Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film - Softcover

Turan, Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1610396316 ISBN 13: 9781610396318

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2016

Synopsis

The images and memories that matter most are those that are unshakeable, unforgettable. Kenneth Turan's fifty-four favorite films embrace a century of the world's most satisfying romances and funniest comedies, the most heart-stopping dramas and chilling thrillers.

Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes.

Not to be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdote, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres. From All About Eve to Seven Samurai to Sherlock Jr., these are all timeless films classic and contemporary, familiar and obscure, with big budgets and small each underscoring the truth of director Ingmar Bergman's observation that no form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide, and served as the Times' book review editor. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he is the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. Turan teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. His most recent books include Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told and Never Coming To A Theater Near You. Turan lives in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @KennethTuran.

From Booklist

Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1991 and a regular contributor of reviews to NPR, approaches movies, as did the late Roger Ebert, on their own terms, trying to understand what a filmmaker is trying to do and assessing a movie’s success or failure in light of its maker’s intent. This book isn’t a collection of film reviews per se; it’s a look at Turan’s personal favorites, which range from the easily recognizable (The Godfather, All about Eve, Casablanca, Unforgiven, Vertigo) to the for-­devoted-film-fans-only (The Dybbuk, Seven Men from Now, The Best of Youth). His comments about the movies are always insightful: he calls The Godfather, for example, “excessive but natural, larger than life yet always lifelike,” which nicely encapsulates the film’s dual nature, and his writing is fluid and accessible. Richly deserving of shelf space alongside Ebert’s The Great Movies (2002), Pauline Kael’s For Keeps (1994), and Turan’s own Never Coming to a Theater Near You (2004). --David Pitt

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1610396316
• ISBN 13: 9781610396318
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368