SO FETC H : THE MAKING OF MEAN GIRLS

2 MORE

Life-story time…

QUENTIN BY TARANTINO

★★★★★

This graphic-novel biography from comics creator Amazing Améziane is brimming with lurid style. Imaginary interviews with Tarantino power the book from his childhood to Video Archives, Roger Avary and beyond. Anecdotes mount like bodies as his career begins, propelled by vital collaborators – Harvey Keitel, Sally Menke… The artwork gets the heavy-ketchup flavour of the material, expressing Tarantino’s self-mythologising in ways prose can’t.

LENA HORNE: GODDESS RECLAIMED

★★★★★

Black-cinema expert Donald Bogle delivers an excellent biog of the groundbreaking singer/actor/superstar. Recounting Horne’s life and career via interviews, rare photos and meticulous research, Bogle focuses on the many battles she faced working within a studio system rife with prejudice. He also shines a spotlight on her civil-rights activism. An engrossing study of both Horne’s importance to Hollywood history and the shameful politics of the time.

★★★★★ JENNIFER KEISHIN ARMSTRONG HARPERCOLLINS

Despite Regina George’s doubts, ‘fetch’ is still happening 20 years on from the original Mean Girls. From high school to outer space, pop-culture expert Jennifer Keishin Armstrong shows why with her terrifically readable and rigorous study, a celebration with a sharp eye. Proving the success was no accident, Tina Fey took at least 10 drafts and 18 months to perfect the script, drawing on her life, Heathers and Rosalind Wiseman’s source book. Armstrong assiduously details how director Mark Waters proved crucial, watching every audition during the critical casting process. Insights abound, like how Lindsay Lohan had to be restrained from curling her hair (Plasticsstyle) too early and how Rachel McAdams used censored f-bombs in rehearsals to get into character.

Alongside breakdowns of everything from props to raps, Armstrong is terrific on the virtues of the friendly on-set vibe and fast-take direction. The MPAA ratings battle is wryly detailed, too; bizarrely, a frozen hot dog caused problems…

But it’s in the aftermath that So Fetch excels. Eviscerating tabloid ‘prurience’ over Lohan, Armstrong shows how Mean Girls rewrote the landscape for women in comedy and flourished in meme culture, from Trump/Clinton spats to NASA launches. The musical and new film prove its resilience. And while certain ideas about race/ sexuality may date the 2004 movie – and Wiseman’s profits battles leave a sour taste – the themes of peer pressure and fitting in endure. Truly, the limit does not exist.

BLACK CAESARS AND FOXY CLEOPATRAS

★★★★★

ODIE HENDERSON ABRAMS

The 70s rise of Blaxploitation saw Black culture reclaim the stereotypes that had previously been weaponised against it. Film critic Henderson’s account celebrates the highs of the genre without sugar-coating the lows. The book assumes a base level of Blaxploitation knowledge, making it a niche concern, but if you know your Blacula (1972) from your Youngblood (1978), it’s a fascinating deep dive into a much-misunderstood period of film history.

KUBRICK: AN ODYSSEY

★★★★★

ROBERT P. KOLKER, NATHAN ABRAMS FABER & FABER

Stanley Kubrick was still living when his last fulllength biog was published. High time for another then, a task Kolker and Abrams shoulder well in a 650-page doorstopper that paints its subject as a sometimes volatile self-concealer ‘who hid behind the grandeur of his work and the privacy of his life’. All the masterpieces are covered, though it’s the unrealised projects – collabs with Brando, John le Carré and Ian Fleming, for example – that inform this tome’s most tantalising passages.

50 OSCAR NIGHTS

★★★★★

DAVE KARGER RUNNING PRESS

Golden glory or mixed blessing? Journo Karger elicits broad responses to ‘Hollywood’s biggest night’ in his lively interviews with 50 winners. A strong range of talents share complex feelings: Barry Jenkins recalls that Moonlight mishap ruefully; Elton John thinks he won for the wrong song; Marlee Matlin has terse words for co-star Bill Hurt’s criticisms. Others are more gleeful: Olivia Colman and Halle Berry’s responses deftly disarm our often justified cynicism about the whole circus.