VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever 2001 (Paperback)

by Jim Craddock (Editor)

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
Several capsule movie review sources now appear annually, including Halliwell's Film and Video Guide (HarperCollins), Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide (Plume), and the Blockbuster Entertainment Guide to Movies and Videos (Dell). Comparable in scope, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever stands out by dint of its biting attitude. The latest edition adds 1000 reviews, bringing the total to approximately 22,000. Access is via 13 indexes: by cast, director, writer, and so on. Particularly helpful are the alternative title index and the category list, an acerbic grouping of titles under rubrics like "Post Apocalypse: No more convenience stores." Coverage of foreign films is solid, and the extensive cross references are to be applauded. An awards index and a website guide only increase the reference value. VideoHound's Horror Show is more focused, providing 999 paragraph-length reviews of horror films. Encompassing both silent films and 1990s slasher pictures, it is accompanied by a subset of the indexes found in the larger Golden Movie Retriever. The contents are fleshed out by 50 sidebars highlighting topics along the lines of "The 1950s: The Bugs, 3-D, and the Birth of Hammer." A "Horror Connections" section lists websites, magazines and newsletters, organizations, and books, and photographs enhance the text. Unfortunately, this volume suffers from the inclusion of nontraditional horror films like Apocalypse Now and Trainspotting. While these films are indeed chilling, their inclusion casts doubt on Mayo's entire project. Why, for instance, is Full Metal Jacket left out? Public libraries may nevertheless be interested in both volumes.?Neal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 1998 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: 1812 pages
• Publisher: Gale Group; Revised edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578591201
• ISBN-13: 978-1578591206
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.7 x 2.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,444,374 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 51 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

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.

36 of 36 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 (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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 (Indianapolis, IN USA) - 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.