This book is supposedly a complete look at Woody Allen but apart from the details of the split with Mia, adds little to the Eric Lax biography of several years ago (Baxter takes a few jibes at Lax, calling attention to those people he failed to interview; perhaps someone should remind Mr. Baxter that he didn't interview absolutely everyone who has come into contact with Woody Allen in the past 60 years either). To his credit, Mr. Baxter seems to have a wealth of financial and contractual information about Woody's films that's seeing the light of day for the first time. The question is, who cares? The book often bogs down in these behind-the-scenes passages and I found myself having to resist the urge to put it down for good. There's also a fairly obvious attempt to create "balance" by throwing dirt Woody's way, none of which is too successful. Let's face it. This imperfect man is a creative genius and, biographies or no biographies, deserves to be respected as such. I still recommend the book to Woody Allen fans, if only to say you've read this latest biography.

For the most part, I found this book well written and informative, although typos occur quite frequently in the hardcover edition.

After a brief background on Allen's childhood, the author titles the chapters after the titles of Allen's films; a beneficial format, because it allows the reader to watch the movie before they read the chapter if they elect to do so.

The author has interesting arguments about why Allen acted the way he did in certain situations, but it is important to note that it doesn't appear that Mr. Baxter actually spoke with Allen during his research for this book. This is not the Gospel on Allen, but it is an interesting body none the less.

This is a very fair, even-handed look at the life of Woody Allen and his films. It is NOT critical of him, as several of the negative reviewers below seem to suggest. The author writes with candor and doesn't censor himself. Those are qualities I expect from a biography. Why read a bigraphy if you don't expect to come across a few warts? I've been a fan of Woody's for over 25 years. I like him. And, I like this book.

Despite its respectable cover this is only slightly more serious than the celebrity tell-alls of recent months. Incidentally it also has at least a couple of factual flaws even mild Internet research could have corrected

The book only scrathes the surface of this splendid director. Several chapters on the directors movies are simply to "thin". There's no information that we haven't heard of before. Instead read the book on GEORGE LUCAS by same auther. It's much better.

This is a very interesting book about a filmmaker. What i like is that it spends most about his career. It was very well written biography.

I happen to have first-hand knowledge of what went on in the making of this movie, and this book bears no resemblance to that. It's inaccurate to the point of being slanderous to some involved. This book is just ignorant gloss designed created in hopes of recouping some of the buckets of money that were lost on this film. The movie cost about $30-35 million and still hasn't earned half of that back in the US. Of course there's overseas, but unfortunately the film was pre-sold over there so there's no more money to be made. The descriptions of the live action shoot and of what went on with the effects displays more imaginative fantasy than there was in either the writing or (especially) the directing of the film. Save your money. But then I'm sure you knew that already. PS: If I were allowed to give this book 0 stars, I would have.

I got this book after I saw the movie for the 3rd time. I was interested in how they made the movie with all the cool stunts and stuff. I was surprised to learn that most of the actors did their own stunts and the two things about the making of this movie that had me the most surprised were the fact that the actor that played Ridley did all his own stunts, including the axe jumping sceen in the Thives Maze. Another part was in the part of the movie where the characters Elwood, Ridley, Snails and Marina went into the sewer under Sumdall that it was really a real sewer. The book also tells how they created the red and gold dragons and other stuff. This book is a diffent must have for any Dungeons and Dragons movie fan.

Like the other cosmic impact novels of the late 1970's, most notably Lucifer's Hammer and Shiva Descending, The Hermes Fall tends to get lost in its characters. Still, for those who can find it, it is a rather intriguing read.

What sets The Hermes Fall apart from other cosmic disasters is that it focuses on a known asteroid. A five-mile-wide behemoth, Hermes passed within half a million miles of the Earth in 1937. Although much better than Lucifer's Hammer as far as complexity of story, it isn't as good as Shiva Descending or Thunder Strike, by Michael McCollum, because it lacks the emotional elements.

If you can find The Hermes Fall, it's worth the read.

It is a beautiful looking hardcover book with wonderful photographs. Baxter has done a great deal of background research (albeit heresay a lot of it) that garners some valuable insights into Kubrick's life. Baxter has, however, failed to penetrate into Kubrick's creative process as a filmmaker. Baxter lacks the academic film knowledge to substantially interpret what Kubrick's stylistic concerns and thematic preoccupations are. He fails to get to the heart of Kubrick's muse, so to speak, and wastes far to much energy on attempting to counter the myths that surround Kubrick as a filmmaker. For example, Baxter spends a great deal of time destroying the myth that Kubrick is a consumate film technician by including isolated incidents of mistakes he apparently makes during shooting. These examples are few and far between but Baxter seems intent on deconstructing Kubrick's mystique to the extent where he misses the point of what such a work is about. Baxter fails to make the necessary connections between Kubrick's ouevre and his background - whether one likes Kubrick is irrelevant, or cares if he has human failings after all, it should be about what events transpired in Kubrick's life that influenced him into creating the works that he has.

Throughout this book, Baxter makes references to Kubrick's "genius", though he rarely specifies or qualifies the epithet. Instead, he uses it as a periodic scrap of praise while he attacks Stanley Kubrick as a ruthless power-player, obsessive hermit, and breast-fetishist. He critizes Kubrick for insisting that his films be shot near his house -- as it is a great strain on the cast and crew -- but he never makes a case for it weakening his films (which, of course, it doesn't). He just uses it as a locus for people to complain about Kubrick, who has very personal (and ultimately aesthetically justifiable) reasons for doing what he does. For the most part, this book is a catalogue of complaints, crudely strung together and never presented with any empathy or insight. Baxter records the cruel manipulation Kubrick suffered at the hands of Kirk Douglas and Marlon Brando, and then goes on to record Kubrick's stop-at-nothing insistence on personal artistic control, but fails to see the obvious lesson Kubrick learned in his first few years in Hollywood. Instead, he narrow-mindedly lambasts the whole lot of them. There are no critical insights into any of Kubrick's films in this book, only anecdotes about script-construction, contract negotiation, and arguments over lighting procedures. Not unlike Donald Spoto's Hitchcock biography, "The Dark Side of Genius", this book aims to crucify its subject for the way he set about creating his masterpieces, but unlike Spoto's definitive book, this one has nothing to say about the quality, subtlety, delicacy, or power of those masterpieces -- nothing about what makes the "genius" a genius.

There's no doubt somewhere down the line, someone might write the definitive biography of the great film maker, Stanley Kubrick. Mr Baxter's book isn't quite it, just as several other Kubrick bios aren't either. Kubrick was an enigma and writing about not just an enigma but an intensely private person is always a problem. Mr Baxter's book looks at Kubrick's life and film's ina an entertaing and readable fashion without getting much past the surface.Combined with several other books on Kubrick (most notably the out of print book by Michel Ciment)John Baxter's book compiles some of the most famous Kubrick "stories" and some lesser-known ones. Given the author's long-standing credentials as a film historian as well as popular biographer of film identities, it would have made the book a more valuable addition to film culture had Mr Baxter included some more analysis of the films themselves. If this review seems a little at odds with a four star rating it's because ANY book which contributes in any way to help understand the artist who created a small but extraordinary body of work is worthy of that.

Poor book. The author doesn't understand Spanish nor French - very strange when writing Buñuel's biography. His sketch of B's personality is very poor.

Baxter's book is readable, but inadequately researched. Baxter is innocent of Spanish, and this means that many of the documents related to Bunuel are...well, Spanish, to him. It also leads to a number of egregious errors and, in general, to suspect judgements and thin interpretations. A number of questions need to be addressed in a biography of Bunuel, but Baxter either treats them superficially or ignores them. A definitive--or even semi-definitive, if such a thing exists-- biography of Bunuel is yet to come.

"Bunuel" by John Baxter has received some bad press from some of the reviewers here, but this is not a bad book at all. It is probably the second best biographical book about Luis Bunuel right after, of course, "My Last Sigh." Bunuel remains one of the giants of the cinema, a director who's films remain timeless and evocative, seductive and visceral, and sometimes funny. Baxter is not a bad author and elevates his subject to some great intellectual levels, exploring the depth of Bunuel's work and the philosophies, desires, madness and obsessions that spin madly at the center of this man's story. And yet, Baxter reveals that Bunuel was not some lunatic with a camera, he had surprisingly compassionate, funny human aspects, which is the case with most geniuses. Bunuel's life here plays like a great novel, filled with interesting characters from Bunuel's life like the painter Salvador Dali and the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. There is interesting information here, sometimes voyeuristic when we learn Lorca apparently tried to seduce Dali. The book is also a good examination of the films, because to understand Bunuel's mind, one must look at his masterpieces. There are fascinating moments when the book goes into the Surrealist movement and Bunuel's first two surreal films made with Dali, "Un Chien Andalou" (with the immortal image of a razor slicing across a woman's eye-ball) and "L'Age d'Or" (which has touches of De Sade). We follow Bunuel on his exile to Mexico where he makes the classic "Los Olvidados" which left an impact in many directors including, we learn here, Roman Polanski. Bunuel's work is a rich collage of visceral, seductive emotions and images as seen in works like "Viridiana" and "Belle De Jour" (the most famous erotic film ever) and the book makes good use of exploring all of the art. And yet, the human stories are also entertaining. A surprising thing that comes out is the love story between Bunuel and his wife Jeanne Rucar (who wrote a book about their marriage titled "Woman Without A Piano" which I wish someone would put back in print!) which is as involving as the stories of Bunuel's movies. There are comic moments, as when Mexican director Arturo Ripstein calls on Bunuel after seeing "Nazarin" and tells him he wants to be a director just like him. Bunuel gets anrgy, admits him and screens "Un Chien Andalou" and comments, "THIS is what I do." Ripstein, of course, is one of Mexico's greatest directors. "Bunuel" is fascinating, enjoyable, entertaining and sometimes crazy. It manages to capture a man and his art and dissect the wonderful faults and positives of his genius.

I've always been a Lucasfilm/Star Wars fanatic, and have always gobbled up any shred of info, whether it be about the stories, or the behind-the-scenes realm. I'm one of those fans who knows the names of the modelmakers responsible for those great, worn ships in the original film.

And while I am a bit over the top in regards to what I know, this in no way absolves John Baxter for the mountainous errors in his work. Just because I'm sharp on a lot regarding Lucas doesn't mean that Baxter's innacurracies won't be such a sin if they fall on uninformed ears.I won't go through each and every flaw, but let me just warn you that this book drops the ball repeatedly regarding what Lucasfilm fans would call rudimentary data.

I t's best to bypass this mess and select David Pollock's "Skywalking" instead. It's the oldest and still the best bio on this great talent. Another book that proved to be immensely entertaining (though only covering the era of the first trilogy) was Garry Jenkin's "Empire Building." If it's behind the scenes Star Wars stuff you're after, then this is absolutely THE book to get.
In closing, I'm most disappointed with Mythmaker because it pales in comparison to Baxter's Steven Spielberg bio released a few years before. It makes me wonder how accurate (or innacurate) THAT bio was.....

I am a big George Lucas fan and I found a few errors in this book. The one that really bothered me was that the author repeatedly stated that Jim Henson did the puppeteering and voice for Yoda. IT WAS FRANK OZ NOT JIM HENSON! That was soooo annoying! I kept wishing that the author was around so that I could just scream it in his face!

Other than these small details, the book was pretty good. But still, I can't help but wonder what else was inaccurate that I just took as new information.

This was the first real biography I read of George Lucas; since it I have read Dave Pollock's Skywalking, which is a far better and balanced look at the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas.

John Baxter's bio on Lucas is really mean toward its subject. In his narrative of the filmmaker's life he routinely slams Lucas, pointing out all the mistakes George made in his life and never really focusing on the happiness Lucas has brought to millions of moviegoers with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. In the end, it seems Lucas wins over Baxter with The Phantom Menace, but considering how much Baxter seems to hate George Lucas, I think I'm reaching a little bit.

Not only does Baxter hate Lucas, his book is littered with typos and errors. He never once gets the name of Steven Spielberg's college--Long Beach State--right (he calls it the University of California, Long Beach at one point and California State College, Long Beach in another). He mangles some of the details of The Phantom Menace as well (says that Valorum was played by Ian McDiarmid, when it was Terence Stamp who really played him). Some of the more gossipy parts in the book are backed up with shoddy references, too.

Another problem is that Baxter goes off on a lot of other tangents that are only vaguely related to Lucas. For instance, he discusses what Francis Coppola was doing while Star Wars was being produced, and the problems Star Wars' director of photography--Gil Taylor--had with Stanley Kubrick. Better editing would have eliminated these parts.

If you want a better and more balanced account of George Lucas' life, read Skywalking by Dave Pollock. Pollock doesn't take a critical machete to Lucas' life or films and there aren't any editorial mistakes.

A strength of Baxter's examination of the 14th Indiana is extensive inclusion of primary sources as soldiers' letters. The book is well-researched and reads easily. It follows the 14th from the time of its formation until its return to Indiana after the war. The accounts of the 14th's role in battles as Antietam and Fredericksburg are unified by Baxter's idea that the soldiers' experiences and performance in the Civil War were shaped by their frontier background in Indiana.