29/10/17: Carrie Fisher – The Princess Diarist (2016)

Subtitled "A sort of memoir...", this book recollects Carrie Fisher's time on set filming Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) – or Star Wars, as it was simply known back then. The main focus is her affair with co-star Harrison Ford. She was 19. He was 33 and married with children. The first 100 pages are highly entertaining, written by the older Carrie looking back at her younger self with all of the wit and wordplay of her excellent novels and previous non-fiction books.

There then follows 68 pages from her journals of the time. These are full of self-conscious teenage angst and poetry and don't make for especially compelling material now. They lack detail of who did or said what, instead examining her emotions and fears. The entries aren’t even given dates. If you are reading this for behind-the-scenes Star Wars gossip, you will be disappointed. These pages are more interesting for the way they chart the development of Carrie Fisher as a writer: by this point she was still to learn all of the tics and tricks that would make her prose sparkle. We learn surprisingly little about Harrison Ford, other than that he was quiet, aloof and possibly even a little dull.

The final third of the book is the most fascinating. She describes how it feels to "be" Leia, the character people seem unable to separate her from, and is acutely aware of her fickle, fading fame. She's especially good when discussing the excruciating sci-fi fan conventions she reluctantly began to attend, selling autographs and meeting admirers. It would be easy for her to have savaged her slightly deranged followers, who often tell her their life stories and detail her impact on their formative years, but she learns to regard them with gratitude and humanity.

What's missing from the book is any reference to working with Harrison Ford again in the Star Wars sequels. Was it awkward? How did they get on? What happened when they had to become an on-screen couple three years after splitting as a real-world couple? And what about when the series was revived for 2015's The Force Awakens and they found themselves acting together again? Shortly after this book was published, Carrie Fisher died. With Ford preferring not to comment on their relationship, this slim book may have to be the last word on the subject.

On page 48 there's a photo of Carrie and Harrison – or “Carrison”, as she calls them – smiling together. They look impossibly young and beautiful.

23/08/16: Hadley Freeman – Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned from Eighties Movies (and Why We Don't Learn Them from Movies Any More) (2015)

Hadley Freeman sees the 1980s as an unheralded golden era of film. Much of the appeal of this book is that it falls somewhere between a chatty, journalistic style of writing and a serious work of film studies. In the interesting introduction, she argues that since the big corporate buy-outs of the studios, film-making has become more formulaic and conservative, with few strong roles for women. I'm not entirely convinced by this. What about Sandra Bullock in Gravity? What about Jennifer Lawrence in The Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games? She also uses the example of the Star Wars prequels being far worse than the 1977–83 originals, which they were, but 2015's Star Wars Episode VII is both a great film and one with a strong female lead. OK, this came out after the book was published, but it does suggest flaws in her theory. I think it's more the case that there have always been great and terrible films made in every decade. But it was good to read a positive reassessment of the 1980s, and I agree with most of her critiques of the films themselves. It’s hard to disagree with her observation that films are now designed to work internationally: nuanced dialogue doesn't translate in the way that helicopter explosions do.

One thing that didn't work so well was her top 10s. These seemed quickly and carelessly thrown together after the well-argued chapters. For example, some of the songs in her top 10 power ballads aren't even power ballads, while she overlooks a song such as Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", which was. Otherwise, an excellent book.

28/03/15: Carrie Fisher – Shockaholic (2011)

Considering all the electro-shock therapy she endured to combat depression (detailed, unflinchingly, in the first chapter), it's incredible how sharp and witty this (sort-of) memoir is. What a great writer. As with the previous book, Wishful Drinking, it details a series of episodes and recollections from Carrie Fisher's professional and personal life. It's far from a full, chronological memoir, and reading the reviews on Amazon, it seems many were disappointed by that brevity. I thought it worked well, as the prose is so rich with wit and anecdotes. There are chapters on her relationships with her father, her stepfather, her one-time stepmother Elizabeth Taylor and so on. There's a very insightful reflection on her friendship with Michael Jackson: she shows real understanding of his problems without taking the easy tabloid route of portraying him as either monster or saint.

The topic she keeps returning to is that of her father, and how she came to know him better in his final years. She recalls him with much humour and love, and never lets sentimentality get in the way of realism: her father was hardly ever there for her, but she adored him anyway. It's touching stuff.

06/02/15: Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman – Annie Hall (1977)

Annie Hall is rightly regarded as a classic film. Such great acting. Such a great script. So many great lines. It's a joy to read them again here. You can really "hear" Woody Allen and Diane Keaton speaking the words. The story – a clever tale about the various stages of a relationship – has a universal, timeless element that transcends the topical references to 1970s USA. And it remains very, very funny.