Book review: "Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Greatest Movies" by Andrew DeGraff and Essays by A.D. Jameson

So the reason that I picked up this book originally is because I thought it might be a good birthday gift for a friend. Before I bought it I picked it up from the library so I could flip through it to see what I thought. The book's real showcase is supposed to be the maps, but I thought they were kind of meh at best and confusing and dumb at worst. The saving grace of this book were the great essays that accompanied each of the maps. (It's kind of funny, I thought maybe I was just being a snob about the maps - I have strong feelings about good maps, it's a weird thing I have, okay? - but a lot of the goodreads reviews I read after the fact shared similar sentiments.) The chapter headings on each of the the movies are also beautifully illustrated.  I had a soft spot for the Raiders of the Lost Ark one specifically.

-Did you know that Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back was delayed filming because Kubrick's shooting schedule for Godfather went long and he took up so many sets on this film lot? Those are two pretty famous movies shot back to back in one spot.

- There is this big link between James Bond and Indiana Jones that I never really put together before but now that I know about it it seems pretty obvious. But I love me some Indiana Jones (if Radiers or Last Crusade is on TV I will stop everything I am doing to watch it until the end) but James Bond always just seems like a whiny prick. Indiana doesn't need gadgets, HE USES BOOKS AND HIS FISTS.(Another thing that I never put together with Raiders and Last Crusade is that Indy and Marian are both fulfilling the dreams of their father's - Marian's was the grail and Henry Sr. the Ark). Good grief now I have go to watch those movies.

-John McTiernan diercted Predator and Die Hard, and they are each other's opposites. John McClane is the Predator taking out a lot of people in one confined place in Die hard.

-In Edward Scissorhands there's a lot of talk about ambrosia salad - "Ambrosia salad is a metaphor for the subdivision. Supposedly divine, it's in fact a sickeningly sweet concoction filled with colored marshmallows that resemble the suburb's houses, squat and identical except for their garish pastel paint jobs."