Book description
For nearly half a century Philip French's writing on cinema has
been essential reading for filmgoers, cinephiles and anyone who enjoys
witty, intelligent engagement with the big screen. His vast knowledge
of the medium is matched by his love for it. I Found It at the Movies
collects some of the best of Philip French's film writing from 1964 to
2009. Its subjects are as various, entertaining and challenging as
cinema itself: Kurosawa and the Addams family; Satyajit Ray and Doris
Day; from Hollywood and the Holocaust to British cinema and postage
stamps. I Found It at the Movies is an illuminating companion to the
world of the cinema. I Found It at the Movies is the first of three
collections of Philip French's writings on film and culture
'...five'll get you ten that anyone fancying a night at the cinema
would be better off staying in with I Found It at the Movies. Its words
are worth a thousand pictures.' - Christopher Bray, Observer Review, 1st
May 2011 Philip French was born in Liverpool in 1933, and after
service as an officer with the Parachute Regiment in the Middle East he
read law and edited The Isis at Oxford before going on to study
journalism at Indiana University. For over 30 years he was a producer
for BBC Radio, specialising in programmes on the arts and American
affairs. From the early 1960s he has been a regular contributor to
numerous magazines and newspapers ranging from Sight & Sound to the
TLS, and from the Financial Times to The Observer, where he's written a
weekly film column since 1978. His books as author or editor include The
Age of Austerity (1963), The Movie Moguls (1969), Westerns (1973), Three
Honest Men: Edmund Wilson, F. R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling (1980), Malle
on Malle (1992), The Faber Book of Movie Verse (1993), Cult Movies
(1999), and Westerns and Westerns Revisited (2005). He served on the
jury at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, was a Booker Prize judge in 1988,
was given a life achievement award by the Critics Circle in 2003,
received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lancaster in 2006,
became the first critic to be made a Lifetime Honorary Member of BAFTA
in 2008, and in 2009 was named Critic of the Year in the National Press
Awards.
