From Amazon
What began as a special on the centenary of film in Canada by
Take One magazine in 1996 is now the most comprehensive and accessible guide on the subject to date. As befits its nature as a reference book,
Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film employs a careful, measured, and eminently sensible approach. This is not the place to find impassioned defences of
Porky's or "think pieces" on the oeuvre of Leslie Nielsen. Instead, the book respectfully lists the achievements of Canadians through every era of film history, from Mack Sennett and Mary Pickford in the silent era to present-day figures like Atom Egoyan and Patricia Rozema. The guide's mission, writes editor Wyndham Wise in his preface, is to recognize Canadians' "important but largely unrecorded contribution to the history of cinema." Films like Norman McLaren's
Neighbours, Paul Tana's
La Sarrasine, Guy Maddin's
Careful, Egoyan's
Exotica, and Denis Villeneuve's
Maelstrom are described in venerated tones, but the book is also largely free of snobbishness, with cult classics such as
Strange Brew,
Prom Night, and, yes,
Porky's all meriting mentions. Some of the decisions about what not to include are mystifying, and the guide is also afflicted with something of a regional bias, judging by the fact that younger filmmakers from Ontario and Quebec (e.g., Villeneuve, Jeremy Podeswa) are more likely to merit entries than their contemporaries in the West (e.g., Bruce Sweeney, Lynne Stopkewich). That said,
Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film still rates as the most thorough and useful reference book on the cinematic achievements of the Great White North.
--Jason Anderson
Book Description
Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film is the most exhaustive and up-to-date reference book on Canadian film and filmmakers, combining 700 reviews and biographical listings with a detailed chronology of major events in Canadian film and television history. Compiled by Wyndham Wise, the editor and publisher of Take One, Canada's most respected film magazine, with a foreword by Canadian director Patricia Rozema, this is the only reference book of its kind published in English.
Each film title is listed with credits, a mini review, and significant awards. Biographical listings of directors, producers, actors, writers, animators, cinematographers, distributors, exhibitors, and independent filmmakers are accompanied by date and place of birth, date of death if applicable, a brief career overview, and a filmography. Wise celebrates Canadian achievement on both a national and an international scale, and juxtaposes the distinctly Canadian with Canada's exports to Hollywood: Maury Chaykin and Jim Carrey, John Candy and William Shatner, Mon Oncle Antoine and Porky's, Highway 61 and Meatballs, The Red Violin and The Art of War.
From great early Hollywood stars like Walter Huston, Fay Wray, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and Marie Dressler, to our current crop of star directors - including Patricia Rozema, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand, Peter Mettler, Guy Maddin, and Robert Lepage - Canadians have made an important but largely unrecorded contribution to the history of world cinema. Impressive for its breadth of coverage, refreshing in its opinionated informality, this comprehensive and lively look at Canadian film culture at the start of the twenty-first century admirably fills the gap.
