Picture


Lillian Ross - 1951
    Journalism of the Twentieth Century were chosen by the New York University Department of Journalism and a distinguished panel that included David Brinkley, Pete Hamill, Jeff Greenfield, Mary McGrory, and Morley Safer, Picture had an honored place on that list.

Not to be Missed: Fifty-four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film


Kenneth Turan - 2008
    Kenneth Turan’s fifty-four favorite films embrace a century of the world’s most satisfying romances and funniest comedies, the most heart-stopping dramas and chilling thrillers.Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes.Not to be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdote, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan’s selection of favorites ranges across all genres. From All About Eve to Seven Samurai to Sherlock Jr., these are all timeless films—classic and contemporary, familiar and obscure, with big budgets and small—each underscoring the truth of director Ingmar Bergman’s observation that “no form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood


Karina Longworth - 2018
    But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

Unsinkable


Debbie Reynolds - 2013
    After two broken marriages, this third, she believed, was her lucky charm. But within a few years, Debbie discovered that he had betrayed her emotionally and financially, nearly destroying her life.Today, she writes, "When I read the optimistic ending of my last memoir now, I can't believe how naive I was when I wrote it. In Unsinkable, I look back at the many years since then, and share my memories of a film career that took me from the Miss Burbank Contest of 1948 to the work I did in 2012. . . . To paraphrase Bette Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, I've had a bumpy ride."Unsinkable shines a spotlight on the resilient woman whose talent and passion for her work have endured for more than six decades. In her engaging, down-to-earth voice, Debbie shares private details about her man and money troubles, including building and losing her Las Vegas dream hotel and her treasured Hollywood memorabilia collection. Yet no matter how difficult the problems, the show always goes on.Debbie also invites us into the close circle of her family, speaking with deep affection and honesty about her relationships with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher. She looks back at her life as an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age—"the most magical time you could imagine"—including her lifelong friendship with (and years-long estrangement from) the legendary Elizabeth Taylor. Here, too, are stories that never reached the tabloids about numerous celebrities, such as Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Gene Kelly, and many more. She takes us on a guided tour through her movies with delightful, often hilarious behind-the-scenes anecdotes about every film in which she was involved, from 1948 to the present.Frank and forthright, and featuring dozens of previously unseen photos from Debbie's personal collection, Unsinkable is a poignant reminder that there is light in the darkest times. It is a revealing portrait of a woman whose determination is an inspiration.

Hope for Film: From the Frontline of the Independent Cinema Revolutions


Ted Hope - 2014
    Ted Hope, whose films have garnered 12 Oscar nominations, draws from his own personal experiences working on the early films of Ang Lee, Eddie Burns, Hal Hartley, Michel Gondry, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Solondz and other indie mavericks, relating those decisions that brought him success as well as the occasional failure.Whether navigating negotiations with Harvey Weinstein over final cuts or clashing with high-powered CAA agents over their clients, Hope offers behind-the-scenes stories from the wild and often heated world of low-budget cinema—where art and commerce collide. As mediator between these two opposing interests, Hope offers his unique perspective on how to make movies while keeping your integrity intact and how to create a sustainable business enterprise out of that art while staying true to yourself. Against a backdrop of seismic changes in the indie-film industry, from corporate co-option to the rise of social media, Hope for Film provides not only an entertaining and intimate ride through the ups and downs of the business of art-house movies over the last 25 years, but also hope for its future.

Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen


Brian Raftery - 2019
    The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s Airport; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals. Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s the definitive account of a culture-conquering movie year none of us saw coming…and that we may never see again.

My Week With Marilyn


Colin Clark - 2000
    The film united Britain's leading actor, Laurence Olivier, with Hollywood's most glamorous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe - and clashes between them entered film legend.For one glorious week, the world's biggest star sought comfort in the arms of the set's most junior employee. This is the frank, fresh and comic story of how Clark came to share Monroe's confidences - and her bed!This edition combines Colin Clark’s acclaimed 'The Prince, the Showgirl and Me' (191995) and his 'My Week with Marilyn' (2005).'More illuminating than the millions of words and pictures pumped out to expose or dish the dirt on the Monroe legend.' - Sunday TelegraphClark’s extraordinary experiences on and off set have now been turned into a major film starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh and Dominic Cooper.

Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of the Other Side of the Wind


Josh Karp - 2015
    Coincidentally it was the story of a legendary self-destructive director who returns to Hollywood from years of self-imposed exile in Europe. Welles swore it wasn’t autobiographical.The Other Side of the Wind was supposed to take place during a single day, and Welles planned to shoot it in eight weeks. It took twelve years and remains unreleased and largely unseen. The Last Movie is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes account of the bizarre, hilarious and remarkable making of what has been called "the greatest home movie that no one has ever seen." Funded by the Shah of Iran’s brother-in-law, and based on a script that Welles rewrote every night for years, a final attempt to one-up his own best-work. It’s almost impossible to tell if art is imitating life or vice versa in the film. It’s a production best encompassed by its star, John Huston, who described the making of the film as "an adventure shared by desperate men that finally came to nothing."

Agnes Martin: Writings = Schriften


Herausgegeben Von Dieter Schwarz - 2005
    Her "floating abstractions," in which lines and free bands of color emerge almost imperceptibly, can be reproduced only with difficulty. Her writings, on the other hand--although certainly not intended as programmatic statements--offer valuable clarity regarding her own works and poetic insight about art in general. Since its original publication in 1991, this volume of Martin's writings has been a fundamental document for libraries of artists, collectors, and critics. Rather than identifying herself with her Minimalist peers, Martin has aligned herself with the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese, asserting that "the function of art work is . . . the renewal of memories of moments of perfection." In combination with illustrations of her works, these texts--including lectures, stories recorded by critic Ann Wilson, passages ostensibly arranged in associative sequences, and "fragmentary ideas"--form an eloquent artist's statement by the creator of "silent paintings."

Hollywood Be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story


Cass Warner Sperling - 1993
    The first family biography of Hollywood's Warners draws on letters and interviews to follow four brothers from their immigrant beginnings to their position as prime shapers of American entertainment, capturing the excitement and tension of Hollywood's evolution.

Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild


David Stenn - 1988
    She catapulted to fame after winning Motion Picture magazine's 1921 "Fame and Fortune" contest. The greatest box-office draw of her day she once received 45,000 fan letters in a single month, Clara Bow's on screen vitality and allure that beguiled thousands, however, would be her undoing off-camera. David Stenn captures her legendary rise to stardom and fall from grace, her success marred by studio exploitation and sexual scandals.

Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture


Peter Kobel - 2007
    Drawing on the extraordinary collection of The Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories for silent film and memorabilia, Peter Kobel has created the definitive visual history of silent film. From its birth in the 1890s, with the earliest narrative shorts, through the brilliant full-length features of the 1920s, SILENT MOVIES captures the greatest directors and actors and their immortal films. SILENT MOVIES also looks at the technology of early film, the use of color photography, and the restoration work being spearheaded by some of Hollywood's most important directors, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Richly illustrated from the Library of Congress's extensive collection of posters, paper prints, film stills, and memorabilia-most of which have never been in print-SILENT MOVIES is an important work of history that will also be a sought-after gift book for all lovers of film.

Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood


Mick LaSalle - 2000
    Then two stars came along: Greta Garbo, who turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale; and Norma Shearer, who succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. In their wake came a deluge of other complicated women-Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, and Mae West, to name a few. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later.A thorough survey and a tribute to these films, Complicated Women reveals how this was the true Golden Age of women's films.

Historic Costumes and How to Make Them


Mary Fernald - 1937
    From short tunics worn by Saxon men in the fifth century to a lady's bustle dress of the late 1800s, this profusely illustrated text contains a wealth of authentic patterns. Information on pattern sizes, materials required, and methods of sewing accompany simply drawn diagrams for Elizabethan doublets, capes, and trunks; a man's coat and vest from the Restoration period; a lady's bell-shaped gown of the eighteenth century; an early-nineteenth-century empire gown; a crinoline; and other wardrobe items.Diagrams have been carefully and accurately drawn to scale from working patterns, and detailed notes for making costumes include suggestions for the most suitable colors and textures to be used for costumes of particular historical periods. A final section includes diagrams and information for creating period headdresses, caps, and hoods. Students of costume design, home tailors, and community drama groups will welcome this carefully researched guide to fifteen centuries of English fashions.

Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations


Peter Evans - 2013
    But this riveting account of her storied life, including her marriage to Frank Sinatra, and career had to wait for publication until after her death—because Gardner feared it was too revealing."I either write the book or sell the jewels," Gardner told coauthor Peter Evans, "and I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels." The legendary actress serves up plenty of gems in these pages, reflecting with delicious humor and cutting wit on a life that took her from rural North Carolina to the heights of Hollywood's Golden Age. Tell-all stories abound, especially when Gardner divulges on her three husbands: Mickey Rooney, a serial cheater so notorious that even his mother warned Gardner about him; bandleader Artie Shaw, whom Ava calls "a dominating son of a bitch - always putting me down" and Frank Sinatra ("We were fighting all the time. Fighting and boozing. It was madness. But he was good in the feathers")."Her story is a raw-nerved revelation. . . . A vivid portrait" (Chicago Tribune)."Witty, penetrating, unique in its voice, it is impossible to put down - A complete delight" (Philadelphia Inquirer).