Monday, January 25, 2010

Starstruck

Ira M. Resnick is founder of the Motion Picture Arts Gallery and has served the Film Society of Lincoln Center as both a board member and trustee. However, as far as I'm concerned, those credits are less important than his status as a first-rate collector nerd. Resnick has a collection of 2,000 vintage movie posters and 1,500 stills. Starstruck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood collects 250 posters and 40 stills from that stockpile, covering the best of Hollywood from 1912 to 1962. Interestingly, the book is as much about Resnick's odyssey as a collector as it is about cinema history. Starstruck discusses the process by which he acquired art beginning with his time studying at NYU Film School and offers tips to collectors, while also charting stars' and directors' careers, with images organized both thematically and chronologically. That kind of insight into the cinema buff and collector mindset is a fun idea and should be a refreshing break from the glut of classic poster reproduction books.

Starstuck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood (with a foreward by Martin Scorsese [who's name is spelled wrong on the publishers site!]!) is due to be published on February 15.

2 comments:

Michael said...

How come you never beg me to relate some collectoresque anecdotes when you see me and then rest your head on your hand all bound up in rapt attention and whatnot waiting for the words to roll out? I have over 2000 film posters, you know.

Hmmph. I guess this Resnick chump gets all the girls too.

aaron said...

Ahem, I distinctly remember a conversation where I asked you to clarify why Mexican paper was inferior to European paper AND listened with rapt attention to your answer (which was extremely racist, by the way).