Nicole Kidman

Book Description

From the brilliant film historian and critic David Thomson, a book that reinvents the star biography in a singularly illuminating portrait of Nicole Kidman—and what it means to be a top actress today. At once life story, love letter, and critical analysis, this is not merely a book about who Kidman is but about what she is—in our culture and in our minds, on- and offscreen.

Tall, Australian, one of the striking beauties of the world, Nicole Kidman is that rare modern phenomenon—an authentic movie star who is as happy and as creative throwing a seductive gaze from some magazine cover as she is being Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Here is the story of how this actress began her career, has grown through her roles, taken risks, made good choices and bad, and worried about money, aging, and image.

Here are the details of an actress’s life: her performances in To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge!, The Hours, and Birth, among other films; her high-visibility marriage to Tom Cruise; her intense working relationship with Stanley Kubrick and her collaborations with Anthony Minghella and Baz Luhrmann; her work with Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Renée Zellweger, and John Malkovich; her decisions concerning nudity, endorsements, and publicity.

And here are Thomson’s scintillating considerations of what celebrity means in the life of an actress like Kidman; of how the screen becomes both barrier and open sesame for her and for her audience; of what is required today of an actress of Kidman’s stature if she is to remain vital to the industry and to the audiences who made her a prime celebrity.

Impassioned, opinionated, dazzlingly original in its approach and ideas, Nicole Kidman is as alluring and as much fun as Nicole Kidman herself, and David Thomson’s most remarkable book yet.

Customer Reviews:

Strange, disappointing work by noted film critic.......2007-03-04

I chose this book not because of its subject so much as because David Thomson wrote it. I own his "New Biographical Dictionary of Film" and have enjoyed reading the mostly thorough entries and catty comments it contains. "Nicole Kidman" is a tiresome and creepy disappointment, however. It is more filmography than biography and consists largely of Thomson's fantasies of how Kidman's films could be remade to better suit him, as well as a good deal of fretting about her "advancing age" (she will turn 40 this year) and the inexorable concomitant decline of her beauty, sex appeal, etc., which the author seems to take entirely for granted. I recommend this book only to diehard Kidman fans (a member of which I am not, although I have managed to see and enjoy most of her films anyhow, and think much of her work is just fine the way it is) who will read anything printed about her, no matter how bizarre or repugnant. Critics (and dirty old men) like Thomson should find someone more deserving of being picked on.

disappointment.......2006-11-14

Most people buy biographies because they have an existing interest in that star and want to get more of an insight into that particular personality. This book provides absolutely no new revelations into this talented actress. Instead we are forced to be the audience to David's views on each and every film and how he feels she could have done better/worse etc. There are very few interviews with people that have worked with her, few details about why she made her films choices, how the films were put together, and how she has become such a bankable star. He quotes from other magazine and interviews she has done, which we all have access to, and talks like he knows her intimately even though it is revealed they only spoke for a few minutes on the phone. I understand this was an unauthorised biog, but surely there could have been some proper investagative journalism and research done to provide the reader with new information on Nicole, instead of boring us with his own theories. Shame on you David! We bought this book to learn more about Nicole not about you.

Totally original.......2006-10-24

No one writes about films the way David Thomson does. Yes, this is a love letter to an actress, but more than that, it is a humorous, insightul look at current movies, and our culture. Not your standard biography, this book is much more than that, and a real treat from beginning to end.

frustrating and brilliant at the same time.......2006-10-16

Thomson's writing style, for me, is the definition of incisive, and like the old master, Stanley Kubrick, who he writes about in the book, he can be maddening just as often as he can be gratifying. He's at his best when he writes about the nature of the film medium and how films act on our subconscious sexual longings, which, I'm am convinced, is the only true way we react to movies. The rest (talk about camera movement, cinematography, nuanced performances) resides somewhere between posing and intellectual fodder. The Human Stain is a highly problematic film, but my attention was galvanized throughout, not by Faunia Farley's plight, but by the ghost of a promise of a far more alluring dream: of myself running in and rescuing poor helpless Nicole. Puerile and childish, maybe, but Thomson is the only critic I know who is audacious enough to address the movie that exists BETWEEN the individual audience member and the movie, the only movie that really exists, as opposed to the inert play of shadows and light projected on a screen. His sin, and the source of most of the negative reaction this book seems to be getting, it seems, is to discuss the movie between himself and the screen in total honestly, making no bones about it. Movies are not primarily about technical precision; they're about how they speak to our unconscious fears and our frustrated sexuality and when someone puts their finger on that, we tend to recoil.

I'm torn right down the middle by this book. The aforementioned comments about the nature of the medium are fresh and vital, as in his other, much better book, The Whole Equation; when it comes to film, Thomson has his eye turned to the future, to how digital technology is sapping the life-likeness from our films and to the numbing realization that people are gradually drawn to the falseness of movies instead of their brilliant capacity to evoke life. Movies are in a state of ignominous decline, and that apprehension seeps into how he sees Kidman; the possiblity of Botox, the lamentable last few entries on her resume. He's courageous to share his fantasies of Nicole with us, and I hope he's being honest about them, because otherwise my view of the man would change entirely. The problem remains that virtually no one wants to hear about the fantasies of an aging, portly, grey-haired man; we have our own fantasies, thank you. Do Thomson's fantasies justify themselves in the degree to which they yield insights to how we view movies, and Nicole, etc.? That's a subjective thing and negotiating that line as I read the book was what made "Nicole Kidman" a predominately queasy experience for me.

Also, his reviews of Nicole's films, which is really what I bought the book for, are depressingly shallow. A little more talk about the movies on the screen rather than the ones in Thomson's head would have been appreciated here, as his hypothetical, what if? movies aren't quite as interesting as he seems to think they are.

Far from Thomson's first priority, I think, is to comfort his reader. He seems better than anybody else at getting us to see movies as dubious objects that sap our energies and emotions rather than revivifying them. This book will be rewarding as long as you don't mind bumping into the author on your way to Nicole.

A "biography" that should be an embarassment to the author.......2006-10-14

This book is not so much a biography (let alone an authorized biography) as it is a trite apologetic for the author's own obsession with Nicole Kidman. Thompson offers an armchair deconstruction of film and film-making in an effort to lend his book some semblance of critical purpose. His conclusion however, (all movie actors are hollow shells of human beings with whom we interact in a mutual desire to fill some assumed void; movies are only viewed as an extension of star-worship) generalizes his own neurosis and obsessions to his readers. These kinds of sweeping generalizations permeate the text (all Australian's are driven by rage??) and would not pass muster in a college freshman writing course.

Thompson's chummy style, implicating the reader in his own onanistic obsession, is grotesque. Personally, I do not surf the web looking for nude and semi-nude pictures of Ms. Kidman, nor do I share Thompson's morbid fantasies of her waking up "screaming" at the realization that she is aging. This falls firmly under the category of "too much information" and should give the reader a clue as to the proprietary and even sadistic bent of Thompson's attachment to and fascination with the actress.

Ultimately, Thompson's argument that Ms. Kidman shamelessly courts the limelight begging to be worshiped in an effort to "be" what we desire speaks more truth about Thompson's own need to justify his voyeuristic impulses than it does about Ms. Kidman's attitude towards privacy and public notice. It brings to mind the kind of defense offered at rape trials that the girl was "asking for it" because she had on too much makeup. And the rape analogy can be taken farther. The availability of coverage of her personal life is primarily the product of those industries secondary to the film industry - the tabloids, entertainment broadcasts and yes, critics, who obtain their own celebrity and make their living by marketing the image of others. In so doing, they take something as essential to a human being as their identity out of their hands, craft or even reinvent it and sell it like a comodity for their own gain.

Thompson exemplifies the worst of this parasitic behavior, reducing Nicole Kidman to the shell of a public persona crafted largely by others, and presuming to therefore "know" her, all the while blaming her for the shallowness of that image. Worse yet, in a volume that bears Ms. Kidman's name and likeness on the cover, Thompson uses this "biography" to showcase his own obsession and his own fantasy-driven "insights" into popular culture and film. A book like this, nothing more than fantasy-rendered-as-biography, can only be regarded as an act of violence against its very subject.

Average customer rating:

Nicole Kidman: The Biography
An Enjoyable Biography
GREAT READ!
Best present ever!
As close as we can get

Nicole Kidman: The Biography
Lucy Ellis , and Bryony Sutherland
Manufacturer: Aurum Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 185410926X

Book Description

The first–ever biography of this dazzling Hollywood star.

Customer Reviews:

Nicole Kidman: The Biography.......2007-01-09

I really liked this biography about Nicole Kidman. It is detailed, not too emotional, rather facts-oriented and seems honest.

An Enjoyable Biography.......2006-05-08

This is the only Nicole Biography I have ever read. It is written by two English authors. It is long and the print is small, so one must be prepared to spend some time reading it.

It covers her childhood up through the time of writing. The authors seem to have done extensive research on Nicole, so appear to have covered all the bases. Her career is written about in great detail and there is sufficient mention of her personal life to keep the reader wanting more.

It is not a juicy tell all, though, but instead very respectful of Nicole's privacy. I think one will be surprised to find out the kind of person Nicole really is, the breadth of movies she has done, and also how many of those movies were disturbing and/or quite sexual.

An Enjoyable Biography!

GREAT READ!.......2004-02-22

I really loved this book. I just finished reading it and was disappointed it ended so soon. I didn't know much about Nicole Kidman until I read the biography. As I read it, I felt as though I was living her life; feeling her pain and joy. Whoever reads this book will love it! It truly is a great read!

Best present ever!.......2003-12-30

I was recently given this book by a friend as I am a new Nicole Kidman fan - What a great read! It was really fun, and detailed her life in a chatty but informed way. I didn't know about any of the films she did as a teenager and I am dying to see them and understand the backstage stories more! I think Nicole's a brilliant actress and this is a fitting biography.

As close as we can get.......2003-12-30

I have been following Nicole's career for a while and have always been fascinated by the fact that she breaks all the rules and goes for quirky arty films rather than surefire box office hits. Unlike other reviewers here, I think this biography put those desires into context with her struggle as being labelled Mrs Tom Cruise and the break up of her marriage.
I found it a really interesting read with some different takes on the usual stories. There were also some great tales from her early days back in Australia which I have never heard before. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a bit more about this wonderful actress and mother.

Average customer rating:

Interesting subject, poor writer
nothing new
Eyes Wide Open for Nic
Go, Nic, Go!

Nicole Kidman
James L Dickerson
Manufacturer: Citadel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 080652491X

Customer Reviews:

Interesting subject, poor writer.......2005-08-18

While Nicole Kidman is an interesting subject, and I love to read about her and watch her films, the writer of this book is infantile, and often makes you wonder if he has studied English at all. There are bizarre run-on sentences and wording that simply doesn't make sense. The style is choppy and uninteresting.
You might like this book if you are just hoping to learn a little more on Kidman's life, but expect to overlook some major shortcomings in the writer.

nothing new.......2005-04-25

Same stuff you hear in the news. Doesn't tell you about why or how her marriage broke up or anything else really.

Eyes Wide Open for Nic.......2003-08-12

I see this biography of Nicole Kidman, and, being a red-blooded All-American type, I decided to check out one of my favorite actresses. Having admired Ms. Kidman since her Dead Calm days, I like to claim her as one of my film "discoveries" so there's more than a bit of prejudice about her.

This biography, painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed, is a work of many textures and is an enjoyable as it is thorough.

But, hey, wait until you come to Chapter Seven - "The Making of Eyes Wide Shut" -- the film she and then-husband Tom Cruise made with the late, great Stanley Kubrick.

A longtime admirer of Kubrick's work, I learned some hand-wringing details about ol' Stanley such as whether or not the myths surrounding him and his allegedly bizarre work habits were true or not.

And SEX, oh yes. Nicole Kidman and sex. We see how Kubrick manipulated, managed, whatever, Ms. Kidman's 'love' scenes in Eyes Wide Shut. and how those scenes affected her marriage with the oh-so-nearby Mr. Cruise. This chapter has some of the 'hottest' descriptions I've seen in a serious, almost scholarly, biography. The pages were singed on the ends.

It's here where the reader gets hooked and then digs in for the rest of the ride, particularly after reading the interview with the 'sailor' who did the 'love' scenes with our star.

Go, Nic, Go!.......2003-07-29

As a read, this book is every bit as fabulous as Nicole is an actress. It is filled with psychological insights into her marriage to Tom Cruise and offers the most detailed information yet about her experiences growing up in Australia.

The best part of this book centers on the making of "Eyes Wide Shut." Beyond any doubt, it is the steamiest, most erotic writing I have enountered about a major Hollywood star. My glasses are still steamed over.

Book Description

A look at Hollywood’s brightest star, featuring 60 color photos.

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Nicole Kidman (Export& Airside Only)
Tim Ewbank and , and Hildred Stafford
Manufacturer: Headline Book Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0755311671

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Nicole Kidman: La Biografia
Lucy Ellis , and Bryony Sutherland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Orlando (Unabridged Audio Book)
Virginia Woolf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Product Description

Begun as a "joke," Orlando is Virginia Woolf's fantastical biography of a poet who first appears as a sixteen-year-old boy at the court of Elizabeth I, and is left at the novel's end a married woman in the year 1928. Part love letter to Vita Sackville-West, part exploration of the art of biography, Orlando is one of Woolf's most popular and entertaining works. This new annotated edition will deepen readers' understanding of Woolf's brilliant creation. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, transformed the art of the novel.

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Nicole Kidman: The Biography
Tim Ewbank; Stafford Hildred
Manufacturer: HEADLINE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLKVJA

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OH MY DEAR LORD!

Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Drums
Patrick Wilson
Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Drum Set Warm-Ups: Essential Exercises for Improving Technique

How to Play Drums: Everything You Need to Know to Play the Drums

Drum Basics, Steps One and Two Combined (The Ultimate Beginner Series)

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ASIN: 0882846841

Book Description

This book has everything you need to know to get started. Includes beats and fills in all contemporary styles, including jazz, rock, metal, country and Latin. Technique builders and daily workouts improve your playing step-by-step. Practice tips help you learn drumming skills quickly, as do fun and exciting play-along tunes (with CD). A section on purchasing equipment, tuning and sound modification and drumset maintenance is also included.

Customer Reviews:

OH MY DEAR LORD!.......2000-03-07

this book is AWESOME! buy a lot of copies, you'll see!

Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Drums: CD

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Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Drums: CD
Patrick Wilson
Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews:

Another great Engel product.......2005-01-10

If you've read the core book for Engel, or maybe want a cheap way to learn about the game, this book come highely recomended. It's a comic with more of that lovely Engel art work, but that is all. It's just fiction with no rules or any thing like that. But what it lacks in rules, it suppplies in game history and even potential elements for you to use in your game. The Wanderer is a very interesting character who I'm dying to know more about, the story behind how the Raguelite Himmel falls is a very important part of the games background, some thing that you could work into your game if you wished, and the Pandoramicum is a very ancient and interesting item that I enjoyed reading about. The story as a whole I found very entertaining and dramatic, usefully for any Engel game and just enjoyable on its own terms.

Again, I'll recomend this to any one who is interested in Engel. It gives you a lot of setting info, history, and even a hint at some of the mysteries of Engel. Pandoramicum packs a whole lot into it's 48 pages and at an unresistable price. Why not give it a try?

Sketchy Comic, Short Story........2004-03-12

Indeed, the illustrations were all very sketchy until various points throughout the book(in which details were more fluid, though they were already spectacular). And in that case, I'd hardly consider it a book. However, those were my only real problems, which could have easily been remedied by a color publication. It was more or less what it was worth, and I personally think the story, as grand as it was, was just too short. The summary on the back pretty much tells you the whole story, as there is no real conclusion. The rest of the contained in the book was a toss of brief Engel concepts and histories, so you don't /really/ have to know Engel to know what they're talking about, but it would definitely help get you more into the mood. Those who say this book is a resource to get you into the themes of Engel, have obviously ignored the fact that they know everything outside of this book.

In short, go get Engel before you think this will help you get into the mood of the game, or just shell out 5 bucks for a decent short story.

Great introduction to Engel setting.......2003-05-08

For those needing a break from regular comics, or those looking to get a better grasp on the Engel setting, this book is for you. It has good art and grand story, but serves best as a vessel to getting into the Engel setting.

Players of the Engel game line will benefit from seeing how their characters may interact with the world around them from their place at the Himmel. Referees will see how the Dreamseed creatures terrorize the world, and how to get his Engel players involved.

Overall, a great place to start in Engel.

Book Description

Redefining the way we view business success, Pamela Laird demolishes the popular American self-made story as she exposes the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital--all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty.

In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Laird goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key--access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. She explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. She evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics--effort, innovation, talent--and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections.

In contrasting how Americans have prospered--or not--with how we have talked about prospering, Laird offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.

Customer Reviews:

A must-read for anyone giving serious thought to success and failure.......2007-03-31

Have you ever wondered why some people succeed in the workplace and others just seem to plod along? Have you ever questioned the "rags-to-riches" myths that portray the founding fathers as self-made men? If so, Pamela Walker Laird's magisterial study, PULL, is a must read for you!

Laird is an internationally acclaimed business scholar who set the record straight on marketing's formative years in her first book, ADVERTISING PROGRESS. Now, this prodigiously research new study examines the history of the self-made man, providing an important corrective to the Horatio Alger stories that resonate in the American imagination.

This is not a "how-to book," so if you are looking for step-by-step instructions on how to be successful, you had best look through Amazon for something else. However, if you are looking for a thoughtful, carefully researched analysis that talks about the history of success and failure, you will find much here. Was Benjamin Franklin a "self-made man"? No, says Laird. Franklin, like many others in PULL, was a smart guy, who knew how to work the system and make it work for him. He recognized the importance of developing friends in the right places, and those sponsors PULLed him up the economic ladder.

While Laird starts with Franklin, she brings her story into our own time, with a careful analysis of the pros and cons of equal opportunity and affirmative action initiatives, and a discussion of the real importance of mentoring and sponsorship in the corporate world. Fashionable theorists cited by other Amazon.com reviewers of PULL might speculate on the roots of success, but Laird has rolled up her sleeves, dug through the world's best libraries, and provided the most comprehensive study of success and failure that we have by drawing on real-life examples from the distant and recent past. Theorists and their fans would do well to open their minds to Laird's approach, and to borrow a bit of her elbow grease. Laird acknowledges that theory can suggest new ideas, but it is no substitute for judicious historical research and analysis.

PULL gets an A Plus from this reader!

Disappointing.......2007-03-16

I usually get better ratings for my reviews if I give books good reviews, but I found this one disappointing and would suggest that readers might better spend their time on other books about networks and networking.

The book presses the unremarkable point that social cohesion can exclude people, but it has an angry tone that makes this wrong. Rather than shedding light on the psychological and social forces that replicate these structures, it reads more like a catalog of the injustices that this have been metted out. The philosophical issue of what makes an ideal world where everyone is the best off is complex, and this book does not address this. Most importantly, it references very few of the books and studies that have been done on social networks for the past 70 years. I would recommend that readers look at the works of Mark Granovetter, Charles Tilly, Harrison White and others who have made significant contributions to our undersanding of social structure, much of it based on empirical research and not opinions. The only network researcher she mentions, Wayne Baker, she does in a negative light. I, personally, find Baker's empirical research much more compelling that Laird's.

Historian comes up empty on self-made manhunt.(Book review): An article from: ColoradoBiz

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Historian comes up empty on self-made manhunt.(Book review): An article from: ColoradoBiz
Mike Taylor
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from ColoradoBiz, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 777 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Historian comes up empty on self-made manhunt.(Book review)
Author: Mike Taylor
Publication: ColoradoBiz (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Page: 50(1)

Article Type: Book review

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