Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture from One of America's Most Incisive Writers (Nation Books) by Peter Biskind

Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture from One of America's Most Incisive Writers (Nation Books) Reviews

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  Adrian Turner

  I read "Gods And Monsters" based on my enjoyment of the same author's excellent "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", but just as a word of warning, this is a collection of Biskind's earlier pieces, many of which are academic in nature, rather lengthy, and correspondingly "dry", though not uninteresting. Your mileage may vary, but I felt on steadier ground in the latter third of the collection, where he returns to his wheelhouse of in-depth personality profiles of film industry movers & shakers.
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  Karl

  This is very dense going, even scholarly and academic at times, but it is worth the effort. The author knows his stuff. The more opinion based pieces are thoughtful, detailed and well supported. Don’t expect to read this quickly.
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  Michael Samerdyke

  Peter Biskind's "Seeing Is Believing," about the political implications of Fifties movies, is one of my favorite books.
  
  "Gods and Monsters" is a sampling of Biskind's short pieces on film. It is a mixed bag, but, to me, the pluses outweigh the minuses.
  
  Some of the pieces are very political and some are very gossipy. Despite that, they tend to be interesting, both in themselves and showing how Biskind went from being a counterculture writer to being a Vanity Fair writer.
  
  His piece on Scorsese is terrific, as are a number of these, including the essay that eventually grew into "Seeing Is Believing." I wouldn't mind it if a second volume of Biskind's short pieces were published. I'd buy it.
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  Stagger Lee

  Like any collection, the quality - or my level of interest - varies, but when the writing chimes with the subject, there's some excellent pieces - on Don Simpson, Terence Malick, George Lucas, the Weather Underground.
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  Melvin Van t hof

  This book contains a wide collection of articles. The first couple of articles didn't interest me much but the second half of this book is very interesting. A bit of an hit and miss.
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  Hunter Duesing

  While I think most of Biskind's ideas in regards to the movies he analyzes in here are bullshit, pretty much every article in here is compelling and interesting. However, much like Biskind's other work, some of his facts are a bit dodgy (particularly in the article on Terence Malick). You would think Biskind would have a crack team of fact-checkers by now, but I guess he thinks that the myth he spins is more interesting than the reality.
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  Harold

  This book had some really interesting sections (especially a few of the later pieces), but I have to admit that I skimmed quite a few parts. A lot of his early essays are very wordy and academic, and when the topic was a movie I haven't even seen, I just couldn't be bothered (sorry, "On the Waterfront").
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  Richard

  some nice moments but a lot of tedium
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  Josh Folan

  Reads like a lineage of shitty college term papers.