PositiveThe Toronto Star (CAN)There’s nothing subtle about Tarantino’s riffs and ripostes about films, directors and actors, which are often laced with profanity and italicized words to really drive home his point. If the author’s name wasn’t an immediate tip-off, it soon becomes apparent that this isn’t your standard tome of film scholarship ... Tarantino occasionally dons the beret of the film professor, albeit a profane one...more of a list of films and directors he admires — almost all of them male — than it is a persuasive argument. You sense he’s included it out of a sense he has to say something that might impress cinema snobs ... He’s at his best and most amusing when he’s simply unpacking a mind stuffed with memories and opinions of favourite films, almost of all them from the 1970s, explaining in detail what he liked or disliked about them ... I would love to have read some elaboration of this philosophy, especially in regards to some of the actors he’s worked with. But Tarantino doesn’t expand on that thought and barely mentions most of his own nine feature films to date (he’s vowed he’ll stop at 10) ... Naming writers for the Los Angeles Times whom he despises — Tarantino really should have bottled this bile, which is unworthy of him — he unloads on movie critics in general...Ka-zing! It’s a strange beef given that most critics I know, present company included, adore Quentin Tarantino movies and can’t wait for his next one ... He remains reliably contrary, quotably obdurate and eternally passionate, qualities that make Cinema Speculation an entertaining trawl through the man’s mind.
Bruce Springsteen
RaveThe Toronto Star...[a] warmly confessional autobiography ... page after page of this generous memoir really brings home the psychic burdens young Bruce endured growing up in his hard-scrabble hometown of Freehold, New Jersey ... The book is light on dirt and dish that could anchor a headline, but it’s loaded with revealing anecdotes.
