Empire Magazine - Olly Richards - November 2005
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Review Text:
Birthing place to the likes of The Third Man, Alien and Gladiator, the walls of Shepperton Studios are thick with stories. So, sensibly, rather than go the stuffy academic history route, this plush volume pieces together an oral history from virtually everyone who ever lifted a boom or made a cup of tea there.
The star names are present - the late Sir John Mills, Tony Scott (one of the studios' current owners), Kenneth Branagh, Richard Attenborough - offering their own potted history of how their careers bounced back and forth to the facility. But it's the accounts of the people whose names, or even job titles, you've never heard that give the studios a sense of importance.
Many of those recounting their experiences have spent close to their entire career moving around the various departments of Shepperton, experimenting with multiple disciplines before finding their place among what is widely acknowledged as the greatest pool of technical filmmaking talent in the world. With each instalment is painted a picture of a community, rather than a business, riding through wars and other disasters on the strength of its workers.
This is not a book to be rushed through, but a cosy read to be absorbed slowly, preferably with something black-and-white playing on the TV in the background. It may be subtitled 'A Visual Celebration' - many of the previously ubpublished shots are stunning - but it's in the words and feeling of its contributors that this really celebrates its subject.
Olly Richards
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GQ Magazine - Paul Wilson - November 2005
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Review Text:
You know how extras on a DVD can be better than the movie? Well, think of Shepperton Studios: A Visual Celebration as a volume of material from over 70 years of great cinema, only without the films to muck things up.
Not that the studios, located in Middlesex, haven't birthed some fantastic films - Alien, The Third Man, Dr Strangelove, Gladiator and dozens more. Along with Pinewood (with which it now forms a plc), Shepperton is Hollywood's favourite eastern outpost and a pillar of the British film industry. This summer, The Da Vinci Code was filmed there, and a ten-year expansion programme for the studio is already in place.
A bright future, then, to match a fascinating past, documented in a book with more than 300 photos, which comes with a DVD of trailers of the studios' finest. A limited edition of 750 numbered copies (£125) has the DVD, a presentation box and a campaign brochure from the original of The Wicker Man.
Paul Wilson
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