PDF Sleeping with Strangers How the Movies Shaped Desire Audible Audio Edition David Thomson Random House Audio Books
Download As PDF : Sleeping with Strangers How the Movies Shaped Desire Audible Audio Edition David Thomson Random House Audio Books
From the celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, an original, seductive account of sexuality in the movies and of how actors and actresses on screen have fed our desire.
Film can make us want things we cannot have. But, while sometimes rapturous, the interaction of onscreen beauty and private desire speaks to a crisis in American culture, one that pits delusions of male supremacy against feminist awakening and the spirit of gay resistance.Â
Combining criticism, his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, and memoir, David Thomson examines how film has found the fault lines in traditional masculinity and helped to point the way past it toward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a person desiring others.Â
Ranging from advertising to pornography, Rudolph Valentino to Moonlight, Rock Hudson to Call Me by Your Name, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Phantom Thread, Thomson shows us the art and the artists we love under a new light. He illuminates the way in which film as art, entertainment, and business has been a polite cover for a kind of erotic séance. And he makes us see how the way we watch our movies is a kind of training for how we try to live.
PDF Sleeping with Strangers How the Movies Shaped Desire Audible Audio Edition David Thomson Random House Audio Books
"I loved this book. Thomson gives powerful insights into film history in this look into the role of desire in shaping the movies and of the movies in shaping desire."
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Sleeping with Strangers How the Movies Shaped Desire Audible Audio Edition David Thomson Random House Audio Books Reviews :
Sleeping with Strangers How the Movies Shaped Desire Audible Audio Edition David Thomson Random House Audio Books Reviews
- I loved this book. Thomson gives powerful insights into film history in this look into the role of desire in shaping the movies and of the movies in shaping desire.
- I loved this book so much. Thomson once again gives new insights into familiar classics. His essays about Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant are so excellent. At times you think he may be stretching a point or two but then you think about it, and you know he isn't. His understanding of the studio system is second to none. Thomson has dedicated this book to his great friend Kieran Hickey. If there were a time machine, I would love to go back and join Kieran and Dave at the movies. What a delight that would have been. Dave, thanks for a wonderful read. You've done it again.
- I have read several books by Thomson and even when I've disagreed with a premise or a conclusion I've appreciated the knowledge and thought that went into the writing. But this book is really pointless. Or too pointed. It seems to be a compilation of about five hundred rhetorical questions, most of which go unanswered. One example "Are hope and depression twins in America?" What does that even mean? Meandering ruminations aside, the book doesn't even live up to its premise. Near the end Thomson writes that his publisher proposed he write a book about gay influence in the movies. Well, that's not what he's written. There are numerous declarations/disclaimers such as "So-and-so was undoubtedly straight...." or "I don't wish to imply that so-and-so was gay...." And then, nothing much. As one critic wrote (I'm paraphrasing), there is no such thing as a "gay sensibility" and its influence is immeasurable. Nailing down or even isolating that sensibility and its influences was clearly beyond Thomson. Much of the book seems to be an excuse to use dirty words and to offer up examples of his adolescent self-abuse as weird illustrations of his arguments. Really, a rather silly book.
- Reading this book reminded me of why I don't watch awards shows anymore. The awards shows go along fine for 45 minutes then BOOM, there is some celebrity who decides to look foolish by slamming Trump. In this book, I would read about 75 fairly interesting pages then BOOM, there would be some political rant about Trump, one even calling him grotesque. What does calling Trump grotesque have to do with the evolution of film in America? My thought with this book is the same as the celebrities - stick to what you do well because when you let your emotions show like that you look like a fool. There are plenty of other ways to see, hear, and read political rants without paying money for a book that has them interspersed throughout.
