Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Ghost That Will Never Quit

The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear by Nat Segaloff

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CBR 15 Bingo – Picture This: This book is all about the visual medium of cinema and television, discussing the Exorcist franchise from many perspectives. The Exorcist is at first glance the story of a mother desperate to save her daughter from evils beyond her reckoning, but in the fifty years since it was first released it had gone on to become a beloved, long-running franchise rife with controversy. I have never actually seen The Exorcist. Of course I know the movie and how iconic it is, […]

Violating the Status Quo

Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema by Anne Helen Petersen

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CBR 15 Bingo – Dwelling: All the people discussed in this book work and live in Hollywood – both town and concept – which for better or for worse casts a long shadow across their lives. Hollywood has always banked on its stars and their stories as a promotional tool, so heavily that when actors openly diverge from their public personas it often causes backlash among the public. Especially in the first half-century of Hollywood, stars were marketed with particular stories and personas, often as […]

“Is Tommy Lee Jones 20 or 100 in this movie?”

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West

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Official book description: New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle’s alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy West returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa–who is a lion–to look out for their best interests? Why […]

I still wish we’d have done this one for CannonBookClub.

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This book was an alternative pick for the non-fiction (Hollywood history-centric) #CannonBookClub, and it was my pick. I saw it and I knew I had to read it ASAP, even if it didn’t end up winning the vote (it didn’t; that honor, of course, went to Life Moves Pretty Fast, which I haven’t read yet as of writing this review). I’d actually never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s before a couple of weeks ago, though I’m familiar with its legacy, both positive and negative. (Positive: Audrey […]

Imagine Russia Kidnapped Brangelina to Make Putin Propaganda

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Remember the hissy fit North Korea pitched over Seth Rogan’s cinematic turd fest The Interview? From their reaction, you’d think the famously repressive country had something against the silver screen. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth. After Kim Jong-il died in 2011 (he was the one in jumpsuits) it came out that the former Dear Leader was a huge movie buff, with a dedicated smuggling system implemented just so he could watch western cinema. In his twenties, he was appointed […]



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