A backstage glimpse of the realities of the new Hollywood focuses on the film releases and strategies of the summer of 1998, showing why Godzilla was fated to fail and how Spielberg triumphed.

    This biography reveals the secrets of the sometimes strange and often sad private life that was concealed behind the matronly facade.

    From horror masterpieces like The Beyond and Zombie Flesh-Eaters to erotic thrillers like One On Top of the Other and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; from his earliest days as director of manic Italian comedies to his notoriety as purveyor of extreme violence in the terrifying slasher epic The New York Ripper, his whole career is explored. Supernatural themes and weird logic collide with flesh-ripping gore to breathtaking effect. Bleak horrors are transformed into bloody poetry - Fulci's loving camera technique, and the decayed splendour of his art design, make the films more than just a gross endurance test. Lucio Fulci built up a fanatical following, who at last will have the chance to own this book - five years in the making - which is the ultimate testament to 'The Godfather of Gore'. Featuring a foreword by Fulci's devoted daughter Antonella, and produced with her blessing and full co-operation. This book is quite simply the last word on Fulci. His whole career is studied in obsessive depth. Huge supplementary appendices make this volume essential for all serious students of the Italian horror movie scene. Featuring COMPLETE FILMOGRAPHIES for ALL the major actors and actresses ever to appear in Fulci films, the appendices alone are a unique, breathtakingly detailed reference source in their own right. Without doubt, by far and away the largest collection of Fulci posters, stills, press-books and lobby cards ever seen together in print. We have scoured the Earth to find the most stunning, rare and eye-catching Fulci images. Everything worth seeing is here. This is a truly beautiful book.

    He writes about the porn palaces with live sex shows, and the men and women who perform in them, prostitutes and their pimps, the runaways who will likely be the next decade's prostitutes, the clergymen who fight the smut merchants and the cops who feel impotent in the face of the judiciary."-bPublishers Weekly/b/p brbrPThis classic account of the ultra-sleazy, pre-Disneyfied era of Times Square is now the subject of a documentary film of the same name to be theatrically released this year. With this edition, bTales of Times Square/b returns to print with seven new chapters./p

    Beginning with his early days in Brooklyn and his college years in Texas, where he dreamed of becoming an actor, this book follows his career as one of the earliest members of the famed Actors Studio and as a Tony Award winner for his work on Broadway. Wallach has worked with such stars as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, and Henry Fonda, and his many movies include The Magnificent Seven, How the West Was Won, the iconic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and, most recently, Mystic River. For more than fifty years Eli Wallach has held a special place in film and theater, and in a tale rich with anecdotes, wit, and remarkable insight he recounts his magical life in a world unlike any other.

    His own brilliant directing career has been marked by similarly grand ambitions, and he is unique in having premiered all of his features - from the highly styled The Element of Crime to the digital-video-originated The Idiots - at the Cannes Film Festival. Trier is a rare item in contemporary cinema, a restless innovator and polemicist, as his participation in the back-to-basics Dogme95 movement attests; and these conversations with Stig Bjorkman, author of Bergman on Bergman and Woody Allen on Woody Allen, trace the evolution of his career and thought in a manner that is both astonishingly detailed and engagingly humorous.

    But how do these uncompromising and often haunting performances square with his off-duty reputation as the ultimate salt-of-the-earth diamond geezer? The answer lies in the East End of his youth. Revisiting the bomb-sites and boozers of his childhood and adolescence, Ray Winstone takes the reader on an unforgettable tour of a cockney heartland which is at once irresistibly mythic and undeniably real. Told with its author's trademark blend of brutal directness and roguish wit, Young Winstone offers a fascinating insight into the social history of East London, as well as a school of hard knocks coming-of-age story with a powerful emotional punch.

    In My Lucky Stars Shirley MacLaine talks candidly and personally about her four decades in Hollywood, especially about the men and women--her "lucky stars"--who touched and challenged her life.

    Most of us know the man only through the characters that he has played: Roohdaar in Haider, Maqbool in the eponymous film, Rana in Piku, Saajan in The Lunchbox, and of course, Ashoke in The Namesake. Today, these characters have made him a recognized name around the world.Irrfan Khan is an intimate and meticulously researched account of this refreshingly unique and unconventional Indian icon. Drawn from personal interviews and told through many voices, Aseem Chhabra traces Irrfan’s personal and artistic life in all its many shades. Rich in detail and peppered with anecdotes, it is a fascinating look at the life and work of the actor that begins in a small household in Rajasthan and culminates in his face gazing down from billboards in Hollywood. It explores some of his greatest performances that have shown India and the world what cinema can do. At the heart of this story, however, is a man, possibly the finest actor of his generation, his passion for the craft of acting and his love for unusual characters.

    This riveting book offers 20 harrowing, real-life tales of sea kayaking accidents that will not only keep readers on the edge of their seats, but also instruct them with potentially life-saving lessons.

    Here is an account of a filmmaker who looks straight into the eye of the Hollywood blockbuster storm and dares not to blink.In "A Killer Life," Christine Vachon follows up her independent producing handbook, "Shooting to Kill," with a behind-the-scenes memoir of the battle between creativity and commerce -- and a renegade's rise to being one of the most powerful female producers in independent film today."A Killer Life" traces the early years Vachon spent producing such controversial and critically acclaimed movies as "Poison, Happiness," and "Kids," films that paved the way for Academy Award-winning triumphs like "Boys Don't Cry." She recounts the birth and rise of independent film and the evolution of her company, Killer Films, revealing the stories behind star castings and firings and films that never got made; how sexuality factors into the films she produces; and how the often lethal combination of finance and creativity affects what we see on the big screen.Intelligent and tough as nails, but endearingly self-effacing, Vachon's account of her filmmaking experiences, and the successes and failures that have made Killer Films one of the few truly independent film companies in New York, is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking read for filmmakers and fans alike.

    Both the veterinary community and dog-owners alike are hailing the arrival of "Living With Blind Dogs".In it, Levin successfully answers the question most commonly asked by devastated pet-lovers: "What do I do now?" Levin came to write this book, when after a decade in human ophthalmic nursing she left that field to manage an ophthalmic veterinary clinic. Here, she was able to meld her knowledge of ophthalmology with her love of dogs, developing badly needed educational materials for clients. Levin took the opportunity to meet many blind dogs and talk with their owners. Caroline Levin is also an award-winning dog trainer. She has an in-depth understanding of canine behavior and the methods used to successfully train dogs. She shows her dogs in obedience competitions and the new sport of musical canine freestyle.

    But the drama they project on screen is only half the picture. Stretching back from its earliest days of two-reel silent films to the latest 3-D digital blockbusters, film history provides a cast of characters ready to spill witty bon mots, outrageous pronouncements, and heartfelt reflections. The Filmmaker Says is a colorful compendium of quotations from more than one hundred of history's most influential and opinionated creators of filmed entertainment. Paired like guests at the ultimate filmgeek dinner party—a celebrated filmmaker of today might sit next to a giant from the silent era—the members of this raucous crew puts on a show arguing, complimenting, and disagreeing with each other about every step of the moviemaking process. A perfect gift for working filmmakers, aspiring auteurs, and avid moviegoers, The Filmmaker Says will delight anyone who has dreamed of yelling "action" or just can't wait for the lights to go down and the curtain to go up.

    After the tremendous impact of Public Enemy - in which he notoriously pushed half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face - he was typecast as a gangster because of the terrifying violence that seemed to be pent up within him. Years of pitched battle with Warner Brothers finally liberated him from those roles, and he went on to star in such triumphs as the musicals Yankee Doodle Dandy (winning the 1942 Oscar for best actor) and Love Me or Leave Me. Even so, one of his greatest later roles involved a return to crime - as the psychopathic killer in the terrifying White Heat. He retired from films in 1961 after making Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, only to return twenty years later for Ragtime. But however much Cagney personified violence and explosive energy on the screen, in life he was a quiet, introspective, and deeply private man, a poet, painter, and environmentalist, whose marriage to his early vaudeville partner was famously loyal and happy. His story is one of the few Hollywood biographies that reflect a fulfilled life as well as a spectacular career.

    In a brief period of time she made twenty-six pictures, became one of the country's top box-office attractions, and then disappeared. After twenty years of rumors, the same girl made headlines when she was "rediscovered" as a waitress in a New York restaurant. Now she makes perhaps the boldest headlines of all with this book--for these are the uninhibited reminiscences of Constance Ockleman, who was made by Hollywood into Veronica Lake.