Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! ANTIQUES OF DEATH!!!!!, February 27, 2001
You will really appreciate this book after you've read through it two or three times. After that, you'll find yourself watching a movie and yelling out, "fruit cart!" or "antiques of death!" thereby cracking yourself up, and irritating those around you who haven't been blessed with this book. :) The best thing to do is this: buy it, make your friends buy it, and spend some time reading your favorites out loud to each other. Then the more movies you watch, the more cliches you'll start spotting, and even bad movies will be more entertaining.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ebert hilariously skewers movie conventions, June 30, 1998
By A Customer
A very funny book, compiled by critic Ebert with the help of fans, this is the definitive list of movie cliches, everything from "Ali McGraw Disease" (the one where the actress is perfectly coifed and made up for her touching deathbed scene to the famous: "FRUIT CART!" -- an expletive used by knowledgeable film buffs during any chase scene involving a foreign or ethnic locale, reflecting their certainty that a fruit cart will be overturned during the chase, and an angry peddler will run into the middle of the street to shake his fist at the hero's departing vehicle. My favorite is the description of the inevitable scene where the bad guy stops in the middle of his elaborate plan to kill the good guy to explain helpfully his even more elaborate plans to rule the world. Lots of fun, and you'll never look at a movie -- or a fruit cart -- the same way again.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most crucial books ever written for filmmakers, March 2, 2002
If you work as a filmmaker or in television, whether as a hobby, your profession or your obssession, YOU NEED THIS BOOK. Screenwriters for both film and TV especially need this, since it deals largely with storytelling cliches, but it also lists visual ones in cinematography, in angles, in casting and in general mise-en-scene that it is absolutely crucial for the director to avoid. This book will make you a better filmmaker just on virtue of being aware of what's been done to death.It's also useful across the board. While it usually rips into the more standardized genres (like slasher flicks or action movies), it also chainsaws such common cliches as "The Pet Homosexual" ("he can talk endlessly about sex, provided he never has any himself", most recent offender: "The Next Best Thing" and "Will and Grace"), "Baked Potato People" (the gentle lunatics in the asylum that show the outside world is crazy; most recent offender: "K-PAX"), and more subtle ones like the Fat Guy rule; if a group of men are planning an escape, the fat one usually can't be trusted. This is a very funny book, but it's also very true, and if we made everybody currently making movies sit down and read the damn thing, we'd have better movies, or at least different cliches. Fun for the armchair film freak, but absolutely crucial for the filmmaker.
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