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Topic: David Thomson (film critic)

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	National Film Theatre: Nicholas Ray: David Thomson, 'In a Lonely Place' (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		If the film makes an impact it does so through its style, using style here to mean the full force of the artist's personality as revealed in his work: there can be no argument here.
		Primarily, though, I would suggest that the critical duty is to examine the cinema in terms of its ideas, to submit these to the test of comment and discussion.
		During his last year, he consented to the making of a film on his approach to death: it was the collaboration of Ray and Wim Wenders, a record, a tribute and a testament to friendship.
	www.bfi.org.uk /showing/nft/featurearchive/nicholasray/lonely_place_thomson.html (3044 words)

	identity theory \| the narrative thread - david thomson
		English-American writer David Thomson was born in London and attended film school.
		David Thomson has also been the editor of the short-lived Journal Of Gastronomy and contributes film commentary and criticism to the New York Times, Film Criticism,The New Republic, Salon and the Independent (of London).
		At the beginning of the age of film particularly and for some time there after and even now occasionally, you can have a film that just hits everybody in a way that the greatest novel never ever will be able to do.
	www.identitytheory.com /people/birnbaum82.html (5288 words)

	Film \| Good enough
		Thomson has little time for the crudities of the silent era, for instance, and judges DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to be no good when stood next to Mahler's Ninth Symphony ("listen to that music and you cannot ignore the naiveté, the coarseness, in Griffith").
		The barrage of high-brow name checks may well have the reader wondering what all this has to do with a medium whose niceties, at the time, included the fine art of falling from your saddle and choosing a place to land that was two inches to the left of the place chosen by your horse.
		Like all the best film critics Thomson is an unashamed rhapsodist, reminding us that the only real qualification for the job is the ability to get carried away, frequently to the cliff-edge of silliness.
	film.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,5129337-3181,00.html (558 words)

	BostonHerald.com - the Edge: David > ``The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood''
		A respected film critic and author of the widely heralded ``The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,'' Thomson presents an unconventional history of Hollywood, one that spans a century of moving pictures, from ``The Birth of a Nation'' to the ``Matrix'' trilogy.
		Thomson has nothing to say about ``Star Wars'' - ``there is not enough in it,'' but places ``The Deer Hunter'' securely on his list of movies that aspire to the whole equation.
		Thomson credits Thalberg with being the first to have a firm grasp of the business, appreciating the need for schedules, budgets and control, essentially creating the position of producer.
	theedge.bostonherald.com /bookReviews/view.bg?articleid=342 (575 words)

	PopMatters Film Interview \| David Thomson - The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
		Really, it's Thomson's willingness to essay on such inquests so sportively, not his demonstrably encyclopedic knowledge, that brings the book to 963 pages and gives you the feeling that none should be skipped.
		Thomson lives with his second wife, the photographer Lucy Gray, and their two young sons, Nicholas and Zachary.
		I knew that the world of film and the world of books were important to me. I belong to both of them, and I feel torn because of that.
	www.popmatters.com /film/interviews/thomson-david-030505.shtml (2292 words)

	2blowhards.com: Free Reads -- David Thomson
		By the way,what David does heap scorn on is the state of film criticism and scholarship that reduces to "Two thumbs up." Or something like that.
		I think the state of criticism at the Times is generally excellent: obviously, I don't agree with all their reviews, and some could be better, but given the quantity of material, I think the quality is excellent.
		I think that criticism, when it's good, is a wonderful thing — and of course, whether the criticism is good is largely unrelated to whether one agrees with the critic or not.
	www.2blowhards.com /archives/000522.html (4984 words)

	Morning Edition (NPR): Interview: David Thomson discusses the career of film critic Pauline Kael, who died yesterday at ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Interview: David Thomson discusses the career of film critic Pauline Kael, who died yesterday at age 82
		Movie critic Pauline Kael died yesterday at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
		Kael was a movie critic best known for her reviews in The New Yorker.
	www.highbeam.com /library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1P1:46837873&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf (189 words)

	Powells Books - The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson
		For twenty-five years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview), not merely the “desert island book” of art critic David Sylvester, not merely “a great, crazy masterpiece” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian), but also “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone).
		Thomson is, I think, the last of the great film writers....He is here to sing the multiplex blues — sitting there, at the back of the cinema, amid the torn velour and spilled Pepsi — but this book is the most beautiful of torch songs, and more than bright enough to light up the gloom."
		David Thomson lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.
	www.powells.com /cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=719&cgi=product&isbn=0375411283 (792 words)

	01.12.2005 - Shining a light on imperfect (but highly enjoyable) films
		David Thomson is a London-born film critic with an abiding fascination for American movies.
		Thomson recently spoke with the Berkeleyan’ s Wendy Edelstein about the upcoming PFA series, the evolution of film, and the future of the movie-going experience.
		Film has enough in common with theater or drama and literature to hold onto a lot of the virtues of character development, narrative unfolding, and dramatic payoff.
	www.berkeley.edu /news/berkeleyan/2005/01/12_thomson.shtml (1451 words)

	The critic gets his own series (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Thomson -- born in Britain and a resident of the United States for 30 years and San Francisco for more than 20 -- is among the most respected film critics and writers around.
		Thomson took the title of the book and series from a passage in "The Last Tycoon" that asserts that Hollywood "can be understood, but only dimly and in flashes.
		Thomson was born in London but soon fell under the spell of Hollywood movies and vowed to move to America.
	sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/09/PKG8JAKJP21.DTL (918 words)

	Sore Eyes » Blog Archive » David Thomson interviewed
		Film critic and writer David Thomson talked to Robert Birnbaum of The Morning News about Hollywood, the
		And that means that in time the older films will get a bit more distorted and a bit more forgotten.
		Going back to this whole question of whether these films were works of art or just works of entertainment - a lot of them were just works of entertainment.
	soreeyes.org /archive/2005/03/19/david-thompson-interviewed (362 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Film \| Features \| Frederick Wiseman: Welfare
		Partly because of this, his work is of great value, almost as slices of the times we live in or, as he has called it, "a form of natural history".
		Any half-hour of this long film provides revelations, like the girl claimant who is told by her interviewer that he's looking after two and a half million people and that if a couple of thousand don't get what's due them, he's doing a good job.
		David Thomson, the film critic and historian, disdains Wiseman's neutrality, wishing him to be crazier or at any rate less guarded.
	www.guardian.co.uk /Film/Century_Of_Films/Story/0,4135,401800,00.html (549 words)

	Archives: Movie Critics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Esteemed critic David Thomson, author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, talks with Robert Birnbaum.
		Film and theater critics train at 'boot camp': Rigorous course sharpens craft of critics--new and old.
		Junket Bonds: Critics and studios are hopping into bed together and the results are hard to watch.
	www.rockcritics.com /archives/moviecritics.html (619 words)

	The Unbearable Lightness of Being David Thomson
		David Thomson is a film writer known throughout the world who remains relatively invisible at home, which just happens to be San Francisco - Pacific Heights, to be exact.
		Thomson is a huge figure in the movie world: "The finest film writer in the English language," as Boston Globe critic Mark Feeney calls him.
		Thomson's wife, Lucy Gray, describes him as a man who is always working, rapid at forming opinions, and sure of what he thinks.
	www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/03/31/CM107753.DTL (2677 words)

	Books at Random House of Canada \| The Whole Equation by David Thomson
		David Thomson has given us a one-volume history of Hollywood that is as well one of the most brilliant, most insightful, entertaining, and illuminating books ever written on American film.
		Thomson unreels the history of film in a series of flashbacks forward and back, budgets are broken down, boardrooms are spied upon, scripts and personalities pass before us in fascinating and unprecedented review.”
		David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is available from Knopf in hardcover and paperback, and Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles is available in Vintage paperback.
	www.randomhouse.ca /catalog/display.pperl?0375400168 (750 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Film \| Features \| Observer review: Hollywood by David Thomson
		Thomson, who now lives in San Francisco and writes with an intimate knowledge of LA, would be incapable of such an error today.
		Thomson writes that while travelling the long desert roads researching his splendid book, In Nevada, 'the best tapes, I found, were Mahler, John Coltrane and the recorded talks of Alistair Cooke'.
		Thomson's sharp tongue and epigrammatic style are notably absent from the introductory texts and captions.
	film.guardian.co.uk /books/story/0,12788,875341,00.html (1097 words)

	BookkooB: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film - David Thomson
		Thomson is in his full right to present his thoughts in the way he wants, but on the other side, it is just a disgrace the way he attacks filmmakers as persons in this self-indulgent and severely unjust way.
		Thomson manages to break all the rules in the book in of good critique; he is biased, insulting and he does not present valid arguments for his statements.
		Rather, this is film criticism – and Thomson is an acutely perceptive, intelligent and eloquent critic.
	www.bookkoob.co.uk /book/0316726605.htm (1351 words)

	Salon.com Books \| Reel lives
		Film critic David Thomson talks about his masterly survey of movie people -- who's in, who's out and just what makes a star different from the rest of us.
		And it's also an autobiography of sorts, a wide-reaching account of Thomson's filmgoing life, a fierce argument about popular art and an ongoing investigation of what it means to be human in a world full of spectators and performers.
		Devotees have been known to joke about Thomson's idiosyncratic passions (he says Angie Dickinson is his favorite actress and calls Cary Grant "the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema") and obsessively quote their favorites among his many sterling lines.
	www.salon.com /books/int/2002/12/16/thomson/index.html (1036 words)

	Peachpit Goes "Behind the Seen” with Academy Award-winning Film Editor Walter Murch
		Murch is widely acknowledged in the film industry as a consummate craftsman and technical innovator, and his sound mixing and film editing on Minghella's "The English Patient" won unprecedented double Oscars.
		In conversations with author Koppelman during the post-production of "Cold Mountain," Murch illuminates the ongoing transformation of filmmaking from its late 19th century origins to its digital transformation at the beginning of the 21st.
		David Thomson, film critic and author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, concludes, cThis is probably the subtlest and most tender account of what a craftsman brings to a motion picture ever written."
	www.pearsoned.com /pr_2004/110804.htm (616 words)

	Jigsaw Lounge - Rating System
		Peary is punchy, argumentative, partisan, informative and enthusiastic, combining all the virtues of the best critics with very few of their vices.
		Pauline Kael remains the most revered of all film critics and, although they aren't cheap to buy new, her collections of New Yorker reviews are the best long-form film writings around.
		( www.screenit.com/search_movies.html), a 'parental guidance' site which analyses films in terms of their swear words, sexual content, violent incidents and 'negative role models,' and so on, but whose critics are totally independent, thorough and switched-on.
	www.jigsawlounge.co.uk /film/guide.html (644 words)

	BookkooB: Beneath Mulholland - David Thomson
		Mulholland Drive, the famous road winding through Los Angeles, is Thomson's Rosebud, his symbol of film as mythological reality, aspiration and disenchantment, "the shambles of destroyed hope".
		Thomson has an extraordinarily knowledge of the most obscure aspects of film, from which he draws startling connections and insights, presenting an almost hallucinatory vision of the inner life of the cinema.
		As much about Thomson as the film world it dissects, this mixture of new and revised reprints of magazine articles cover the gamut of Hollywood's recondite dreamscape with rare if caustic perception.
	www.bookkoob.co.uk /book/0349111472.htm (420 words)

	The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Knopf, David Thomson
		Above all, Thomson has the courage of his convictions, unafraid to challenge received wisdom or conventional opinion, which means that every page may hold a surprise.
		In its first edition, describing Lee Remick in her second film role in Anatomy of a Murder, when she loosens her hair in the courtroom, Thomson talks of her as suddenly appearing `rapeable`.
		Thomson aims to give a well crafted slice of punchy prose for each entry and somehow manages to capture the very essence of each persons attributes and skills (or lack of!)
	allentech.net /bookstore/item_0375411283.html (1474 words)

	Amazon.com: Books: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		A critical minimalist, Thomson often nails the essence of a personality or career in less than a dozen words, such as Johnny Weissmuller: "No subsequent Tarzan ever matched him the loincloth was retired." He deftly distills entire movies down to single sentences, with Internet-like linkages.
		Like other serious film writers his age, Thomson admits that he no longer finds movie-going the "transforming experience" it once was, adding "I think I have learned that I love books more than films." This probably shapes some of his outspoken opinions.
		David Thomson goes way beyond the usual dry recitation of dates and facts and actually renders informed opinions on the people about whom he writes.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375411283?v=glance (2512 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| By genre \| Poetry
		She has won many awards for her writing, which has focused on Scottish landscape and culture as well as on Muslim Asia, but despite critical acclaim she is not widely known.
		In a recent lecture, Bloodaxe publisher Neil Astley made a swingeing attack on the current state of poetry, criticising the editors and critics who he believes are shutting out new talent at the expense, particularly, of women and ethnic minority writers.
		David Luke opens up the world of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with a selection of masterful translations of his poetry, says Nicholas Lezard.
	books.guardian.co.uk /departments/poetry/front/0,6000,95686,00.html (1626 words)

	SCOTLAND'S INVENTIONS
		This car is the named after David Dunbar Buick, a Scot who immigrated to the U.S. in 1856.
		David also patented a carburetor and designed an automobile, but business debts and failed investments prevented him from realizing profits from his inventions.
		Named after the scientist, Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), professor at Glasgow University, who was a pioneer in the field of thermodynamics.
	www.magicdragon.com /Wallace/thingscot.html (3879 words)

	BW Online \| October 22, 2002 \| The Reel Deal for Film Buffs
		Thomson, who's also a novelist and biographer, has seen thousands of movies and seems to have a nuanced critical position on most of them.
		Thomson has added about 300 new entries to the 1,000 or so in the 1994 edition, but his heart often doesn't seem to be in it.
		Thomson focuses most of his critical attention on Washington's work in Malcolm X, which I agree is still the actor's greatest role so far.
	www.businessweek.com /bwdaily/dnflash/oct2002/nf20021022_9487.htm (1145 words)

	David Thomson on Sidney Lumet - The Independent Film Weblog - indiefilm.weblogsinc.com _
		Film critic David Thomson reviews the career of director Sidney Lumet, who will be awarded an Honorary Oscar on February 27, in The Independent.
		Thomson calls Lumet a quintessentially “New York film-maker”, and blames his lack of recognition on “the absence of some uncontrollable passion”.
		Film Posters.com offers original movie posters and lobby cards as well as Vintage Movie Memorabilia and original posters.
	indiefilm.weblogsinc.com /entry/1234000430031619 (449 words)

	Come and see - Feature Article - Sight & Sound October 2004 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		A film like that grows and shifts in time, and it must have taken on deeper meanings as it grew, being infected by the world around it.
		"It is normal not to make films." Think about it a while (and duration has always been a key, hesitant element in Rivette) and you may begin to feel his humour, his stoicism, his patient sense of life and its alternatives.
		This is one reason why, over the years, Renoir's films alter for us: there is so much to see that ten years later we may come up with a different line.
	www.bfi.org.uk /sightandsound/2004_10/comesee.php (2541 words)

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