1999 / Ebook / 79 pages / USA
***
BFI books permit authors to peter out at a pathetic page count when they ran out of things to say, but this one smartly splits the assignment between scholars who bring different expertise to the dissection of a grim folk tale. I favoured the musings on mathematical framing over the history and politics.
2007 / Ebook / 97 pages / UK
**
Excessive postmortem of a vintage Post Office propaganda piece (evidently more detailed than many proper films are worth), though I could probably wax similarly tedious about some of my favourite adverts, if tasked with writing the book on the early-90s CIC Video Star Trek VHS trailer or something.
1994 / Ebook / 96 pages / UK
*
A brief biography of W. C. Fields, whom we're presumably supposed to be bowled over by as he pratfalls between laboured comedy skits, these recapped verbatim and illustrated by page-using screencaps, because there's just not that much to say, really.
2006 / Ebook / 88 pages / USA
***
The tramp and his most serious silliness are examined in their crazy context. The standard scene by scene breakdown is more justified when they're near-silent vignettes. Complete with deleted scenes and archive talking heads, this is all you could ask from a worthwhile documentary.
1998 / Ebook / 76 pages / UK
**
I hadn't made it far into this nonsense nightmare without a walkthrough. He provides the background and clarifies the visual foreign puns and other elusive things, but a person who's so enthusiastic about this shit isn't someone you really want to spend even a stingy page count with.
