Videohound S Golden Movie Retriever 1997

The alternative life raft in a sea of similarity, VideoHound competes on content, categories, and indexing, but the dramatic difference is the attitude. Irreverent, slightly tongue-in-cheek, the Hound never takes himself too seriously. The 1997 edition, fully expanded and updated with 1,000 new entries, provides information and opinions on 22,000-plus videos--more than any other guide on the market--including documentaties, made-for-TV movies, and animated features. Includes Web site entertainment directory.

Describes and rates more than twenty thousand videos, and provides indexes by theme, awards, actors, actresses, and directors.

On 4 July, 1910, in 100-degree heat at an outdoor boxing ring near Reno, Nevada, film cameras recorded-and thousands of fans witnessed-former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries' reluctant return from retirement to fight Jack Johnson, a black man. After 14 grueling rounds, Johnson knocked out Jeffries and for the first time in history, there was a black heavyweight champion of the world. At least 10 people lost their lives because of Johnson's victory and hundreds more were injured due to white retaliation and wild celebrations in the streets. Public screenings received instantaneous protests and hundreds of cities barred the film from being shown. Congress even passed a law making it a federal offense to transport moving pictures of prizefights across state lines, and thus the most powerful portrayal of a black man ever recorded on film was made virtually invisible. This is but one of the hundreds of films covered in The A to Z of African American Cinema, which includes everything from The Birth of a Nation to Crash. In addition to the films, brief biographies of African American actors and actresses such as Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Halle Berry, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx can be found in this reference. Through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, black-&-white photos, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organizations, awards, film credits, and terminology, this book provides a better understanding of the role African Americans played in film history.

USA Today gave it a 4-star rating, the Houston Chronicle called it "by far the best" and the New York Times says the "Hound takes the lead in a blaze of supplemental lists". The new 1996 edition of America's favorite guide to movies on video offers over 22,000 video reviews, including 1,000 new reviews.