We suspect this book plays to an age group, but as that probably includes us, we’re happy to flag up Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from eighties movies by Hadley Freeman.
Out in a couple of weeks via Fourth Estate (bit available to pre-order now), this 320-page book is described by the author as a ‘personalised guide to American movies from the 1980s – why they are brilliant, what they meant to her, and how they influenced movie-making forever’. Strong words.
The films flagged up include comedies such as Three Men and a Baby, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future and Trading Places, hip teen flicks such as Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club and Mystic Pizza, action films including Top Gun, Die Hard, Young Sherlock Holmes, Beverly Hills Cop and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, not to mention the likes of Splash, About Last Night, The Big Chill, Bull Durham, The Little Mermaid, ET, Big, Parenthood and Lean On Me.
The author grew up on a diet of these, with ‘her entire view of the world, adult relations and expectations of what her life’ forged by them. The book looks at the key players, the worlds they created, why children were always more wise than adults, why science was so loved and why the future was viewed with excitement. It also considers how the changes between cinema then and now says so much about pop culture’s and society’s changing expectations and ‘why Pretty in Pink should be put on school syllabuses immediately’.
If that appeals, the book is out on 21st May 2015, selling for £9.74.
