Now on eBay: "the mad max movies" by Adrian Martin

[MFP 2020]

http://tinyurl.com/hkqal





Within the 88 pages of "the mad max movies," author Adrian Martin analyzes each movie (Mad Max, Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) in turn, offering up interesting insights about the creation of each, plus many quotes from the people involved.





More than just a simple review, each chapter is a detailed film commentary. If you're looking to add to your collection of Mad Max memorabilia, or to add to your appreciation of this incredible trilogy, you owe it to yourself to bid on this book. (It took me a long time to find; in the end, I had to import it myself from Australia.)





The book itself is in almost new condition, with very minor shelf wear on the back cover. (I love my books and I treat them right!)

[scummy]

I brought this book and found that this guy raved on with big words, and i got lost many times in what he was trying to say . Unless you sit in a dead quiet room with no interuptions you will lose concentration , i personally thought it was crap and a waste of money . Sorry cheers .

[AdrianUK]

Well scummy, I didn't want to be the first to give a bad review of this book but seeing as you've been so reserved!LoL


I purchased the book when it first came out a few years ago,and also posted something similar back then as there were a number of people not impressed.


Martin does review it in a way that is really not how a fan would view it,there is nothing new in the book that we don't already know or haven't read before. It is obvious by the number of mistakes in it (wrong characters in the wrong scene etc.) that Mr Martin obviously watched the movies once with one eye in a newspaper at the same time. The photos are also of 'Xerox' quality.............BUT.........it is ok to add to a Mad Max collection.

[rockatansky4073]

Absolutely, he's too analytical, triesto find sh*t in them, that ain't in them, like a certain ENTITY that used to haunt this forum, plus with suck a cool picture on the front cover, i thought it would be brimming with awesome rare colour pictures, but its got nothing but photocopies of presskits and still we've all got at home.

[Copwatch]

I brought this book and found that this guy raved on with big words

Would it have made you happier if every word had less than three syllables?

I don't know, this seems like a pointless criticism - "the book was bad because I didn't know what those words meant." Huh.

[Peter Barton]

I don't think the above posts are so much to say "the book is bad because the book uses big words". I think the point was more along the lines that the target audience for the book is not necessarily the target audience for the films themselves. They book is aimed more at film theory, analysis and criticism than aimed at being a book for Mad Max fans.

[Copwatch]

I like the films. I also understand what the author is saying. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[MFP 2020]

I was starting to feel like a schmuck because I'd liked the book. I didn't necessarily agree with everything he wrote, but that's the subjective nature of criticism. If I like a movie, I will read any criticism, because whether I agree with it or not, it might give me something new to think about. I thought (IIRC) Richard Corliss's review of MM2 was fantastic; there's also a series of video reviews on YouTube about MM2 that seemed to me to overreach a little, but was nevertheless fascinating to watch.

It says a lot about someone if he/she gets upset when someone has a different opinion. I have a much younger cousin who was into some band that i didn't like, and she took it very personally when I criticized the band. (She identified with the band so much that she took criticism of the band as criticism of her. Silly.) I am comfortable in my likes and dislikes, and if someone thinks the Mad Max trilogy is garbage, that opinion has absolutely no bearing on my enjoyment of the movies.

So you know what? I liked the book. I also liked "Trancers." And I won't apologize. For any of it.

[Morrisminor]

I have the book and it's an okay read, maybe a bit rambling in parts and often I found myself at odds with some of his opinions. On page 68 he says "The first two films in the series, to my eyes, are supremely uninterested in landscape, except as the barest and most unvarying of settings or backdrops." Well that's his opinion and he's entitled to it but for me and especially in Mad Max 2 I almost interperet the landscape as one of the most iconic aspects of the films. When Max is setting off from Mundi Mundi and that wide isolating and barren vista emphasised by the blowing wind sound fx and the sense to let the shot create its own athmosphere with the absense of a musical score. Well, I'm pretty sure "landscape" was well within George Millers mental palette when he was conceiving that shot. And Broken Hill....
And on page 1 he states how Mad Max has influenced various film-makers such as "the delirious, supernatural or sci-fi fantasy-thrillers of Tsui Hark in Hong Kong, Luc Besson in France and Guillermo "De" Toro in Mexico." Well Hark and Besson I could maybe buy into, (Bessons Le Dernier Combat was referred to in the press at the time as "the thinking mans Mad Max), but Del Toro? Unless he said so himself, and if he did he should have been directly quoted by Martin, I don't see it in his work, not even in Blade 2. The book is fine. It'll open you to some ideas albeit they stem from Adrian Martins interpretations of the series.
Now what we really need is a book like the one Paul M. Sammon did for Blade Runner...FUTURE NOIR the making of Blade Runner.http://www.amazon.com/Future-Noir-Makin ... 285&sr=8-3. Something that's well written and researched and reinforces the reputation of the films.

And TRANCERS is awesome...."Dry hair's for Squids!"

[Copwatch]

I can agree with that, I suppose.


Del Toro has stated several times his love for the Mad Max films, and The Road Warrior in particular - most recently, it was one of his "Five Favorite Films" he listed when asked by Rotten Tomatoes, saying that it "transformed the way I see the world."