Halliwell's Film Guide: A Survey of 8000 English-Language Movies

By Leslie Halliwell

Boasting more than 16,000 movie entries listing cast, major credits, short synopsis, selected critical reactions, nominations and winners of Academy Awards, this is the recognized name in film... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684160560
• ISBN13: 9780684160566
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 897 Pages
• Weight: 3.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

This author hates movies.

I previously owned and read this book. First, know that this book was authored in 1989, the year the author died. More important, know that snide critic Leslie Halliwell hates anything made since about 1950. His snooty takedowns of anything made during our lifetime will make you throw the book away unless you're actually trying to feel miserable. Take this direct quote from HIS OWN WEB PAGE: "The Guide was suffused with the personality – and prejudices – of its creator, Bolton-born Leslie Halliwell, a man of unparalleled film knowledge, who for over fifty years was the cinema’s biggest fan, and its harshest critic. An unashamed devotee of the Golden Age of Hollywood when the big studios churned out movies on a production-line basis, he was often criticised for his pithy comments and succinct dismissals of more recent films, his assessments growing ‘increasingly weary and blimpish’ according to one observer. Halliwell’s lack of acceptance of modern movies was easily demonstrated by the fact that not a single production from the seventies and eighties received his highest rating of four stars (the most recent to do so, in fact, was 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde)." Buyer beware.