| By Mike Tyrkus |
“Where do we go from here?” asks Magill’s Cinema Annual 2020 editor Brian Tallerico in the introduction to this year’s edition. He continues his existential quandary: “How will the streaming industry change the way people make movies? How will technology like the smartphone change viewers? And how will anxiety about the state of the world we live in be reflected in our art?” These are only some of the questions that the latest edition of Magill’s Cinema Annual examines as it continues the fine film reference tradition that has defined the VideoHound® series of entertainment industry products that Gale publishes by allowing readers the opportunity to experience the artistry of cinema via some of the best writing on the medium available.
The 39th-annual volume in a series that has developed from the core 21-volume Magill’s Survey of Cinema set—formerly published by Salem Press—Magill’s Cinema Annual 2020, Gale’s 26th volume, contains essay-length reviews of significant domestic and foreign films released in the United States during the previous calendar year.
This latest edition of Magill’s Cinema Annual offers an in-depth retrospective on 225 significant films released during 2019. Continually distinguishing features of the volume, and the series as a whole, include extensive credit sections, domestic box-office grosses, publicity taglines featured in reviews and advertisements, awards and nominations listings, MPAA ratings, as well as trivia and additional fun facts for each film in the volume when available.
Magill’s Cinema Annual 2020 also features nine exhaustive indexes (including those covering the directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, art directors, music directors, and performers who helped create the films featured in the subject and cumulative title index—which spans the breadth of the entire Magill’s series); an obit section profiling major contributors to the film industry who have passed away during the previous calendar year; and an annotated list of selected film books from the past year, which all add to the exhaustive amount of information provided in this year’s volume. Most importantly though, are the 225 authoritative critical reviews included within the pages of Magill’s Cinema Annual 2020, complete with author bylines, that complete this essential film studies reference source.
Ford-v.-Ferrari-1Screenshot of Ford v. Ferrari from Magill’s Cinema Annual 2020
To compile this unparalleled collection of film criticism, the Magill’s editorial staff has reviewed a variety of entertainment industry publications, including trade magazines and newspapers as well as other online sources, on a daily and weekly basis in order to select significant films for inclusion in this edition of Magill’s Cinema Annual. After these selections were made, members of the Magill’s staff, and additional contributing reviewers, including various film scholars and other industry professionals, created the reviews that can be found within the pages of the volume.
The Magill’s Survey of Cinema series, now supplemented by the Annual, has been the recipient of the Reference Book of the Year Award in Fine Arts from the American Library Association. Gale, an award-winning publisher of reference products, is proud to again offer Magill’s Cinema Annual as part of its popular VideoHound product line, which also includes VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever 2020.
Magill’s Cinema Annual, 2020 Edition is available in eBook format on Gale eBooks or in print.
Meet the Author
An award-winning independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, Mike Tyrkus has spent much of the last two decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema. He is a standing member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group’s webmaster and current president. His contributions to the world of film criticism can be found in such places as the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Magill’s Cinema Annual, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). Mike is also the editor of VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their two dogs. You can find Mike on Twitter and Facebook, or at CinemaNerdz.com.