David Thomson

"In The Fatal Alliance the acclaimed film critic David Thomson offers us one of his most provocative books yet--a rich, arresting, and troubling study of that most beloved genre: the war movie. It is not a standard history or survey of war films, although Thomson turns his typically piercing eye to many favorites--from All Quiet on the Western Front to The Bridge on the River Kwai to Saving Private Ryan. But The Fatal Alliance does much more, exploring...

Contents Include: Growing Melons in Dung-beds or Pits; Sowing the Seed, and Management of Young Plants; Training and Stopping; Soil and Planting, etc; Moulding Up - Temperature; Impregnation, Watering, etc; Forms of Houses - Depths of Soil; Preparing the Plants, Planting; Watering; Temperature and Syringing; Ventilation; Impregnation, Training and Stopping; Very Early Forcing; Varieties; Insects and Diseases. This book contains classic material,...

From one of the greatest living writers on film, a magisterial look at a century of battle depicted on screen, and a meditation on the twisted relationship between war and the movies. In The Fatal Alliance the acclaimed film critic David Thomson offers us one of his most provocative books yet-a rich, arresting, and troubling study of that most beloved genre: the war movie. It is not a standard history or survey of war films, although Thomson turns...

"Look, I'm hardly pretty, he seems to say. I sound like gravel; I look rough and tough; and, honest, I don't give you the soft, foolish answers the pretty boys will give you. You may not like what I say, but you better believe it." He became a legend as "Bogie," the world-weary, wisecracking outsider, but in reality, Humphrey Bogart was plagued by doubts and demons. He was born upper-class, yet made his name playing mavericks, drank with the Rat...

Introduced by Seamus Heaney. David Thomson’s travels in the Gaelic world of the Hebrides and the west coast of Ireland brought him into contact with a people whose association with the sea and its fertile lore runs deep. They told of men rescued by seals in stormy seas, of babies suckled by seal-mothers, and of men who took seal-women for wives? stories centuries old, handed down to them by their forefathers. These mysterious and fascinating legends...

How does one package and sell confidence in the stability of a nation riven by civil strife? This was the question that loomed before the Philadelphia financial house of Jay Cooke & Company, entrusted by the US government with an unprecedented sale of bonds to finance the Union war effort in the early days of the American Civil War. How the government and its agents marketed these bonds revealed a version of the war the public was willing to buy and...

Film scholar David Thomson focuses in on a series of moments-- which his readers will also experience in beautifully reproduced imagery-- from 72 films across a 100-year-plus span. Moments takes readers on an unprecedented visual tour, where the specifics of the imagery the reader is seeing are inextricably tied to the text. Thomson's moments range from a set of Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering photographs to sequences in films from the classic-- Citizen...

A critic shares professional insights into how to derive more from a film experience, analyzing a range of iconic films to reveal metaphorical artistry techniques in the acting, filming, dialogue, and music.