Re: Books, movies and records of the year
Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 6:35 pm
1975
Record of 1975 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | 45 rpm single | all time #13
"With Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen achieved the perfect balance between working-class reality and rock & roll mythology. A blue-collar fairy tale evoking Phil Spector in its romanticized grandeur and Bob Dylan in its street-corner poetic grit. Born to Run is teen melodrama in excelsis, overblown and histrionic in ways Spector never imagined; it smacks of the kind of palpable, life-or-death desperation which threads its way through everything from Romeo and Juliet to Rebel Without a Cause, where every action, every thought, and every word bears the complete weight of the world. Born to Run is first and foremost a celebration of the rock & roll spirit, capturing the music's youthful abandon, delirious passion, and extraordinary promise with cinematic exhilaration." (Jason Ankeny, All Music)
Movie of 1975 | Zerkalo (The Mirror) | Andrei Tarkovsky | USSR | all time #30
"Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicised art —no less than a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal— and succeeds. Intercutting a fragmented series of autobiographical episodes, which have only the internal logic of dream and memory, with startling documentary footage, he lovingly builds a world where the domestic expands into the political and crisscrosses back again. Unique its form, unique its vision." (Chris Peachment, Time Out)
Book of 1975 | Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | USA | all time #370
""If there is literature (and this proves there is) this is where it's at” (John Cheever). Saul Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores the long friendship between Charlie Citrine, a young man with an intense passion for literature, and the great poet Von Humboldt Dleisher. At the time of Humboldt's death, Charlie's life is falling apart: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic Mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around." (Publisher)
Books of 1975:
1 | Complete Tales & Poems | Edgar Allan Poe | USA | collection | #55
2 | Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | USA | #370
3 | Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow | USA | #546
4 | World of Wonders | Robertson Davies | Canada | #603
Movies of 1975:
1 | Zerkalo (The Mirror) | Andrei Tarkovsky | USSR | #30
2 | Barry Lyndon | Stanley Kubrick | UK | USA | #50
3 | Nashville | Robert Altman | USA | #85
Albums of 1975:
1 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #17
2 | Blood on the Tracks | Bob Dylan | USA | #21
3 | Horses | Patti Smith | USA | #23
Songs of 1975:
1 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #13
2 | Bohemian Rhapsody | Queen | UK | #39
3 | Thunder Road | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #92
Record of 1975 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | 45 rpm single | all time #13
"With Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen achieved the perfect balance between working-class reality and rock & roll mythology. A blue-collar fairy tale evoking Phil Spector in its romanticized grandeur and Bob Dylan in its street-corner poetic grit. Born to Run is teen melodrama in excelsis, overblown and histrionic in ways Spector never imagined; it smacks of the kind of palpable, life-or-death desperation which threads its way through everything from Romeo and Juliet to Rebel Without a Cause, where every action, every thought, and every word bears the complete weight of the world. Born to Run is first and foremost a celebration of the rock & roll spirit, capturing the music's youthful abandon, delirious passion, and extraordinary promise with cinematic exhilaration." (Jason Ankeny, All Music)
Movie of 1975 | Zerkalo (The Mirror) | Andrei Tarkovsky | USSR | all time #30
"Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicised art —no less than a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal— and succeeds. Intercutting a fragmented series of autobiographical episodes, which have only the internal logic of dream and memory, with startling documentary footage, he lovingly builds a world where the domestic expands into the political and crisscrosses back again. Unique its form, unique its vision." (Chris Peachment, Time Out)
Book of 1975 | Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | USA | all time #370
""If there is literature (and this proves there is) this is where it's at” (John Cheever). Saul Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores the long friendship between Charlie Citrine, a young man with an intense passion for literature, and the great poet Von Humboldt Dleisher. At the time of Humboldt's death, Charlie's life is falling apart: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic Mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around." (Publisher)
Books of 1975:
1 | Complete Tales & Poems | Edgar Allan Poe | USA | collection | #55
2 | Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | USA | #370
3 | Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow | USA | #546
4 | World of Wonders | Robertson Davies | Canada | #603
Movies of 1975:
1 | Zerkalo (The Mirror) | Andrei Tarkovsky | USSR | #30
2 | Barry Lyndon | Stanley Kubrick | UK | USA | #50
3 | Nashville | Robert Altman | USA | #85
Albums of 1975:
1 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #17
2 | Blood on the Tracks | Bob Dylan | USA | #21
3 | Horses | Patti Smith | USA | #23
Songs of 1975:
1 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #13
2 | Bohemian Rhapsody | Queen | UK | #39
3 | Thunder Road | Bruce Springsteen | USA | #92