Literature
Book Review – I was Interrupted
by Parker Mott on Apr.24, 2012, under Literature
The cover to Nicholas Ray's autobiography of-a-sort "I was Interrupted".
Author: Nicholas Ray
(243 pages, 1993)
Nicholas Ray’s part-autobiography, part-workshop I was Interrupted is an eye-full of guidelines for the aspiring artist nicely poised by Ray’s modest, informal prose. Although Ray is instructive, his lessons are not rigid. He often reminds the reader: “don’t take anything I say for granted. Test everything out” (70).
I was Interrupted,thus, poses no unbendable formula or structure to be an “artist” or “master”. Ray, in great detail, presents a personal method simply as a starting avenue to explore and prepare us, the reader, to find our own – what he calls “moments of exposure” (71). (continue reading…)
Book Review: This is Orson Welles
by Parker Mott on Mar.11, 2012, under Literature
"This is Orson Welles". Or is it?
Author: Peter Bogdanovich
(549 pages, 1998)
The legends of Orson Welles, the renowned director of Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, mostly plague rather than applaud him. Many people and critics assume him to be egotistical, smug, micromanaging, and self-indulgent. Peter Bogdanovich’s This is Orson Welles, however, strives to “correct the false impressions about nearly everything that had happened in [Welles’s] life and career” (xiv). But this collection of interviews becomes not just a portrait of Orson’s personality, but also one of a deep, everlasting friendship between him and Bogdanovich. (continue reading…)
