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This Is Spinal Tap (Cultographies) |  | Author: Ethan de Seife Publisher: Wallflower Press Category: Book
List Price: $15.00 Buy New: $4.95 as of 2/10/2010 03:31 EST details You Save: $10.05 (67%)
New (9) Used (6) from $4.95
Seller: bibliobsession Rating: 1 reviews Sales Rank: 1433779
Media: Paperback Pages: 144 Number Of Items: 1 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4 Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 190567449X Dewey Decimal Number: 791 EAN: 9781905674497 ASIN: 190567449X
Publication Date: September 30, 2007 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A documentary, a mockumentary, indeed a rockumentary& mdash;Rob Reiner's phony road movie following the exploits of a fictitional heavy metal band has long been celebrated as a comedy landmark. This book is the first attempt to provide a sustained critical appraisal of the film's success, addressing general cinephiles and devoted Tapheads alike. The study considers the film within the context of cult cinema, real and mock documentaries, Hollywood comedies and musicals, and the history of rock music. This detailed stylistic and comic analysis offers new insights into the ardent Cult of Tap.
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| Customer Reviews: Pretentious and ponderous March 21, 2009 Dan Amrich (Bay Area CA) 9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Nobody can destroy the joy of movies quite like a film professor. For a short book, Ethan de Seife's analysis of This is Spinal Tap feels mind-numbingly long, mostly because it repeats itself. A handful of points (Tap owes a lot to cinema verite; Tap simultaneously uses and breaks the rules of both conventional and documentary filmmaking) get overexplained with new and fancier words, like a grade-school book report stretching to meet its minimum word count with the use of a very large thesaurus (A sample: "The formlessness of alleged actuality is rendered more cinematically palatable by the use of mechanisms of narrative"). There are some interesting insights -- the film's parallel with traditional Hollywood musicals was well presented, and the author does a good job of looking at the rock culture the film lampoons -- but many of the insights from the filmmakers are lifted straight from the DVD commentaries, and better told by them than regurgitated by a stuffy academic. Rarely engaging to the reader, it's simply too overwritten and self-important to be enjoyable.
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