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 Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies will illustrate how the Mansion's 999 "grim grinning ghosts" moved from sketches to reality, evolving from earliest story concepts through adaptations and changes as it moved into each of the parks, to the very latest ideas for show enhancements. This book will also confirm or dispel the various myths and rumors that surround the mysterious Mansion's story. In recent years, The Walt Disney Company has seen the demand for theme park attraction-specific merchandise explode, and the Haunted Mansion resides at the top of the list. Fans are waiting with super(natural) anticipation for the upcoming movie, and this book will also explore the latest technology developed to bring the Mansion's inhabitants to an afterlife like never before.

    It is fitting, then, that the companion book to his movie Sleepy Hollow is a big and beautiful hardback, full of images that range from quietly eerie to eye-popping. The book contains Burton's sketches, paintings from production designer Rick Heinrichs and costume designer Colleen Atwood, and dozens of stills from the film itself. All of this is juxtaposed with Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay of Washington Irving's story. The result is a unique opportunity to see how a film comes together. Bare words on a page result in Burton's quirky roughs, which are fleshed out into more detailed paintings by Burton and the production team. Finally it all comes together in photographs of the end product. In addition to an engrossing screenplay (Careful! It's far from a direct cribbing of the original story, so see the movie before reading too far if you don't want the plot spoiled), the reader gets to see the evolution of Ichabod's binocular glasses and creepy yet strangely charming autopsy instruments. The book as a whole illustrates one of the most interesting aspects of Burton's vision--frightening images are clearly meant to be seen as beautiful at the same time. The Art of Sleepy Hollow is entertaining on several levels: as a good story, as a step-by-step tour of the way a film's design comes together, and as a fascinating picture book for grownups. --Ali Davis

    Marking Miller’s first collaboration with watercolor artist Lynn Varley (Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns) in over a decade, 300 was a gritty reimagining of a battle in which 300 Spartan soldiers fought to hold back the entire Persian army. The series won five Eisner Awards, including Best Limited Series, Best Writer/Artist (Miller) and Best Colorist (Varley).300: The Art of the Movie takes you behind the scenes as director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) adapts 300 to the silver screen. With 200 pages of production photos, concept art and much, much more, 300: The Art of the Movie is sure to delight Miller fans and movie buffs alike.

    For $10,000, Jane and Don optioned Natural Born Killers and set off on a two-year roller coaster ride no classroom could have prepared them for. With an outrageous cast of real-life characters including Oliver Stone, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Juliette Lewis--along with a slew of film-crew leeches and behind-the-scenes studio pitbulls--Killer Instinct rivals the most mesmerizing, gut-wrenching movie scenes. A wild joyride like no other, Hamsher's tale provides a fresh, insider's perspective on stardom and the real balance of power in Hollywood.

    Now, Victoria Wilson gives us the first full-scale life of Barbara Stanwyck, whose astonishing career in movies (eighty-eight in all) spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound, and lasted in television from its infancy in the 1950s through the 1980s—a book that delves deeply into her rich, complex life and explores her extraordinary range of motion pictures, many of them iconic. Here is her work, her world, her Hollywood. We see the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stock . . . her years in New York as a dancer and Broadway star . . . her fraught mar­riage to Frank Fay, Broadway genius, who influenced a generation of actors and comedians (among them, Jack Benny and Stanwyck herself ) . . . the adoption of a son, embattled from the outset; her partnership with the “unfunny” Marx brother, Zeppo, crucial in shaping the direction of her work, and who, together with his wife, formed a trio that created one of the finest horse-breeding farms in the west; her fairy-tale romance and marriage to the younger Robert Taylor, America’s most sought-after— and beautiful—male star. Here is the shaping of her career with many of Hol­lywood’s most important directors: among them, Frank Capra, “Wild Bill” William Wellman (“When you get beauty and brains together,” he said, “there’s no stopping the lucky girl who possesses them. The best example I can think of is Barbara”), King Vidor, Cecil B. De Mille, and Preston Sturges, all set against the times—the Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the unions, the advent of World War II—and a fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture industry. And here is Stanwyck’s evolution as an actress in the pictures she made from 1929 through the summer of 1940, where Volume One ends—from her first starring movie, The Locked Door (“An all-time low,” she said. “By then I was certain that Hollywood and I had nothing in common”); and Ladies of Leisure, the first of her six-picture collaboration with Frank Capra (“He sensed things that you were trying to keep hidden from people. He knew. He just knew”), to the scorching Baby Face, and the height of her screen perfection, beginning with Stella Dallas (“I was scared to death all the time we were making the pic­ture”), from Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy and the epic Union Pacific to the first of her collaborations with Preston Sturges, who wrote Remember the Night, in which she starred. And at the heart of the book, Stanwyck herself—her strengths, her fears, her frailties, her losses and desires; how she made use of the darkness in her soul in her work and kept it at bay in her private life, and finally, her transformation from shunned outsider to one of Holly­wood’s—and America’s—most revered screen actresses. Writing with the full cooperation of Stanwyck’s family and friends, and drawing on more than two hundred interviews with actors, directors, cameramen, screen­writers, costume designers, et al., as well as making use of letters, journals, and private papers, Victoria Wilson has brought this complex artist brilliantly alive. Her book is a revelation of the actor’s life and work.Praise:“Wilson’s book is indeed a monument of research. . . . A Life of Barbara Stanwyck will unquestionably remain the biography of record; beyond Wilson’s excavation of so much that would otherwise have been lost, her book has a deep sensitivity to the seriousness and subtlety of Stanwyck’s craft. This is the biography not of a Hollywood phenomenon but of a serious artist.”(Geoffrey O'Brien BookForum)"Victoria Wilson's biography of Barbara Stanwyck is monumental in every sense. It is a sweeping and authoritative work, written with verve and with great empathy and relish for her subject. The author loves Barbara Stanwyck, but she is also shrewd about the actress's complexity and human limitations. Wilson knows all the facts, but she is never overwhelmed by them, and, throughout, she is smart about the films and about the history and business of Hollywood in the Golden Age. Not the least of her achievement is leaving the reader eager to read volume two."(Foster Hirsch, author of The Dark Side of the Cinema; A Method to Their Madness and)"I was blown away, absorbed, riveted. What great smooth style, what brilliance, what depth. I collect celebrity biographies and this one is transcendent. This is huge and wonderful and rich. What an achievement!"(Anne Rice)“What you have done is extraordinary. It is an amazing book, brilliantly written, enhancing the whole life, Barbara’s life, happenings around her—people of the industry, people in the theater and in politics. The way you have shown her life to include other situations, all that you interject . . . it makes her life, to me, more historically important. My father fell in love with Barbara after he saw her in Ladies of Leisure. He loved to go to the opera and to the movies and the only star he talked about was Barbara Stanwyck. He used to say she was an incredible actress. And she was. She really was. You have brought her wonderful career magnificently to life, and as her friend, I thank you.”(Nancy Sinatra, Sr., Barbara Stanwyck’s closest friend)

    . . but the riches found in the overlooked B movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact “unlock the secrets of the times.”Celebrated film critic Taylor pays homage to the trucker vigilantes, meat magnate pimps, blaxploitation “angel avengers,” and taciturn factory workers of grungy, unartful B films such as Prime Cut, Foxy Brown, and Eyes of Laura Mars. He creates a compelling argument for what matters in moviemaking and brings a pivotal American era vividly to life in all its gritty, melancholy complexity.

    Then from it, nearly overnight, emerged one of the world's largest and most iconic cities. The birth and evolution of Los Angeles--its seemingly impossible, meteoric rise--can be attributed largely to three ingenious but deeply flawed people. D.W. Griffith, the early film pioneer who first conceived of feature-length movies, gave Hollywood its industry. Aimee Semple McPherson, a young evangelist and radio preacher, infused the city with its spiritual identity as a hub for reinvention. And William Mulholland, an Irish immigrant turned ditch-digger turned autodidactic engineer, would design the massive aqueduct that made survival in the harsh climate feasible.But while Mulholland, Griffith, and Semple McPherson were all masters of their craft, each would self-destruct in spectacular fashion. D.W. Griffith, led by his ballooning ego, would go on to produce a string of commercial failures; Semple McPherson would be crucified in the tabloids for fabricating an account of her own kidnapping; and a dam designed by Mulholland would fail just hours after he gave it a safety inspection.Spanning from 1904 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and peddling fantasies.

    1962) did not go to film school and hates being defined as an auteur. He prefers to see himself as a craftsman, dutifully going about the art and business of making film. Trouble is, it's hard to be self-effacing when you are the director responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. Along with Quentin Tarantino, Fincher is the most accomplished of the Generation X filmmakers to emerge in the early 1990s.This collection of interviews highlights Fincher's unwavering commitment to his craft as he evolved from an entrepreneurial music video director (Fincher helped Madonna become the undisputed queen of MTV) into an enterprising feature filmmaker. Fincher landed his first Hollywood blockbuster at twenty-seven with Alien3, but that film, handicapped by cost overruns and corporate mismanagement, taught Fincher that he needed absolute control over his work. Once he had it, with Se7en, he achieved instant box-office success and critical acclaim, as well as a close partnership with Brad Pitt that led to the cult favorite Fight Club.Fincher became circumspect in the 2000s after Panic Room, shooting ads and biding his time until Zodiac, when he returned to his mantra that -entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.- Zodiac reinvigorated Fincher, inspiring a string of films--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--that enthralled audiences and garnered his films dozens of Oscar nominations.

    Parlour games. Cocktails. Welcome to a glorious journey through the golden age of the country house party - and you are invited. Our host, celebrated historian Adrian Tinniswood, traces the evolution of this quintessentially British pastime from debauched royal tours to the flamboyant excess of the Bright Young Things. With cameos by the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous earl and the off-duty politician - whether in moated manor houses or ornate Palladian villas - Tinniswood gives a vivid insight into weekending etiquette and reveals the hidden lives of celebrity guests, from Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill, in all their drinking, feasting, gambling and fornicating. The result is a deliciously entertaining, star-studded, yet surprisingly moving portrait of a time when social conventions were being radically overhauled through the escapism of a generation haunted by war - and a uniquely fast-living period of English history. Praise for The Long Weekend:'Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone.' Observer 'A deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book. Tinniswood displays a terrific insider's grasp of gossip . A meticulous, irresistible story.' Spectator 'Elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining . A confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly . Deserves to be on every costume drama producer's bookshelf.' Times

    All three astronauts were experienced pilots and had dreams of one day walking on the moon, but little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. The Apollo program would be perilously close to failure before it ever got off the ground. But rather than dooming the space program, this tragedy caused the spacecraft to be completely overhauled, creating a stellar flying machine to achieve the program’s primary goal: putting man on the moon. Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath. In it, readers will learn: How the Apollo 1 spacecraft was doomed from the start, with miles of uninsulated wiring and tons of flammable materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere, along with a hatch that wouldn’t open How, due to political pressure, the government contract to build the Apollo 1 craft went to a bidder with an inferior plan How public opinion polls were beginning to turn against the space control before the tragedy and got much worse after Apollo 1 is about America fulfilling its destiny of man setting foot on the moon. It’s also about the three American heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy, but whose lives were not lost in vain.

    In this cultural examination of American film noir, poet and novelist Nicholas Christopher contrasts the nightmare world of the genre with the sunny unreality of American popular culture, presenting a fresh view of its meaning for our time.

    Scene 2: Hollywood creates Jean Harlow.Scene 3: Her legend lives forever.At last, the story of how Hollywood shaped a myth and determined a young woman's reality. A town, a remarkable town, became the backdrop for one of Hollywood's most incredible stories, a life rife with glamour, pleasure, power, and--in the end--utter sorrow. Her story lives in the pages and breathtaking pictures of Harlow in Hollywood. When Jean Harlow became the Blonde Bombshell, it was all Hollywood's doing. She was the first big-screen sex symbol, the Platinum Blonde, the mold for every famous fair-haired superstar who would emulate her.

    You look directly through the photographer s eyes as each photo gets closer to that perfect shot. And yet, it s often the photos not chosen that best capture the true spirit of their subjects and the life they lead after the director yells cut. This was never truer than in the classic Hollywood era, where behind-the-scenes photos were carefully vetted for marketing purposes and unapproved shots were never expected to be seen again. Hollywood Frame by Frame presents hundreds of never-before-published photos from the sets of some of the greatest films of the twentieth century. Hollywood s biggest stars are caught with their guard down behind the scenes of movie classics from Some Like It Hot and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs. A treasure trove for any fan of Hollywood s Golden Age, this rare glimpse of the unseen silver screen will intrigue even movie buffs who think they ve seen everything. First book of movie contact sheets, features never-before-seen photos of screen legends at work, including Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Robert De Niro, and Alfred Hitchcock Provides insight into the art of moviemaking, the science of movie marketing, and the nature of stardom Karina Longworth is an author, film critic, and journalist based in Los Angeles and Paris. She has contributed to numerous publications, including the Guardian, LA Weekly, Village Voice, Slate,and many more.