Customer Reviews:
 Please, make my day! November 10, 2008
Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The peculiar artistic journey of Clint Eastwood has been signed by two very distinctive features. His undeniable passion for jazz and his indeclinable attractions poles: the thriller and the Western genre (which has been the true North American mythology) under Sergio Leone direction. Those spaghetti Westerns began to shape in his mind and febrile creativity three important periods. The first one belongs to the seventies as the renegade detective who works without rules according his own basic instincts ( we should not forget the self made personal justice begins probably with Sam Peckinpah's "Straw dogs" and two cult movies of John Borman, the almost forgotten "Point blank" and the classic "Deliverance") then would come the unforgettable saga of four films in which Charles Bronson starred - Harry Callahan typified as no one else the merciless and relentless detective in those out of control and desperate early seventies. The second period is perhaps the most introspective, searching by the unconscious roots of the antihero that concludes with "Bird" . The third period meant for him the concretion of a wider spectre of livings, happenings and situations in which an existential revisiting to the Western genre "Unforgiving") political affairs, corruption, love story, intense personal drama "Mystic river" and clever War episodes have become a sort of living gallery of deconstructions, memories, obsessions, little personal triumphs and disillusions of people who evidently don't occupy the main front pages.
His influences are so vast and multiple that forcefully leads us to realize ourselves he has become what Fassbinder meant for the German nation, or Jean Luc Goddard for France, the embodiment of the repressed feelings of anonymous human beings, the not desired mirror image of the social body, it's to say the ethical voice of the nation. Names of his most visible influences? Samuel Fuller, Mike Nichols, Sam Peckinpah, Billy Wilder, Sergio Leone, Martin Ritt, John Casavettes, John Ford, Otto Preminger, Reinhard Hauff and David Lean.
This is a very smart attempt to decipher and explore the basic clues of the famous artistic trajectory of one of the most important and lucid ethical voices of a nation.
An anthology of essays by learned authors discussing Hollywood star Clint Eastwood January 4, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: New Perspectives is an anthology of essays by learned authors discussing Hollywood star Clint Eastwood, who has made a stand-out name for himself as a top-notch director through films such as "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby". Individual essays include "Mocking Success in 'Every Which Way but Loose'", "Irony as Absolution", "Mystic Moral Miasma in 'Mystic River'", and much more. The essays have a scholarly tone and a perceptive eye toward meticulous analysis of theme; Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director is especially recommended for film studies students and professionals who would learn from Eastwood's work, as well as cerebral Clint Eastwood fans.
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