Yes it's a book, but if the Mods would grant me a pass to post this in the Movie Talk forum, because this book is movie geek heaven -

Over 900 pages covering 300 of the greatest movies of all time, their rank, if any, on the 1997 and 2007 AFI 100 list, plot summeries, production history, reviews, boxoffice take, and a treasure trove of motion picture industry info going all the way to the 1900s up to present day.

It's the best book covering film I have ever owned, sums up all the good stuff we talk about here on this very forum. Just wanted to get the word out. here's the cover:

I caught Lucas's interview on The Daily Show a week or so ago promoting this. It sounds interesting, but at the risk of being Mr. Cranky Pants, I don't see a reason this shouldn't be moved to the Book forum.

let the bashing begin.....

George Lucas blockbusted my childhood!

Actually I want to get this, it sounds good. But this really belongs in the book forum...

Thank you for posting this in the Movie forum Doctor Gonzo!

"Lucas's"? For the love of...

Nice to see a copy editor was paying attention to proper grammar.

fitprod

Isn't that correct since it's a name and not a plural noun?

It sounds better than his previous writings: George Lucas's 'ChildhoodRaping'

.

Yep - Both Lucas' and Lucas's are grammatically correct.

1) Why is it called George Lucas's Blockbusting? What does "Blockbusting" mean?

2) I'm assuming that 299 or so of the movies included had nothing to do with George Lucas, so why is his name in the title?

3) And how far back do the movies go? What's the proportion of movies by decade?

I'm not sure if he's the author (there are two "editors" credited), but he selected the 300 movies that were analyzed.

It seems to be an even distribution between the decades for the most part. Although it's already out of date, what with Avatar's recent domination. Also I understand the need for a level playing field, but this book has all money written in a default adjusted"2005 dollars" and then the actual cost/gross/salary in parentheses. The choice of year itself is pretty strange too, considering the book covers films out up till 2009.

I did appreciate the stories about the films, each film gets two pages, one devoted to it's stats/Oscars/etc, and the other to facts about it's production and distribution. I would have liked expanded notes on certain movies. As it is, it reminds me of those "lists of top colleges" books I would look at in High School, that starts to get a little robotic if you read it for too long at once. Still a really good book though, it makes me want to go get a highlighter and go through it for cool stories/tips.

There are also nice charts and graphs that break up the decades, showing production budget vs. total gross for franchises, comparing decades to each other, stuff like that. It really puts some things in perspective, but some of the charts are miniscule.

On a similar note, I would like to see a book like this about flops, just to see how things went wrong.