Weekend books.

"The nostalgia for old Hollywood often seems to point to something beyond a desire for the comforting regularity of the well-run factories, for those assembly-line films that satisfy just by virtue of their refined craft, perfect lighting, unpalsied camerawork, spatial coherence and unrushed rhythms," writes Manohla Dargis, reviewing Jeanine Basinger's The Star Machine (excerpt). "From the outside, the old studio system seemed to run effortlessly, its gears slicked and slippery smooth, but in truth it was always plagued by cycles of uncertainty and retrenchment; it was a perpetual mutating machine."

Also in the New York Times: "In a new book, Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies: Cinema of the Enlightenment, the historian Laurence Chatel de Brancion steps back into prerevolutionary France to explore the pastimes created by Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, in his role as resident entertainer at the court of the duke of Orléans," writes Kathryn Shattuck. "At the heart of the volume are Carmontelle's experiments with light and moving images: rouleaux transparents, or 'rolled-up transparent drawings,' a precursor to modern cinema."

And: Jeremy McCarter on Andrew Lycett's The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a new collection, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters; and Tom Shone on Judith Freeman's The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.

Glenn Kenny's been reading Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism, "the first compilation of movie writing by the great Kent Jones, whose ever-probing acuity illuminates not just individual films and filmmakers but the condition of cinema in the here and now." He quotes a bit on Wes Anderson and remarks: "Damn. That is movie criticism."

"Is [Detour Edgar G] Ulmer's statement about the failed American dream? Does it echo the hazily Marxist Frankfurt school of philosophy?" In the Austin Chronicle, Joe O'Connell reads The Philosophy of Film Noir and The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, noting that the "two books meet over Blade Runner, which is described as a 'future noir.'"

"American fiction lost three of its most warmly admired figures this year, all dead at the age of 84 after long careers," writes Morris Dickstein in the Los Angeles Times. "Critics love the idea of literary generations, but it would be a challenge to find themes or ideas to link the disparate work of Norman Mailer, Grace Paley and Kurt Vonnegut."

Guardian readers pick their books of the year and the Review looks ahead to the books of 08.

In the NYT, Janet Maslin, Michiko Kakutani and William Grimes make their selections.

Posted by dwhudson at December 29, 2007 8:49 AM