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #923,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly comprehensive, April 22, 2001

By 

"ci_vi" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Video Hounds Golden Movie Retriever (Paperback)

I work as a clerk in a video store, and plan on entering film school. I am often asked to find movies based on the slimmest of details. They range from "a two year old movie with Al Pacino" to "that movie who had the guy from that movie that was nominated for best picture last year". While sometimes I'm able to decipher my customer's meaning, I am often lost. This book has essentially eliminated that problem.

I have never seen a video guide as cross-referenced or as complete as this one. You can use title, subject, actor, director, cinametographer, composer, award winning (you can look to see what movie won the academy award for best song in 1935 or the independent spirit award for first feature in 1987), and then you can find a description and a review. After searching half a dozen of these types of books, I found the 2000 version of the VideoHound - and then ordered the 2001 version that night. I had been rating these references by completeness, when I found Frank Whaley (star of independent movie Swimming with Sharks and minor character in Pulp Fiction) in the actor directory - I knew I had my book.

The only reason that I didn't give this book a five-star review is due to personal preference. I didn't agree with many of their reviews. Somewhat unfair, I realize, but a problem for me nonetheless.

This is perhaps the necessary guide for any movie lover. I know that I'm taking it to my store.

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best of show, April 20, 2001

By 

Alejandra Vernon "artist & illustrator" (Long Beach, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Video Hounds Golden Movie Retriever (Paperback)

At 1,812 pages, this is a very heavy book, and absolutely has no equal as a video guide. If you like to turn on the TV and play "guess the movie", you'll find it invaluable.

Though I don't always agree with the reviews, the 1030 pages of A-Z video descriptions are very complete, it includes many foreign films, and has a healthy sense of humor throughout the entire tome. The ratings are in "dog talk", ranging from "4 BONES" for the likes of "Casablanca", to "WOOF !" for Showgirls.

If you like trivia and lists, this is list heaven. It has an "Alternate Title" list, a "Category" list, "Kibbles & Series", "Awards" index, and the most complete cast, director, writer, cinematographer, and composer indexes you can get.

With each new issue, extras are added, so this is a good one to update at least every other year, besides...your copy will be worn out by then...

...and a meaty butcher's bone to editor Jim Craddock and this "Cunning Canine Production" for giving us a book I can't live without !

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most comprehensive and fun movie/video guide around., December 11, 1999

By 

Robert Morgan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever 2000 (Paperback)

I've been plunking down... $ a year for 5 years now for the annual VideoHound guide, and I'm quite happy I've done so. No one video guide is complete, but VH comes the closest, reviewing not only the a-list movies, but many of the b-to-z grade movies too. The reviews are concise and usually informative (and often sarcastic), and I tend to agree with most of the ratings given. The VH also attempts to make available format information beyond the standard VHS and DVD- you can look up whether a movie was released on 8-mm videocassette, laserdisc, CD-i, and Beta, as well. However, the information on these alternate formats is quite scanty- probably half of the movies in my laserdisc collection are listed as being VHS or VHS/Beta only.

The VH doesn't stop where other movie guides do- almost half of the book consists of indexes- some incredibly useful, some not. The star and director indexes are alone worth the price of the book- my only complaint is that the star index only lists people with several movies under their belt. Stars who have appeared in only one or two movies don't show up- but perhaps an index listing them would be prohibitively large. The category index (want movies about waitresses or poetry?) is fun, but most of the listings are merely representative, rather than comprehensive. The VH contains quite a few more indexes, reflecting movie awards, cinematographers, and more.

I wish the book contained alternate titles alphabetically in the body of the movie index (with a reference to the title the movie is reviewed under.) This would obviate the need for the alternate title index, and would make searching for movies a lot more intuitive. I also have quibbles with some of the movie reviews and ratings, but this is a given in any video guide. These complaints are minor, however- the VideoHound fills the role of video guide incredibly well, better than any other book I've ever tried.