Book picks similar to
Scream Queens: Heroines of the Horrors by Calvin Thomas Beck
horror
nonfiction
non-fiction
movie-books
How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime
Roger Corman - 1990
He also discusses his distribution of the Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut movies that later won Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Corman alumni—John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Fonda, Joe Dante, and Jonathan Demme, among others—contribute their recollections to give added perspective to Corman's often hilarious, always informative autobiography.
Debbie: My Life
Debbie Reynolds - 1988
America's sweetheart. But behind the dazzle was a young woman thrown in the star making machine and hoping for personal happiness.
Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How "The Graduate" Became the Touchstone of a Generation
Beverly Gray - 2017
. . The book as a whole offers a fascinating look at how this movie tells a timeless story.” —The Washington PostMrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you? When The Graduate premiered in December 1967, its filmmakers had only modest expectations for what seemed to be a small, sexy art-house comedy adapted from an obscure first novel by an eccentric twenty-four-year-old. There was little indication that this offbeat story—a young man just out of college has an affair with one of his parents’ friends and then runs off with her daughter—would turn out to be a monster hit, with an extended run in theaters and seven Academy Award nominations. The film catapulted an unknown actor, Dustin Hoffman, to stardom with a role that is now permanently engraved in our collective memory. While turning the word plastics into shorthand for soulless work and a corporate, consumer culture, The Graduate sparked a national debate about what was starting to be called “the generation gap.” Now, in time for this iconic film’s fiftieth birthday, author Beverly Gray offers up a smart close reading of the film itself as well as vivid, never-before-revealed details from behind the scenes of the production—including all the drama and decision-making of the cast and crew. For movie buffs and pop culture fanatics, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson brings to light The Graduate’s huge influence on the future of filmmaking. And it explores how this unconventional movie rocked the late-sixties world, both reflecting and changing the era’s views of sex, work, and marriage.
Film Is Not Dead: A Digital Photographer's Guide to Shooting Film
Jonathan Canlas - 2012
The reality is that film has never gone away, and in recent years has experienced a surging, renewed popularity-sometimes simply for its retro, analog status, but mostly for film's ability to create a look and feel that many believe digital can still not achieve. If anyone can attest to this, it's Utah photographer Jonathan Canlas, who exclusively shoots with film, and has both an extremely successful wedding photography business as well as a series of popular workshops held numerous times per year around the world. In "Film Is Not Dead: A Digital Photographer's Guide to Shooting Film, " Canlas teams up with co-author Kristen Kalp to open the doors for anyone who wants to begin-or return to-shooting film. Casual, irreverent, fun, inspiring, and beautiful, this unique 10x8 hardcover book teaches the reader the basics of film, cameras, and shooting in this medium. Whether it's discussing the different tone and color characteristics of different films (Kodak, Fuji, etc.), how to load a medium-format camera back, how to create proper exposures, how and where to get film processed, or how Jonathan uses fun, plastic cameras like the Holga in his commercial and personal work, "Film Is Not Dead "appeals to anyone who is searching to finally begin creating that film look, but until now hasn't known where to start.
Hitchcock's Films Revisited
Robin Wood - 1965
When Robin Wood returned to his writings in Hitchcock's films and published Hitchcock's Films Revisited in 1989, the multidimensional essays took on a new shape―one tempered by Wood's own development as a critic.This revised edition of Hitchcock's Films Revisited includes a substantial new preface in which Wood reveals his personal history as a film scholar―including his coming out as a gay man, his views on his previows critical work, and how his writings, his love of film, and his personal life have remained deeply intertwined through the years. This revised edition includes all eighteen original essays and a new chapter on Marnie titled "You Freud, Me Hitchcock: Does Mark Cure Marnie?"
A Cast of Killers
Sidney D. Kirkpatrick - 1986
Reports of strange activities at the scene of the crime circulated soon after. When the police arrived, was the head of Paramount Studios burning a bundle of papers in the fireplace, and was a well-known actress searching the house for letters she claimed were hers? Despite a full-scale investigation, the case was never solved; for sixty years is has remained a lingering Hollywood scandal. In 1967, more than forty years after Taylor's death, the great King Vidor, whose directing credits include Northwest Passage, The Fountainhead, Duel in the Sun, and War and Peace, determined to solve the mystery, which had haunted him throughout his career, in order to make a film about it. Through his intimate knowledge of both the studios and the stars, he succeeded, where dozens of professional detectives had failed, in discovering the identity of the murderer. But because his findings were so explosive, he decided he could never go public and locked his evidence away. After Vidor's death in 1982, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, Vidor's authorized biographer, gained access to the evidence and reconstructed the amazing story of Taylor's murder and Vidor's investigation. With a cast of suspects that includes the actress Mabel Normand, a reputed drug addict; the beautiful ingénue, Mary Miles Minter; Mary's domineering mother, Charlotte Shelby; Taylor's homosexual houseman; and Taylor's secretary, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Taylor's mysteriously elusive brother, this true crime story has all the elements of a classic murder mystery. Covered up for more than half a century, the full story can now be told in all its riveting, shocking detail.
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940
Victoria Wilson - 2013
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)
The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the Best of Hollywood's Worst
John Wilson - 2005
A paperback guide to 100 of the funniest bad movies ever made, this book covers a wide range of hopeless Hollywood product, and also including rare Razzie ceremony photos and a complete history of everything ever nominated for Tinsel Town's Tackiest Trophy.
The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers
Mark T. Conard - 2008
They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To
Steve McQueen
Marshall Terrill - 2001
It chronicles the good with the ugly, revealing the great power McQueen wielded. It features numerous behind-the-scenes stories from some of his (and cinema's) greatest films, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon. The book's triumph is the way in which the author explores McQueen in full through his larger-than-life exploits but as important, the lesser known, humanitarian side of the Hollywood legend. It also captures the fundamental essence of what made McQueen cinema's "King of Cool."
The Art of the Dark Knight: With Complete Script
Craig Byrne - 2008
Batman Begins was a successful re-boot of the popular Batman franchise, and The Dark Knight sequel takes the fresh perspective further, developing the highly anticipated, raw cat-and-mouse game between our superhero Batman and his twisted arch-nemesis The Joker. Celebrated stars include Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman, returning as Batman, Alfred, Lucius Fox, and Lieutenant Gordon, respectively; and new additions Heath Ledger as The Joker, as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Aaron Eckhart. The Art of the Dark Knight is the ultimate companion book to the movie, showcasing production ephemera including storyboard art, character sketches, Nolan’s original shooting script, still photos, and even personal behind-the-scenes material created by the Nolans and Crowley during the movie. The Art of the Dark Knight is certain to appeal to diehard and new fans alike.
Interview with Anne Rice
Michael Riley - 1996
1 cassette / 90 minutesAn Audio Exclusive! For the first time on audio, Anne Rice, the literary phenomenon of the late 20th century, speaks.In the novel that introduced Anne Rice to the world, Interview with the Vampire, a reporter seeks out the facts behind an extraordinary life. In the years since that publication, Anne Rice has become one of the world's bestselling authors and has herself been the subject of countless interviews, profiles, and a full-length biography. Yet who Anne Rice is, and the beliefs, fascinations, desires, fears, and passions that inspire her work, remains an endlessly fascinating topic.Now, for the first time ever in an audio format, Anne Rice discusses -- with her longtime friend, Michael Riley -- everything from her latest novels to her relationship to some of her characters; from the relationship of movies and music to her work to issues about gender, eroticism, religion, personal freedom, adolescent sexuality, and more...
The Gross: The Hits, the Flops: The Summer That Ate Hollywood
Peter Bart - 1999
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.
Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema's Greatest Screenwriters
Diptakirti Chaudhuri - 2015
From Zanjeer to Deewaar and Sholay to Shakti, their creative output changed the destinies of several actors and filmmakers and even made a cultural phenomenon of the Angry Young Man. Even after they decided to part ways, success continued to court them-a testament not only to their impeccable talent and professional ethos, but also their enterprising showmanship and business acumen. Fizzing with energy and brimming over with enough trivia to delight a cinephile's heart, Written by Salim-Javed tells the story of a dynamic partnership that transformed Hindi cinema forever.
Center of Attention: A True Crime Memoir
Jami D. Brown Martin - 2020
The photo looks completely out of place on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list where it’s been since December, 8, 2007. For eight of those years, Jason appeared directly beside Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is long gone, but Jason is still wanted for armed robbery and murder.For years, his sister, Jami D. Brown Martin has watched the true crime programs and read the amateur investigative blogs devoted to Jason, his crime, and the efforts to apprehend him knowing the story wasn’t as simple, nor was it just Jason’s. To be the sister, brother, or relative of one of the world’s most wanted men is to live every day with the horrible truth and many consequences of his brutal act.CENTER OF ATTENTION is the story of a former Mormon missionary turned murderer. It is also a riveting look behind the facade of the genetically blessed, seemingly prominent and pious Brown family of Laguna Beach, California. It is a tale of the family patriarch, John Brown, who disappeared without a trace ten years before his son. More important, it is the gripping and ultimately hopeful story of the sister of one of the world’s most wanted fugitives and her journey to accept that despite being a product of the same crazy environment as her brother, her life and path are her own.