Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.

    The true origins of her birth, her fairy-tale discovery in Hollywood, and her career struggles at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are revealed for the first time. Garson combined an everywoman quality with grace, charm, and refinement. She won the Academy Award in 1941 for her role in Mrs. Miniver, and for the next decade she reigned as the queen of MGM. Co-star Christopher Plummer remem

    Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.

    From those conversations stemmed this enlightened, affectionate book -- a mine of wonderful, surprising observations and information about editing, writing and literature, music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history.The Conversations is filled with stories about how some of the most important movies of the last thirty years were made and about the people who brought them to the screen. It traces the artistic growth of Murch, as well as his friends and contemporaries -- including directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Fred Zinneman and Anthony Minghella -- from the creation of the independent, anti-Hollywood Zoetrope by a handful of brilliant, bearded young men to the recent triumph of Apocalypse Now Redux.Among the films Murch has worked on are American Graffiti, The Conversation, the remake of A Touch of Evil, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather (all three), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The English Patient."Walter Murch is a true oddity in Hollywood. A genuine intellectual and renaissance man who appears wise and private at the centre of various temporary storms to do with film making and his whole generation of filmmakers. He knows, probably, where a lot of the bodies are buried."

    In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

    The Big Show is the only book ever to offer an unguarded, behind-the-scenes glimpse of this singular event, along with remarkable insight into how the Oscars reflect the high-stakes politics of Hollywood, our obsession with celebrities (not to mention celebrities’ obsession with themselves), and the cinematic state of the union.

    The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, The Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufrière, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary "documentary" films such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronin's volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzog's fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years.

    One of the most hilarious, romantic, adventurous, and best-loved movies of all time, The Princess Bride is a touchstone in the lives of generations of moviegoers. Now, for the first time, millions of fans will have the opportunity to own the first book to celebrate the magic, memories, and derring-do of the seminal film.A veritable treasure trove of images from everyone’s most-loved moments as well as never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photographs, script pages, production designs, and reminiscences from cast and crew, this giftable package is a perfect and brand-new way for fans of all ages to relive the film over and over again.The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman, is a timeless story set in the mythic land of Florin, where Princess Buttercup and her true love, Westley, must face kidnappers, vengeful swordsmen, an evil prince, a fire swamp, and rodents of unusual size. Its hilarious and exciting storyline, set within the loving framework of a grandfather reading to his grandson, made the film a box-office hit and pop culture phenomenon. The film starred Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, André the Giant, Wallace Shawn, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, Fred Savage, and Peter Falk. It is best known for being an undeniably loved, oft-quoted piece of American cinematic history.Fans will find it "inconceivable" that it has been twenty-five years since Westley and Inigo Montoya first stormed the castle. This official celebration is a must-have for any of the millions of people who love the film.

    Scott called a “suave, scholarly tour de force,” J. Hoberman delivers a brilliant and witty look at the decade when politics and pop culture became one.This was the era of the Missile Gap and the Space Race, the Black and Sexual Revolutions, the Vietnam War and Watergate—as well as the tele-saturation of the American market and the advent of Pop art. In “elegant, epigrammatic prose,” as Scott put it, Hoberman moves from the political histories of movies to the theater of wars, national political campaigns, and pop culture events.With entertaining reinterpretations of key Hollywood movies (such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and Shampoo), and meditations on personages from Che Guevara, John Wayne, and Patty Hearst to Jane Fonda, Ronald Reagan, and Dirty Harry, Hoberman reconstructs the hidden political history of 1960s cinema and the formation of America’s mass-mediated politics.

    During its Golden Age, the studio employed the likes of Garbo, Astaire, and Gable, and produced innumerable iconic pieces of cinema such as The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Ben-Hur.It is estimated that a fifth of all films made in the United States prior to the 1970s were shot at MGM studios, meaning that the gigantic property was responsible for hundreds of iconic sets and stages, often utilizing and transforming minimal spaces and previously used props, to create some of the most recognizable and identifiable landscapes of modern movie culture.All of this happened behind closed doors, the backlot shut off from the public in a veil of secrecy and movie magic. M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot highlights this fascinating film treasure by recounting the history, popularity, and success of the MGM company through a tour of its physical property.Featuring the candid, exclusive voices and photographs from the people who worked there, and including hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs (including many from the archives of Warner Bros.), readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining virtual tour of Hollywood’s most famous and mysterious motion picture studio.

    A guide to more than one hundred of the most popular and controversial cult classic films ever made includes coverage of All About Eve, Tarzan and His Mate, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

    Following the success of Isms: Understanding Art and Isms: Understanding Architectural Styles, this guide sorts the great classic films and directors according to the significant movements that have shaped the development of cinema. Beginning with the early silent era, it spans the entire range of movie history up to the present wave of indie films and the growing fascination with international cinema. Each spread is devoted to a distinct movement and explains when it first emerged, the principal directors, themes, and representative films, and is illustrated with film stills, posters, and photos. Important international cinematic breakthroughs are also highlighted, as well as the careers of international auteurs like Kurosawa, Fellini, and Almodóvar. From prewar Expressionism to twenty-first-century Dystopianism, Film Isms… offers an engaging, new way of understanding movie history.

    The Emperor and the Wolf is an in-depth look at these two great artists and their legacy that brims with behind-the-scenes details, many never before known, about their tumultuous lives and stormy relationships with the studios and with one another. More than just a biography, though, The Emperor and the Wolf is also an impromptu history of Japanese cinema -- its development, filmmakers, and performers -- and a provocative look at postwar American and Japanese culture and the different lenses through which two great societies viewed each other.

    Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a compulsively readable, thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

    Trekking boldly through haunts and horrors from The Frankenstein Monster, The Wolf Man, Count Dracula, and The Invisible Man, to The Mummy, Paula the Ape Woman, The Creeper, and The Inner Sanctum, the authors offer a definitive study of the 86 films produced during this era and present a general overview of the period. Coverage of the films includes complete cast lists, credits, storyline, behind-the-scenes information, production history, critical analysis, and commentary from the cast and crew (much of it drawn from interviews by Tom Weaver, whom USA Today calls ?the king of the monster hunters?). Unique to this edition are a new selection of photographs and poster reproductions and an appendix listing additional films of interest.