pickEverything I wanted it to be.
The focus is on Black cinematic horror, but to address the subject well, it also dips into Black cinematic history beyond horror, and the Black experience in America, historical and present day. There is some coverage of international releases, but the book is primarily talking about US films and the minutiae reflecting the particular racism of each decade as it affects the output of Black horror cinema, 1/?
WTF?! 😆 Yeah, I'm going to spend half this book outraged and the other half in hysterics of one kind or another.
so-soThis book started out strong but kind of fizzled in the middle for me. I liked the screenplay aspect of how the book was written in parts as it made me imagine the scenes vividly. But outside the screenplay sections, the story just tanked for me. In the end I couldn‘t wait to just finish the book and wasn‘t very interested in how it would end.
I check the charity book table at my local shop more in hope than expectation of finding anything I'd be interested in amongst the old cook books, mountains of Jeremy Clarkson drivel and biographies of disgraced celebrities, but today I was rewarded for my perseverance with these two schlocky '70s tomes! 🖤🧌💚💀❤️🧛🏻♀️💚🧟♀️🖤 😱😁
pick(2019 Ed.) It's a fast and humorous love letter to horror films in the form of a handbook for readers who think they might be in a horror movie and wish to survive. I expect that it would appeal most to horror fans: others may not get the joke, mistake it for ridicule, or find that it wears out fast. But I dug it, and if you enjoyed the Scream series for its meta commentary, or Cabin in the Woods for any reason at all then you may too.
I'm glad for the structure the book provides, outlining the multiple ways the egregious past has limited representation and creativity and the hopeful outlook for the future, while in no way letting present day America off the hook for all the ways it still needs to improve on screen and in real life for Back Americans. 4d
1) How funny the text is as a whole. Yes, it deals with serious topics throughout, but the authors' experienced media critic angle adds a superlative quality to the writing - I don't think we went more than five pages before someone else was getting roasted for poor creative output or racist thinking. The few word puns that made their way into the text were choice. 4d
The many lists and trivia inserts with their own formatting and occasional graphics reminded me of a magazine you'd get at the theatre, all the information goes further to emphasizing the point the authors want to make 4d
Less a critique and more a heads up for anyone who plans to read it linearly rather than dip into particular chapters - you're going to encounter duplicate information about films. I believe this was done so that anybody picking the book up anywhere, whether they'd seen a certain film or not, 4d
⚠️Mention of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia 4d