Books by David Thomson and Complete Book Reviews

David Thomson, Author . Knopf $39.95 (1007p) ISBN 978-0-307-26461-9
Film critic Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film ) gives cinephiles and film novices alike a comprehensive yet personal list of 1,000 must-see films. Arranged alphabetically—a chronological index is included—Thomson's...
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David Thomson. Yale Univ., $25 (232p) ISBN 978-0-300-19760-0
Film critic and historian Thomson (Television: A Biography) returns with a masterful look at one of early Hollywood’s preeminent families and the studio they built on their name. This story of Sam, Albert, Harry, and Jack Warner is the latest in...
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David Thomson, Author . Knopf $35 (976p) ISBN 978-0-375-41128-1
When this book was first published in 1975, it ignited arguments among many film buffs who disagreed with London-born critic Thomson's strongly opinionated summations. This latest upgrade—which includes 300 new entries—promises to do
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David Thomson, Author . Knopf $27.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-375-40016-2
The "whole equation," a phrase borrowed from F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Hollywood novel, The Last Tycoon , refers to the balancing of financial acumen, artistic aspiration and sociological savvy that movie moguls needed to keep...
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David Thomson, Author . Knopf $23.95 (214p) ISBN 978-0-375-41213-4
Film historian and novelist Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film ; Suspects ) looks back at his childhood and teen years, beginning with hazy memories of frosty mornings, air-raid shelters in wartime London, fear of bombs and the...
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David Thomson, Author Vintage Books USA $16 (480p) ISBN 978-0-679-77283-5
Prowling the darkened theaters and sun-scorched highways, gilded estates, sets and backdrops of Tinseltown, Esquire film columnist Thomson delivers an offbeat and often trenchant spin on the culture of Hollywood. This collection of essays and...
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David Thomson, Author Alfred A. Knopf $30 (0p) ISBN 978-0-679-41834-4
Welles is certainly enjoying a boom; soon after the first volume of Simon Callow's Orson Welles (Forecasts, Nov. 20, 1995) comes this study by the author of The Life of David O. Selznick and A Biographical Dictionary of Film. Thomson does not...
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David Thomson, Author Alfred A. Knopf $19.95 (333p) ISBN 978-0-394-55622-2
Thomson's rangy metafictional collage blends figures from history and legend as well as characters from Hollywood films in an endlessly inventive cinematic meditation on the American West. Two characters dominate the novel's foreground: a Georgia O'K
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David Thomson, Author Alfred A. Knopf $35 (792p) ISBN 978-0-394-56833-1
David Selznick (1902-1965) was 20 when his father, a high-rolling silent film producer/distributor, went bankrupt. Bent on fame, wealth and publicity, the precocious son who had served his domineering father as a sorcerer's apprentice would actually
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David Thomson, Author Alfred A. Knopf $25 (288p) ISBN 978-0-679-45115-0
Prowling the darkened theaters and sun-scorched highways, gilded estates, sets and backdrops of Tinseltown, Esquire film columnist Thomson delivers an offbeat and often trenchant spin on the culture of Hollywood. This collection of essays and...
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David Thomson, Author Alfred A. Knopf $27.5 (352p) ISBN 978-0-679-45486-1
It may come as a shock to learn that there's more to Nevada than Reno and Las Vegas. As Thomson's compulsive meanderings through the Sagebrush State make clear, there's a whole other Nevada out there--even if it's mostly just empty space. Not unlike
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David Thomson, Author, Pat Thomson, Author Doubleday Books $17.95 (399p) ISBN 978-0-385-18707-7
In this speculative biography, film critic and novelist Thomson (Suspects, etc.) relates the movies in which Beatty has acted or produced to periods in his personal life. The narrative is somewhat fragmented by rhetorical questions and lengthy...
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Dave Thomson, Author, David Thomson, Author Vintage Books USA $9.95 (479p) ISBN 978-0-394-75756-8
In this speculative biography, film critic and novelist Thomson (Suspects) analyzes Beatty's work perceptively, but relies largely on quotes from published interviews when it comes to defining the man himself. The Beatty story is oddly alternated,...
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David Thomson, Author, Kobal Collection, Photographer DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley) $50 (640p) ISBN 978-0-7894-7792-7
For a pictorial stroll down Hollywood's memory lane, cinema enthusiasts will love Hollywood: A Celebration, by David Thomson (Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick), a contributor to the New Republic, the New York Times and other publications....
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David Thomson, Author . Knopf $24.95 (284p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4273-9
Thomson's love letter to Kidman is less a biography than a long and winding meditation on moviemaking and starmaking. Thomson attempts to chronicle the actress's personal life based on her statements to the media, her choice of roles and an...
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David Thomson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 (528p) ISBN 978-0-374-19189-4
From 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies to the latest cable-TV and video game offerings, this fascinating history of movies and their spinoffs celebrates and indicts the flickering image that beguiles. Film critic and...
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David Thomson. Thames & Hudson Inc., $39.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-500-51641-6
When we think about the movies we love or even the ones we hate, specific moments come to mind. Whether we recall a scene or an image or certain dialogue, these moments define the film in our recollection. Prolific film-critic Thomson's (The Big...
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David Thomson. Thames & Hudson, $34.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-500-51916-5
Prolific film critic and historian Thomson (How to Watch a Movie) ambitiously endeavors to map the history of television in this illustrated volume, but for those who don’t admire the author’s sauntering style, the results will be less than...
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David Thomson. Knopf, $28.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-101-94699-2
Part personal moviegoing memoir, part deeply informed film history, this allusively titled study from critic Thomson (Television: A Biography) is concerned with “beauty on screen, desire in our heads, and the alchemy they make in the dark.”...
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David Thomson. Yale Univ., $26 (240p) ISBN 978-0-300-22001-8
Film critic Thomson devotes an unsatisfying treatise to the theme of cinematic homicide and the guilty pleasures that audiences derive from it. He ponders issues of responsibility tied to the collective infatuation with fictional murder—are...
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David Thomson. Knopf, $27.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-593-31815-7
Film critic Thomson (The Big Screen) returns in this scattershot meditation on some of the movie business’s most famous directors. In 14 essays, the author covers such directors as the “artful careerist” Fritz Lang, “intellectually brilliant” Jean-Lu
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David Thomson. Yale Univ, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-0-300-24694-0
Film Scholar Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) explores disasters both cinematic and actual in this erudite if uneven collection. The title alludes to the 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour, which Thomson argues exemplifies his thesis...
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David Thomson. Harper, $35 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-304141-7
In this unfocused if erudite study, film historian Thomson (Disaster Mon Amour) explores “how the technology of film as a medium and its narrative constructs drove and directed our understanding of war.” He contends that popular war films often...
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David Thomson. Yale Univ, $28 (280p) ISBN 978-0-300-26100-4
Film critic Thomson (The Fatal Alliance) serves up an insightful if meandering meditation “about long-form shows on television, on streaming and bingeing, and what that flow has done to us.” Offering a nuanced study of how viewers engage with TV, he
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ARTICLES
  • On Memory and Movies: PW Talks with David Thomson
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