America's Film Legacy, 2009-2010: A Viewer's Guide

New
Paperback
2012
$25.59

This is an authoritative and extraordinary guide to the newest 50 films, chosen by the National Film Registry, from 2009/10. America's Film Legacy, 2009-2010 is a guide to the most significant films ever made in the United States. Unlike opinionated 'Top 100' and arbitrary 'Best of' lists, these are the real thing: groundbreaking films that make up the backbone of American cinema. Each of the 50 newest titles in the National Film Registry is covered in a detailed essay that includes cast, credits, and major awards, as well as screening information and film stills. From well-known movies like The Muppet Movie and Dog Day Afternoon , to more obscure films, like Jezebel and Hot Dogs for Gauguin , Daniel Eagan's beautifully written and updated edition is for anyone who loves American movies and who wants to learn more about them.

Synopsis

This is an authoritative and extraordinary guide to the newest 50 films, chosen by the National Film Registry, from 2009/10. America's Film Legacy, 2009-2010 is a guide to the most significant films ever made in the United States. Unlike opinionated 'Top 100' and arbitrary 'Best of' lists, these are the real thing: groundbreaking films that make up the backbone of American cinema. Each of the 50 newest titles in the National Film Registry is covered in a detailed essay that includes cast, credits, and major awards, as well as screening information and film stills. From well-known movies like The Muppet Movie and Dog Day Afternoon , to more obscure films, like Jezebel and Hot Dogs for Gauguin , Daniel Eagan's beautifully written and updated edition is for anyone who loves American movies and who wants to learn more about them.

$25.59

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Publisher: Continuum Publishing Corporation
Published: 19 Jan 2012
ISBN 10: 1441158693
ISBN 13: 9781441158697

Media Reviews

Rigorous, informative, and very entertaining...invaluable not only for being a compendium of these preserved movies but also for Eagan s writing, which is extensively researched and smartly critical. --Current, the blog of the Criterion Collection
[This book] is an addendum to Eagan s ambitious volume chronicling every title voted onto the National Film Registry since its inception in 1989. This slender paperback covers the fifty newest films to join their ranks during the past two years, and like the overall roster, they truly run the gamut in terms of age, genre, and popularity. Eagan s clear-eyed essays place each film into proper context within the larger picture of American cinema that the Registry seeks to represent, whether dealing with the 1906 actuality short A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire, Leo McCarey s Make Way for Tomorrow, or Sally Cruikshank s nutty animated cartoon Quasi at the Quackadero. --Leonard Maltin
[This book] is an addendum to Eagan's ambitious volume chronicling every title voted onto the National Film Registry since its inception in 1989. This slender paperback covers the fifty newest films to join their ranks during the past two years, and like the overall roster, they truly run the gamut in terms of age, genre, and popularity. Eagan's clear-eyed essays place each film into proper context within the larger picture of American cinema that the Registry seeks to represent, whether dealing with the 1906 actuality short A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire, Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, or Sally Cruikshank's nutty animated cartoon Quasi at the Quackadero. --Leonard Maltin
Rigorous, informative, and very entertaining...invaluable not only for being a compendium of these preserved movies but also for Eagan's writing, which is extensively researched and smartly critical. --Current, the blog of the Criterion Collection
Eagan made a major contribution to film studies with 2009's American Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry--a chronological catalogue of the first 500 selections to be preserved as among the significant films in our motion picture history. This new book of the 50 new films displays all of the merits of Eagan's first effort: each film has a complete cast and credit list along with an entertaining and often provocative essay by Eagan in which the film isn't described in detail but rather is placed in context to show how they may have been inspired by earlier films, how they compare to other movies of their time, and how they may have affected movies to come. Thus Eagan engagingly discusses Newark Athlete, a one-second, 30-frame fragment of a 1891 film by Thomas Edison that laid the groundwork for his later development of the Kinetoscope (and perhaps motion pictures themselves), with the same skill that he brings to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in The West, a 165 minute summation of the Western form; as persuasive a vision of the West as anyone working at that time could deliver. --Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Daniel Eagan has worked for Warner Bros., MGM, and other studios as a researcher and story analyst. He edited HBO's Guide to Movies on Videocassette and Cable TV (HarperCollins) and MGM: When the Lion Roars (Turner Publishing), to which he also contributed articles. He currently writes for The Hollywood Reporter and Film Journal, and lives in New York City.