November 9, 2009
Coinciding with the release of Avatar
, James Cameron’s first film in over a decade, Time
reporter Keegan’s solid biography of the dynamic director sheds welcome light on his cinematic achievements. Growing up in Ontario and later Los Angeles, Cameron was an accomplished artist and budding scientist who would bring his fascination with new technology to all his films. From his days doing grunt work for Hollywood indie legend Roger Corman—including his first directing job, helming Piranha 2
—Cameron pursued his artistic vision with a passion that often translated into a tyrannical on-set presence. His string of action hits in the 1980s—Terminator
, Aliens
, The Abyss
—made him one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, and he continued through the 1990s, culminating in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic
. With each film, Cameron strove for new technological feats, from shooting tricky underwater dialogue scenes in The Abyss
to the reconstruction of a near life-size version of the doomed ship in Titanic
. Keegan explores not only the director’s achievements on film, including an in-depth look at the 3D-film Avatar
but also his often tumultuous personal life (including his five marriages). Fans of the charismatic director will welcome a look behind the scenes of some of the biggest movies in the last two-plus decades.
December 2, 2009
In this reverential portrait of the creator behind some of the biggest films of the last 25 years (The Terminator, Aliens, and Titanic), former Time Hollywood correspondent Keegan documents the history and technical aspects behind James Cameron's movies, concentrating on his use of special effects, set construction, and the original and sometimes difficult procedures that accompanied his cinematic creations. She begins with Cameron's early life and growing interest in filmmaking and progresses to the 1980s-90s, a decade that solidified his position as a director who made wildly profitable movies and reflected his interest in the intersections between technology and humanity and the possible impact of that relationship on the future. Cameron is a driven and sometimes controversial personality figure, but Keegan focuses almost entirely on his filmmaking and is less concerned with his personal life or critical assessments of the individual films. She concludes with a section on the recent and complex making of Avatar, his first film in over a decade. Verdict Most appropriate for science fiction and technical film buffs, though interest may increase with the big-budget push for the December 2009 release of Avatar.-Jim Collins, Morristown and Morris Twp. Lib., NJ
Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2009
There have already been several books about James Cameron, the director of such films as The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar. But this is the one fans of moviemaking books will want. Keegan interviewed dozens of Camerons friends and colleagues, including actor Bill Paxton, special-effects wizard Dennis Muren, and fellow director Peter Jackson. Unlike previous writers, Keegan appears neither to idolize nor revile Cameron; she admires him as a filmmaker while acknowledging his often abrasive and controversial on-set behavior. She explores how the directors big-budget movies are products, not of an overactive ego, but of a fertile imagination and a lifelong dream of telling stories in pictures. She hits the expected high pointsthe stunning success of and the near-universal predictions of failure for Titanicbut she also spends time on some of the lesser-known episodes from the directors life, including his battles with a British crew on the set of Aliens (reminiscent of George Lucas similar struggles when he was making Star Wars). A fine book, in the same league as J. W. Rinzlers splendid The Making of Star Wars and The Complete Making of Indiana Jones.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)