The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition
The first edition of this work was published in 1975 (under the title Biographical Dictionary of Cinema). More than 100 new entries have been added since the last edition, in 2010, including Amy Adams, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joaquin Phoenix, and Robin Wright. Thomson is not shy about broadcasting his very personal views on people involved in filmmaking, among them performers, directors, producers, writers, and translators. (As examples of the highly subjective nature of the work, the entry for Sir Kenneth Branagh includes the line, “Nothing suggests that Branagh is either competent or interesting when detached from Shakespeare,” while the entry for Jodie Foster sidetracks into an odd commentary on the provenance of her children.) Each person is listed alphabetically by surname, with birth and death dates (where applicable) and place of birth. Director entries contain a chronological list of film titles. Entries range from several paragraphs to a couple of pages.   Readers need to come to the text with the awareness that it is less a reference tool than a very readable collection of commentaries on a wide range of motion-picture people and their work. This book—with its at times very opinionated perspective—is suitable for most medium-sized and large public libraries, for both reference and circulating collections. Libraries owning older editions will want to replace with this version. --Rebecca Vnuk