REVIEW:Magic and Madness from the Movies

[Mike Gange]

This is a re-posting. You can find many more of Mike's reviews on books about media at Frank Baker's Website:    http://www.frankwbaker.com/mikes_af.htm

 

-0-

 

Magic and Madness from the Movies

Review by Mike Gange

The Top 10 of Film
by Russell Ash
Dk Publishing, $19.00, 208 pages

-and-

All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards
by Emanuel Levy
Continuum, $29.95, 400 pages

Movies have to be the ultimate paradox. They are bigger than life, thanks to their giant sized screen presentations, their cast (and crew) of thousands and their blockbuster budgets, but are really captured on celluloid, which is thinner than a credit card. They transport us to some magical time and place far away, but we never leave the room. They can make us cry and they can make us laugh, sometimes within the same scene. We tend to adore or deplore the actors, but we often ignore the directors. Sometimes when we want to be alone, we willingly pay money to go into a roomful of strangers, to experience someone else’s story. We hold our favorite fictions in our hearts forever, as if they were a truism from which we should learn life’s lessons. And when the Oscar nominees are announced, even those who rarely go to the movies willingly chime into any discussion about who deserves to win the Academy Awards.

"We tend to adore or deplore the actors, but we often ignore the directors."

As we approach the Academy Awards – The Oscars as they are called – two books will help us understand the madness and the magic that surrounds the popular ceremonies. Russell Ash’s The Top 10 of Film will help provoke further discussions and end arguments about the movies. Every year for the past 15 years, Ash has released a book which includes lists of the top ten items for the year. This book, The Top 10 of Film, came about as he took one of the most popular sections from his ongoing yearly efforts and turned it into a whole separate publication.

The Top 10 of Film is 208 pages of fun, packed into list after list after list of movie rankings. Some of the details Ash has found include these tidbits: of all countries, the U.S. has the highest spending on movies, on average, about $14 million, but India produces the most films, at nearly 900 annually. Ash’s The Top 10 of Film includes chapters with such titles as "All Time Money Makers," "Top Films of the Decades," "Stars of the Year," "Directors and Writers," "Animations," and "Awards." As well as the long list of Oscar winners beginning in the late 1920's, the "Awards" chapter includes lists of those films which have been winners at the Cannes Film Festival, The Golden Globes, The Top U.K. Awards, The Director’s Guild of America, and the European Awards. Part of the fun of this chapter includes recognition for the worst films of any year since the 1950's, as cited by the Harvard Lampoon and the Golden Raspberries Worst of the Year.

Clearly, there are other awards in the world of cinematography, but generally these tend to get overshadowed by the Oscars, the King of all those movie awards – or any entertainment awards, for that matter. Emanuel Levy, the chief film critic for the magazine Screen International and the author of seven books about the movies, tells us everything we could ever want to know about the annual award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards, Levy details how the Oscar is the most prestigious award in the world of entertainment. He writes, "The Oscar goes beyond the film world – it enjoys an extraordinary preeminence in the entertainment world and American culture at large. The Oscar’s prestige and visibility surpass those of other showbiz awards, such as the Tony, the top award in the Broadway theater, the Emmy, which honors televison achievements, and the Grammy, the most prestigious award in the recording industry."

Levy’s book is organized into more than 20 thoughtful essays. He explores topics such as "The Importance of being Eccentric," "The Oscar as Popularity Contest," "Can the Oscar be Bought?" and "The Oscars, Hollywood, and American Culture." Part of Levy’s credibility comes from his writing about movies for more than 25 years, while another part comes from his having taught about popular culture at several colleges and universities in Los Angeles and in New York. Levy even thanks his students for contributing to his evolution as scholar and commentator by challenging his ideas about film and popular culture.

While Levy casts a light on the illustriousness of Oscar, he sometimes also adds to the mystique surrounding the 13 inch, 8 pound statuette. For example, he relates how three different people claim to have originated the name "Oscar." He says actress Bette Davis takes credit for it, saying she named it was for her then-husband Harman Oscar Nelson, while Academy Awards long time librarian Margaret Herrick says she called it Oscar after her uncle, and journalist Sydney Skolsky says he coined the name because he was tired of calling it just a statuette.

While that golden statuette may be only slightly bigger than a quart of milk, in its seven and a half decades, it has become more important than the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup or the World Series, because it is not about the competition. Oscar has come to symbolize the essence of the American Dream.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.