Friday, March 04, 2005
 
Book Report: The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time by Ty Burr (1999)

This book represents another picture book I inherited from my aunt. Not that it meant much to her; she probably bought it at a yard sale to sell on eBay, and I might well have been at the yard sale with her, egging her on.

It's a compendium of 100 of the best movies from 1894-1994, as determined by Entertainment Weekly and Ty Burr. It contains the requisite mixture of classics and foreign films. Man, you know, the last foreign film I saw was El Mariachi, and prior to that it's limited to Jackie Chan and kung fu flicks. I didn't even see Crouching Estrogen, Hidden Misandry even though my wise and benevolent mother-in-law recommended it.

But books of this stripe are good browsing material, even if you're not a tabloid fan or if you don't care for anything lighter than The Atlantic Monthly for your magazine reading. Books like this are quick espresso shots of trivia information, information I hope to put to use at the next North Side Mindflayers Trivia Night victory.

Plus, if you're a trivia smart aleck like me, you'll look for flaws in the book. Like that the cover contains a still from Rebel without a Cause, which didn't make the book. Or that the still of Han Solo confronting Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars was not from the original, but from the 25th anniversary re-release (in 1997, which was beyond the five year cutoff of the book).

So it's a good enough book, a quick one-night flip through, and it won't kill as many brain cells as, say, watching the French language liberated sexuality movies.


 
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."