Natural Selection : Gary Giddins on comedy, film, music, and books / Gary Giddins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Giddins, Gary.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Reviews.

Motion pictures.

Music.

Music--Reviews.

Books--Reviews.

Books.

Genre:

Reviews.

Physical Description:

xxii, 410 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

Summary:

Giddens brings together the best of his previously uncollected essays, including a few written expressly for this volume. Writing with insight, humor, and a famously deft touch, he offers sharp-edged perspectives on such diverse subjects as Federico Fellini, Bob Dylan, and the cartoon version of "Animal Farm."

Contents:

Part 1 Comedy

1 Speechless (Charlie Chaplin / Buster Keaton) 3

2 Hanging Tough (Harold Lloyd) 10

3 There Ain't No Sanity Claus (Groucho Marx and Brothers) 15

4 This Guy Wouldn't Give You the Parsley off His Fish (Jack Benny) 24

5 Cowardly Custard (Bob Hope) 37

6 Idiot Semi-Savant (Jerry Lewis) 46

Part 2 Film

7 Best Picture, 1889 (Edison: The Invention of the Movies) 53

8 Who Was That Masked Man? (Lon Chaney) 57

9 Reviving Ghosts (Olive Thomas / Hindle Wakes) 61

10 The Pulse of the World (Fritz Lang) 64

11 Ways We Weren't (Vitaphone Shorts) 67

12 Naked Truth (Children of Paradise) 71

13 Things That Go Bump (Horror Films) 80

14 A Few Stops on the Way to the Grave (Films Noir) 89

15 Hokum Became Him (William Wyler) 93

16 Primal Fear (Nightmare Alley) 97

17 Tales of Treachery and Loyalty (Jules Dassin / Jacques Becker) 100

18 Incomparable (Greta Garbo) 104

19 Awash in Ambiguity (Marlon Brando) 108

20 Going His Way (Bing Crosby) 111

21 Blond and Beaming (Doris Day) 117

22 The Two Leons (Animal Farm / Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume Two) 121

23 Kong Has Crazed His Mind (Ray Harryhausen) 124

24 All the Screen's a Stage (Jean Renoir) 128

25 Eternal Times Square (Shadows) 132

26 Once upon a Time on the Via Veneto (La Dolce Vita / Divorce Italian Style) 135

27 Charming Imagination (L'eclisse) 139

28 I Spy (The Counterfeit Traitor) 143

29 McCarey Nods (Satan Never Sleeps) 146

30 Across the Pacific (Zero Focus / The Demon) 149

31 "My Life Makes Me Cry" (The Insect Woman) 151

32 The Holland Line (Dutch Movies) 154

33 Still Curious (I Am Curious) 158

34 Broken Promises (The Honeymoon Killers) 162

35 Calm, Cool, and Now Collected (Steve McQueen) 166

36 Rock Heads (Martin Scorsese) 170

37 Real Reality TV (The UP Series) 173

38 Roll Out the Sixties and We'll Have a Wonderful Time (Berkeley in the Sixties / Letter to the Next Generation) 176

39 'Round and Around and Around (Twist) 181

40 Color Him Purple (Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones) 183

41 Call It Anything (Miles Electric) 186

42 Savage Servility (Glory) 188

43 Simplicity Itself (Robert Bresson) 191

44 Pretty Boy (Alain Delon) 194

45 French Doubt (Too Beautiful for You / May Fools) 196

46 Blown Away (A Shock to the System / Pretty Woman / The Hot Spot / White Palace) 200

47 WWII and the Whole Truth (The Big Red One / Devils on the Doorstep / British War Collection) 208

Part 3 Music

48 Mixing Hot Licks with Vanilla (Fats Waller / Glenn Miller) 217

49 Brush Up Your Porter (Cole Porter) 221

50 Long-Playing (Duke Ellington) 225

51 Jazz for the Eyes (The Sound of Jazz / Jazz on a Summer's Day) 232

52 Regrets, They've Had a Few (Sinatra) 236

53 Ambassadors (A Great Day in Harlem / The Real Ambassadors) 240

54 Explosive (Count Basie) 244

55 "I'm Supposed to Deliver" (B. B. King) 246

56 Brother Al (Al Cohn) 259

57 The Arranger (Gil Evans) 264

58 A New Kind of Virtuosity (Christopher Earl) 269

59 Beale Street Talks (Harold Mabern) 273

60 Old Man Rivers (Sam Rivers) 277

61 Who's Gonna Throw That Minstrel Boy a Coin? (Bob Dylan) 280

62 Fresh Flowers (Albert Ayler) 284

63 Put Your Voice Where Your Mouth Is (Lip-syncing) 287

64 On Her 90th Birthday (Billie Holiday) 291

65 "Harsh as the sound of a man's snore was the name of Khufu" (Norman Mailer) 297

66 The Grove of Academe (The New Grove Dictionary of American Music) 300

67 Carrying a Torch (The Modern Library) 304

68 Muddy Waters, I Presume (Alan Lomax) 310

69 Soupspoon's Blues (Walter Mosley) 313

70 Short and Acerbic (M. M. Liberman) 316

71 Oxford Jazz (Sheldon Meyer) 319

72 A Public Burning (Ralph Ellison) 322

73 Doin That Waitin (Albert French) 327

74 Closed Minds (Saul Bellow) 329

75 Laughing Man (Moss Hart) 332

76 He's Got No Kick Against Modern Jazz (Robert Christgau) 340

77 Mr. Ellington, Meet Mr. Matisse (Alfred Appel Jr.) 343

78 Fighting for Freedom and Bad Taste (Sammy Davis Jr.) 347

79 Pops and Pops (Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz) 352

80 Seduced (Classics Illustrated) 357

81 Fear and Trembling (Friedrich Durrenmatt) 369

82 Kaddish for the Jews (Soma Morgenstern) 377.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

019517951X

OCLC:

62322248

Publisher Number:

9780195179514

Online:

Publisher description