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Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 It's Only A Biography March 6, 2010
Chandler (London)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mark Kermode is a great film critic, engaging on radio and tv and always worth reading.
However, this isn't a collection of his reviews. It's a biography. And a critic's life - attending film previews, interviewing directors and actors, presenting documentaries - doesn't make for an especially interesting read. The anecdotes from his early years are quite amusing but as he makes his way, the stories get longer and longer in the telling, and more Kermode-centric.
For example, the book ends with a meeting with Angelica Jolie who compliments Kermode on his hair. Kermode's reponse is "Thank you... I like my hair too". While he takes some credit for being the only person on the planet who couldn't return a compliment to Angelica Jolie, there's something a bit desperate about MK's self-importance and his relentless name-dropping.
This book is a missed opportunity. A little biography around the film criticism would have been fine; the anecdotes of a film critic turn out to be not that interesting...
 Hmmm not bad, but could just as easily be called 'All my anecdotes strung together' March 6, 2010
G.Rayner
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm a massive Kermode fan, I listen to all the podcasts, I wen't to his tour, but this book really doesn't do the good doctor's talents much justice. Radio is clearly where he excels, this book, whilst amusing is ultimately a bit bland and most of the stories I had heard before. It's by no means a bad read, but a bit of a let down.
Disapppointing and I'm sad about that March 6, 2010
P. G. Harris (Lichfield UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let me start by saying that for me the Kermode/Mayo film programme on the radio is absolutely required listening, by podcast if not live.
That is probably why this book is such a disappointment. Yes it's easily readable, yes it's entertaining, yes Kermode writes as he speaks, but this book has a knocked off cobbled together feel which looks more like cashing in than having any merit of its own.
What I was hoping for was an autobiography which gave new information about the author. What the book delivers is a series of extended anecdotes, many of which are already familiar to fans of the radio show. The nadir of this is when Kermode repeats his review of Mama Mia. Now when this was broadcast, it was an absolutely jaw droppingly brilliant piece of radio. My better half quite rightly described it as being "one of those moments which make the licence fee worth every penny". Here it is cold and uninspiring, artificially shoe-horned in like the latest single on a greatest hits album.
The anecdotes are not, however, without merit. The extended trip to Russia, the shooting of Werner Herzog, and the story of Kermode's first radio broadcasts are all good value.
So, a qualified recommendation. It is worth buying, just don't expect too much of it.
reads like he speaks... March 1, 2010
music man
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I found this lost it's way somewhat in the middlle which, much like the Soviet adventure went on a bit for no great reason - for us readers as well as for him. But as ever with the Good Doctor you get no nonense opinions and good anecdotes. Therefore I am an avid listener to his Friday bickering with Simon. However, I really could have done without all the italicising every other sentence, designed presumably to tell us which words to stress. It was like being shouted at by the book. I imagine this must be a bit like being in the room with him - OK for short periods but then starting to really irritate...
All in all not a bad read, but would have enjoyed it more without all the SHOUTING! :*)
Readable enough, but disappointing March 1, 2010
Mark Wallace (West of Ireland)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I wasn't a particular fan of Mark Kermode, but from what I had seen of him on The Culture Show and a few other things I liked him enough to buy this on the spur of the moment. It's 324 pages, but of relatively large print (only 29 lines per page), so it's a quick read.
It's kind of a biography, but Kermode says in the opening pages that `if I say something happened, it may well be that it only happened in the rancid, popcorn-filled cinema in my head.' This gives him license to tell stories like the one where he turns up a big fan at a rock concert and blows the drummer and his kit off the stage, presenting it first as fact, then spending several pages wondering whether it happened, then concluding that it probably didn't. Obviously, this story never happened, so what's the point pretending it did? I don't know. Has he no interesting real stories to tell? It doesn't seem so, as he gives inordinate space to banal stories like his trip across Russia by train and car. Ok, so he got a puncture. That's not that unusual.
The oddest thing is the way he constantly presents himself as a buffoonish incompetent. On screen, I've always seen him as a serious and knowledgeable character but here he keeps saying stuff like `I was a mouthy, know-nothing upstart. Over the years, very little has changed.' And in all the stories he tells he appears as a bumbling idiot, like when Helen Mirren reprimands him and his knees `start to buckle and bend beneath me. By the time I was finished I was down on bended knee, head bowed in suppliant reverence'. This isn't consistent with Kermode's character, so why doesn't he tell us how it really went? I guess this description is for comic effect, but the insincere self-deprecation becomes annoying. There's also nothing of substance on films, Kermode's one area of supposed expertise. It's just pointless, badly-told stories. It's readable enough, but it becomes increasingly unsatisfying and reads like it was knocked off quickly and without much thought. Just scrapes a 3.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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