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Watching Where Eagles Dare
by Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer's earlier book on film, Zona, was about Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, so it was perhaps inevitable that he should next devote his unique critical and stylistic energies to Brian G. Hutton's Where Eagles Dare.
A thrilling Alpine adventure starring a magnificent, bleary-eyed Richard Burton and a dynamically lethargic Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare is the apex of 1960s war movies, by turns enjoyable and preposterous.
'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' is Geoff Dyer's hilarious tribute to a film he has loved since childhood: it's a scene-by-scene analysis - or should that be send-up? - taking us from it's snowy, Teutonic opening credits to its vertigo-inducing climax.
"Starred Review. The book complements a popcorn classic while functioning in quite a different register - in place of grandiose, visceral big-screen thrills, Dyer's fleet work gives off a playful, often funny intellectual high." - Publishers Weekly
"An erudite and amusing love song to a loved one the writer knows is not all that deserving." - Kirkus
"Dyer is one of our greatest living critics - not of the arts, but of life itself - and one of our most original writers." - New York
"[Dyer] is a brilliant, intellectually sparkling critic... ['Broadsword Calling Danny Boy'] is a feast of snark throughout, but that is because Dyer is a comedian to his fingertips as well as a very serious man. He would not waste humour on something he didn't care about... there are some superb one-liners... and he really lets his imagination rip on the acting ... moreishly entertaining." - The Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"An entertaining, tongue-in-cheek tribute." - The Sun (UK)
"Highly entertaining, and a fine excuse to watch the movie again ... brilliant." - The Guardian (UK)
"Dyer's wry humour is everywhere evident. .. 'There is never a dull moment in Where Eagles Dare,' he writes, and nor is there in this book." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"A short, eccentric, hugely enjoyable work that succeeds admirably in capturing the daft exuberance of Where Eagles Dare." - Literary Review (UK)
"Dyer makes for a droll guide, combining a scene-by-scene breakdown of the film's silliness with gonzo riffs on its cultural legacy ... this is less a work of film criticism than a jeu d'esprit." - Financial Times (UK)
"This is Geoff Dyer's funniest book yet." - Michael Ondaatje
This information about Broadsword Calling Danny Boy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. He was educated at the local Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is currently living in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at USC.
He is the author of four novels: Paris Trance, The Search, The Colour of Memory, and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling; two collections of essays, Anglo-English Attitudes and Working the Room; and many genre-defying books: But Beautiful, The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, The Ongoing Moment, Zona, about Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker, Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H W Bush and White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World. He ...
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