Oscar A to Z

by Charles Matthews and Charles Mathews

An encyclopedic listing of more than 2,400 feature films in which a performer, director, designer, or composer was nominated for or received an Academy Award offers detailed and insightful synopses of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385473648
• ISBN13: 9780385473644
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Main Street Books
• Length: 1138 Pages
• Weight: 3.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 7.6" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Oscar resource

An excellent guide to the Oscar nominees and winners from 1927 through 1994. Though more regular updates would be nice, what is in the book will make any film/Oscar buff's cerebrum tingle. Matthews has done exhaustive research on every film nominated for an Oscar (excluding documentary/short film nominees), and though there are some minor errors (e.g., his footnote on actors who direct themselves to Oscar nominations omits Charles Chaplin, and he neglects to note that the first best picture winner without a corresponding director nomination was, in fact, 1927-28 winner "Wings."), in the main the book is a reliable compendium of Oscar minutiae and trivia. Particularly convenient are the book's cross-references and comprehensive index, which allow one to quickly skim through a particular nominee's full list of Academy laurels. Due to space, he does not single out every nominated individual for a bio sketch, but does cover the majority of actors, directors and writers in Oscar's annals. Matthews also displays a nice tone of needling disbelief in addressing some of Oscar's more ridiculed choices ("Gandhi" over "E.T.," to cite one). This is more of a straight reference guide to the Oscars than, say, "Inside Oscar," which pads its nominations/wins lists with juicy anecdotes on every ceremony, but it is an essential addition to any serious film scholar's library.