Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions Kindle Edition

great book-my roommate loved it

The media could not be loaded. If you like Guillermo del Toro's films, heard of his Bleak House but have never seen what's inside, or just admire his sense and sensibilities, this is going to be an incredible book for you. It provides wonderful insight into the working mind of a director and eclectic collector.This is a big and heavy book. The hardcover is nicely embossed to make it feel like a wooden bookshelf. Inside, the book is filled with plenty of pictures and extensive text which makes for a substantial reading.The book's roughly split into three parts, covering his collections, notebooks and lastly the unfinished projects.The first part shows off the amazing collection of items found in his man cave, also known as Bleak House. There are photos of the different rooms and the incredible amount of objects he collects. There are movie props, huge piles of books, all sorts of character figures, a few life-size sculptures, one is of H.P. Lovecraft, in the hallway there's the monster Sammael from Hellboy and many more. The whole place feels like an intimate museum. The photos are delightful, and when you look closely you can spot surprises, such as a Totoro or a book you might also have read.In this section, GDT also talks about his graphic inspirations, on how he read paintings, analyse films, explains his techniques of storytelling and his idea incubating notebooks. Fascinating.The second part on notebooks actually looks at the eight films he has made so far, namely Cronos, Mimic, The Devil's Backbone, Blade II, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II and Pacific Rim.In interview style, author Marc Scott Zicree (MSZ) and GDT talks at length and in detail the inspiration behind each film. It's really insightful to read about how the ideas morph and evolve. No all ideas get used, of course, but you'll still see them in the notebook pages. You'll gain much more if you've watched the movies, although that is not totally necessary, but highly recommended. Pacific Rim's coverage is sadly much shorter than the other films.The numerous scanned notebook pages really provides another dimension to how GDT's mind works. There's quite a lot to read from the notebooks' captions alone. Also included are amazing concept designs from GDT himself.GDT says the notebooks are for his daughters, but they only draw manga style and find his drawings reprehensible and horrible. That's pretty funny. Author MSZ managed to elicit lots of interesting bits of information with thoughtful questions.The last part on unfinished projects is quite brief. Five projects are mentioned with each taking two pages.Interspersed throughout the book are also write-up by prominent guests, such as James Cameron, John Landis, Alfonso Cuaron, Ron Perlman, Mike Mignola and others just to name a few.What's missing in the book is perhaps his role as a producer on other films. I would love to read about what he does as a producer. It's not mentioned in any way, but that's a small issue.Overall, this is a truly insightful and incredible book. Highly recommended.(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

The media could not be loaded. If you've followed the career of director Guillermo del Toro, you no doubt have an admiration for his films. On the whole, some films are more successful than others - but they all have great design work. In particular, his films are known for their abundance of creatures (some elegant, others terrifying).We get personal artwork from every film that Mr. del Toro has directed - "Cronos", "Mimic", "The Devil's Backbone", "Blade II", "Hellboy", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Hellboy II: The Golden Army", and "Pacific Rim". Most of these are early drawings, sketches, and storyboards - and some of it differs greatly from what appears in the finished film. There are also full-page scans from del Toro's idea journals, which includes extensive writing in both English and Spanish. I am so glad that this artwork has been made available, it shows how much time and effort goes into the designs of these movies.Del Toro has been attached to dozens of projects, yet he has only made 8 films. So there's a lot of work that has yet to make it to the screen - fortunately, we also get a few pages of designs from some of these unfinished projects, such as "At the Mountains of Madness" and "Meat Market".By far the best and most numerous designs come from "Pan's Labyrinth" and the two "Hellboy" movies... a lot of the book's real estate is dedicated to those films. In terms of disappointments, I would have liked to have seen more from "Pacific Rim" - there are about 10 pages or so on that movie, but oddly there are no Jaeger or Kaiju drawings.What's NOT included in the book: most notably, del Toro spent 2+ years working on pre-production of "The Hobbit" before leaving the project. As a fan, I would have loved to see some of his artwork from Middle-Earth. Also, del Toro has overseen various Dreamworks Animation projects, like "Rise of the Guardians" and "Kung Fu Panda 2". I'm not sure how hands-on his involvement with those films was, but its hard to imagine he didn't sketch out something for those movies.There are a number of notable individuals who author pages discussing their friendship/collaboration with Guillermo del Toro:James Cameron - director of "Titanic" & "Avatar"; writes the book's Foreword.Alfonso Cuaron - acclaimed director of "Children of Men" & "Gravity", longtime friend of del Toro.Mike Mignola - artist and writer of HellboyRon Perlman - actor who has appeared in many of del Toro's moviesTom Cruise - was set to star in del Toro's film "Mountains of Madness"; writes the book's Afterword.We also get an extensive interview with del Toro, and photographs from his Bleak House (an entire house full of horror artifacts, models, and artwork that inspire him).

I ordered this book for my Reddit Secret Santa giftee who is an aspiring film maker. I had it shipped to me first so I took a look at it and I have to say this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever laid eyes on.The content is artistic and thought provoking and though in no film buff, it has made me respect the work of Del Toro even more.Most of all, my Secret Santa Giftee loved it, and that’s all that matters. It’s an expensive book to be sure, yet worth every penny and makes a really nice gift for someone else or for your own coffee table.

What a great freaking book. There is a lot more text than I anticipated, including in depth interviews with Guillermo about his thoughts on each project. The sketch book pages that are reproduced here have a lot of handwritten notes in Spanish (naturally, considering whose sketch books they are!) and the text is translated in English on the side so you can understand what he has written. There are essays by some of his friends and collaborators (like Ron Perlman) and the description and pictures of his physical collections in his house and office are fascinating. My only complaint is I couldve eaten up twice as many pics and scans as there are! But don't worry there are a lot of them, and the book is truly fascinating if you are interested in seeing a complicated and interesting artist's process close up.