Books, Arts & Manners: Catechism and Criticism

Movies on TV—The 1985 Edition, by Steven H. Scheuer (Bantam Books, 780 pp., $4.95)

What mercy can be shown an arbiter of motion pictures who reviews the same film twice, with different star ratings and critical analyses for each (French Cancan and Only the French Can: Strangers and Voyage to Italy); whose knowledge of English linguistics is so poor that he thinks ffolkes is clearly not pronounceable; and who tells his audience that this new book has “all the legendary films —from recent box-office smashes like Raiders of the Lost Ark to timeless classics like Gone with the Wind”— when in fact he lists no films from 1985, none from 1984, and only a smattering from 1983 and 1982?

JG

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John Greenway

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Movies on TV—The 1985 Edition, by Steven H. Scheuer (Bantam Books, 780 pp., $4.95)

What mercy can be shown an arbiter of motion pictures who reviews the same film twice, with different star ratings and critical analyses for each (French Cancan and Only the French Can: Strangers and Voyage to Italy); whose knowledge of English linguistics is so poor that he thinks ffolkes is clearly not pronounceable; and who tells his audience that this new book has “all the legendary films —from recent box-office smashes like Raiders of the Lost Ark to timeless classics like Gone with the Wind”— when in fact he lists no films from 1985, none from 1984, and only a smattering from 1983 and 1982?