George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success

A comprehensive look at 300 of the most financially and/or critically successful motion pictures of all time—many made despite seemingly insurmountable economic, cultural, and political challenges—set against the prevailing production, distribution, exhibition, marketing, and technology trends of each decade in movie business history.

This is very informative and a great resource to have on the history of filmmaking inside of Hollywood.

This phone book sized book promised : untold secrets of the cultural and financial success of blockbusters. Blockbusting , what does it mean? To create blockbusters? Nope. This book is mostly a compilation of financial data including films of the 30s and 40s. Nothing you cannot find with a bit of research yourself. For a film lover like myself with some knowledge, I find this book a real bore.

I got this book shortly after it came out, and I gotta say, I'm very impressed with it. It's every film lovers dream come true. Filled with facts, trivia, biographies, production and statistical details, this book is sure to keep you hooked. I have many books on films at home, but not on everything I want to know, so this filled that gap for me in some ways.

I especially like how the films are chrnologically arranged by decade, with not only facts bout the films themselves but also facts about the film trends for that particualr decade. I like how on each of the discriptions of the films, it's arranged by plot, production and distrubution headings. These made the book very easy to read. Also really like the sstatiscal tables which helps put the facts in perspective. I also enjoyed reviewing the extensive bibliography in the back.

The one major crticism I would have of this book is that it's missing some critical films in history. It's lacking such classics as "The Shining", "Planet of the Apes", "Dracula", "The Birds", just to name a few. Maybe sometime there could be some sort of amendment, or a "Blockbusting 2" or something to that effect that covers these and other classics not mentioned.

I have loved having this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who has a passionate interest in films, or students of film.

The pages are the quality of a telephone book, the entries contain nothing you couldn't get from Wikipedia, and this wasn't written OR edited by George Lucas.

While George Lucas may not have actually written any of this book past the introduction, I imagine it may have been his idea at some point. In my little dream sequence George calls in his Personal Assistant and says "I'd like to know what the top 100 films are of all time, go get a bunch of guys to research it".

Liking the results he decides to get a few more people to write reviews on each film. And also throw in some trivia.

Despite the fact that it's not George who has written this weighty tome, it is an excellent resource. Whether you're a film trivia buff or you are interested in film making, you should get hold of this and read it. It is informative AND it is entertaining. In the very least you can pull out a few of the interesting background stories whether at lunch with friends or at a dinner party if any of the films covered comes up in conversation.

With good timing and the right delivery you'll come across as being more interesting and intelligent than you actually are.