David Thomson's New Biographical Dictionary of Film

If you know the title of any black and white film apart from Casablanca, if you have a favourite director, if your top 10 list contains films from before you were born, then you can call yourself a movie fan.

For people like us (and I count myself among you), every bit of information about the people involved in making a film helps to enrich the experience of enjoying cinema. The important word in the title of this book is Biographical. Film critic and writer David Thomson's most famous book
contains his very personal thoughts on the movie people who he finds important. There are omissions of course, but a well written personal response to a famous or not so well known actor is worth having more than a completist list of films and their release dates. If you want only the facts go to IMDB.com.

Use this book to dip into, to pique your interest in a director you have never heard of, to get a fresh perspective on an old favourite. If you love movies then this comprehensive movie reference book is a fantastic way to enrich the pleasure you take in reading about, hunting down and watching them.

You may not find the latest teen idol in here but maybe every movie reference dictionary should have an entry on Thomas Edison, who invented the incandescent lightbulb that made cinema possible. Even this man, the foundation of the whole movie business that Thomson loves, comes in for a wry comment: "There's an eerie contradiction between his own humorlessness and the way so many of his inventions made more fun for more people more of the time. Yet Edison probably reckoned he'd discovered the light bulb so that people could work longer hours."