Halliwells Film & Video Guide 1998 Edition

The Classic Guide to More than 23,000 Films

For over twenty years, Halliwell's Film and Video Guide has provided the most comprehensive information available on your favorite films--from the classics of the silver screen to the latest blockbusters, and everything in between. Each entry in this completely revised and expanded edition tells you everything you'd ever want to know about a movie, Including:

Plot synopses and critical evaluations

Cast members, writers, directors, and producers

Quotes from contemporary reviews, alternative titles, and original publicity tags

Video cassette, laser disc, and DVD availability

Easy-to-interpret icons denoting suitable for family viewing, Academy Award winners and nominees, soundtrack availability, computer-colorized versions, and video format compatibility


Plus, lists of four-star and three-star films by title and year, and a list of all the Academy Award winners for best picture and director, best actor and, best supporting actor and actress, and best original and adapted screenplays.
Upholding the outstanding tradition of Leslie Halliwell, editor John Walker delivers the breadth, detail, succinctness, knowledge, and wit that have always been the hallmarks of Halliwell's.

A standard directory of actors, directors, and film technicians, this book has since been superseded by more detailed one-volume guides such as Ephraim Katz's The Film Encyclopedia. Still, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion--now in its 12th edition--continues to be updated and contains a number of special features the competition doesn't have. Most notable are its citations of quips by famous actors and directors (Errol Flynn: "My difficulty is trying to reconcile my gross habits with my net income"; Alfred Hitchcock: "The cinema is not a slice of life, it's a piece of cake"); its discussion of characters, events, and motifs as they play out in film history (e.g. Tarzan, The Gunfight at the OK Corral, "custard pies"); and its bestowing of special awards to the men and women who have produced significant work in the movies. The volume's appendices, which include guides to further reading, a brief history of the cinema, critical "best films" lists, complete notations of film festival prizes, and every Academy Award given through 1995 make it a terrific source of information.