EBOOK
About
As Ready Player One and Stranger Things prove the retro might of VHS era cinema, Watching Skies: Star Wars, Spielberg and Us is a universal and affectionate tale about the pop cultural remembrances stuck in all our R2 unit's memory systems. Like many a British kid in an 80s world of VCRs, Reagan and Atari, Mark O'Connell wanted to be one of the mop-haired kids on the Star Wars toy commercials. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, and of course Star Wars weren't just changing cinema-they were making lasting highways into our childhoods, toy boxes, and video stores like never before. In this energetic and insightful memoir-through-cinema, O'Connell flies a gilded X-Wing through a universe of bedroom remakes of Return of the Jedi, close encounters with Christopher Reeve, sticker album swaps, a honeymoon on Amity Island, and the trauma of losing an entire Star Wars figure collection. A unique study on how a rich galaxy of movies continue shaping big and vital cinema to this day, Watching Skies is for all Star Wars kids-whatever their era. It is about how George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, a shark, two motherships, some gremlins, Ghostbusters, and a man of steel jumped a whole generation to hyperspace.
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Reviews
"This book is a terrific look at growing up geeky, with touchstones familiar to those of us of a certain age who grew up with the original Star Wars, Spielberg movies- you know. The good stuff. O'Connell encapsulates the joy of encountering all that stuff at an innocent age, and better yet, makes the case for its effect on him (and our generation) as we grew up into bigger kids. It's poignant, but
REVOLUTION SF
"Wrapped around a beautifully evocative cover, reminiscent of many Close Encounters of the Third Kind promotional images, O'Connell is deft with his words, bringing back old memories in technicolour that remind us (those of us old enough to remember anyway) just what it was that got us so invested, especially British kids raised on a diet of Doctor Who and '60s re-runs… There's never been a more p
STARBURST
"But what made me a lifelong fan of Mark and his wonderfully magical book down 1980s movie memory lane is that Mark gave me… the feeling of belonging."
MOVIES OVER THE RAINBOW