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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Books / Film This Is a Great Idea for a Series of Books

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 3:26 PM

Screen_shot_2010-06-02_at_12.27.54_PM.png

Partners West says that Soft Skull is about to launch a series of books called Deep Focus. They will do to movies, basically, what the 33 1/3 line of books do for albums: a long-form essay about the making and/or the importance of one work of art. I think this is a spectacular idea for a series of books, especially since the first book in the series will be Jonathan Lethem writing about They Live. (The cover looks great, too.)

David Thompson did something kind of similar recently with the Great Stars series of books about Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and Bette Davis. I can personally attest that the Bogart one, at least, was pretty amazing. I think these sorts of books—thin, focused, attractive—make for a great, intense reading experience; you can put one away in an afternoon and you come away knowing a lot more about one particular subject. I don't read that many magazines these days, but I'd love to walk into a specialized bookstore and find hundreds of these long essay books. They fill the same need as magazines.

Comments (5) RSS

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In the interest of conserving my dwindling shelf space, will I be able to buy them as e-books?

Posted by Fistique on June 2, 2010 at 3:59 PM

This is pretty exciting. I love the 33 1/3 series, through which I've gained a deeper appreciation of albums I already like, and discovered some great insights about albums (and artists) I had passing interest in. Reading about different movies (some I might love, some I might just be curious about) sounds similarly intriguing...

Posted by bookworm on June 2, 2010 at 4:05 PM

Have you seen the Pocket Essentials series? Similar idea from a British publisher about a variety of topics including film:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Esse…

Posted by John Scott Tynes

on June 2, 2010 at 4:55 PM

http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/BFI…

Posted by XenuTakeTheWheel on June 2, 2010 at 6:26 PM

There's also the BFI Film Classics series:
http://us.macmillan.com/series/BFIFilmCl…
"The Manchurian Candidate," by Greil Marcus, is particularly exquisite.

Posted by Space Funk Guru on June 2, 2010 at 9:18 PM