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"I consider myself a student of the cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study." -- Quentin Tarantino

In a move that will surprise absolutely no one familiar with the chatterbox director / screenwriter / actor - although that's not meant to sound like a slight - 'QT' pens his first non-fiction work with the essay collection Cinema Speculation. Given his own silver-screen output thus far, his choice of films worthy of discussion largely adhere to crime and suspense dramas or revenge flicks from the 70's from when he was just an impressionable pre-teen or adolescent trolling the double features of his neighborhood's grindhouses and movie palaces in that pre-multiplex era. So readers get his take on movies such as Bullitt (yes!), Dirty Harry (yes!), Deliverance, The Getaway, The Outfit, Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder,Escape from Alcatraz, and Hardcore along with the odd inclusions of the forgotten comedy-drama Daisy Miller (one of director Peter Bogdanovich's less-remembered efforts) and the somewhat-obscure horror film The Funhouse (its director Tobe Hooper is still best-known for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Tarantino is in his element when discussing these and many other title-dropped films - and I'm a fan of both Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, so as Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie quipped in Django Unchained that "You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention" - and it was fun and informative book. Additionally, Tarantino also composes a couple of offbeat chapters focusing on the L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas as well the 60's 'New Hollywood' segue into the 70's 'movie brat' transition of directors. However, a fair amount of page time (two chapters) was also devoted to Taxi Driver, and since that was never one of my favorite films those sections seemed to drag on a little bit. Still, it's been said that Hollywood briefly had its second 'Golden Era' in the 70's, and Tarantino's take on some of the films from that period helps to support that claim.