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.

    

    Either You're in or You're in the Way is the amazing story of how—without a dime to their names nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood—they managed to write, produce, direct, and act in a feature film alongside four-time Academy Award-nominated actor Ed Harris and fellow nominees Brad Dourif and Robert Forster. Either You're in or You're in the Way tells of the desperate struggle of two sons fighting to keep a vow to their father, and in so doing, creating a better life for themselves. A modern-day Horatio Alger on steroids, this fast-paced thrill ride of heartbreak and redemption will both captivate and inspire.

    Throngs of fans jam into air-conditioned multiplexes to escape for two hours in the dark, blissfully lost in Hollywood's latest glittery confection complete with megawatt celebrities, awesome special effects, and enormous marketing budgets. The world is in love with the blockbuster movie, and these cinematic behemoths have risen to dominate the film industry, breaking box office records every weekend. With the passion and wit of a true movie buff and the insight of an internationally renowned critic, Tom Shone is the first to make sense of this phenomenon by taking readers through the decades that have shaped the modern blockbuster and forever transformed the face of Hollywood. The moment the shark fin broke the water in 1975, a new monster was born. Fast, visceral, and devouring all in its path, the blockbuster had arrived. In just a few weeks Jaws earned more than $100 million in ticket sales, an unprecedented feat that heralded a new era in film. Soon, blockbuster auteurs such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron would revive the flagging fortunes of the studios and lure audiences back into theaters with the promise of thrills, plenty of action, and an escape from art house pretension. But somewhere along the line, the beast they awakened took on a life of its own, and by the 1990s production budgets had escalated as quickly as profits. Hollywood entered a topsy-turvy world ruled by marketing and merchandising mavens, in which flops like Godzilla made money and hits had to break records just to break even. The blockbuster changed from a major event that took place a few times a year into something that audiences have come to expect weekly, piling into the backs of one another in an annual demolition derby that has left even Hollywood aghast. Tom Shone has interviewed all the key participants -- from cinematic visionaries like Spielberg and Lucas and the executives who greenlight these spectacles down to the effects wizards who detonated the Death Star and blew up the White House -- in order to reveal the ways in which blockbusters have transformed how Hollywood makes movies and how we watch them. As entertaining as the films it chronicles, Blockbuster is a must-read for any fan who delights in the magic of the movies.

    Yet many may be surprised to learn that the true story behind the making of the film is as captivating as the film itself. In The Making of Slap Shot, veteran sports writer Jonathon Jackson lets fans not only relive just how the film was made, but brings to light surprising facts (i.e., Al Pacino was the first choice for the role of Reggie Dunlop; almost every scene-even the absurd and unbelievable ones-depicts a real life event). With access to those involved in the making of the film, he brings to life some of the magic behind the creation of memorable scenes and characters, especially the Charleston Chiefs, one of the most popular fictional sports teams in history. Based on interviews with over 50 cast members, production staff, and anyone of note involved in the film's creation Destined to be a collectible and keepsake (along with the jerseys, bobbleheads, and other paraphernalia associated with the film), The Making of Slapshot is a must for fans eager to learn even more about their favorite film.

    Teller asked about the people in the drawings: the streetcar operators, waitresses, soldiers, bums. And Mam and Pad (Irene and Joe) began to unfold the hidden history of their world before their Bundle of Joy came along. Out came the Hobo Shoebox, full of letters Joe wrote while riding the rails during the Great Depression; their daring photos as art students, eloping to escape their feuding families; and the War Trunk. Readers stand beside Teller as Pad teaches him why using a ruler in painting is evil; join Mam as she interprets the designs hidden in Joe's "art pancakes"; and enter the world of a most peculiar, philosophical, funny, and loving family.

    The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Was-serman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios—which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars—to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA’s evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike. That Wasserman’s reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz—along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman’s eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens.The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman’s rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry’s greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown’s absolute monarch.From the Hardcover edition.

    Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong.Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson.Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie is a memoir of funny, sad times and a tribute to outsider artists too wonderfully strange to ever make it in the mainstream. It tells the true story behind the fictionalized movie.

    It is proof that, 'if you go looking for trouble, you'll probably find it'. Over nearly 40 years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Hugh Riminton has been shot at, blown up, threatened with deportation and thrown in jail. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, witnessed massacres in Africa, wars and conflicts on four continents, and every kind of natural disaster. It has been an extraordinary life. From a small-town teenager with a drinking problem, cleaning rat cages for a living, to a multi-award-winning international journalist reporting to an audience of 300 million people, Hugh has been a frontline witness to our times. From genocide in Africa to the Indian Ocean tsunami, from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to slave-trading in Sudan, Hugh has seen the best and worst of human behaviour. In Australia, he has covered political dramas, witnessed the Port Arthur Massacre and the Thredbo disaster and broke a major national scandal. His work helped force half-a-dozen government inquiries.Entertaining, deeply personal and quietly wise, MINEFIELDS is a compelling exploration of a foreign correspondent's life. 'His story is a triumph' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

    In this wide-ranging and elegiac essay, Nick Pinkerton reflects upon Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a modern classic haunted by the ghosts and portents of a culture in flux.

    Among this virtual army of hometown participants were numerous professional and amateur photographers, each with full access to the production’s inner workings—for the first time ever this compiles their behind-the-scenes photographs and stories into a treasure trove of Jaws rarities. Included are a foreword by director Steven Spielberg, interviews with production designer Joe Alves, screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, location casting director Shari Rhodes, and more, providing an unprecedented all-access pass to the creation of some of the most memorable and terrifying scenes in film history. This unique compendium is the first to focus on the production’s local participants, telling their stories at last.

    Now, ten years after the original film’s release, the full story of this seemingly cursed production can finally be told...  In The Crow’s last days of filming, its star Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee) was killed in a strange on-set accident, while filming his character’s death scene. Bridget Baiss describes the chain of events which led from O’Barr’s creation of the graphic novel, up to this fateful day, and beyond, to the film’s final, triumphant release. The definitive account of The Crow’s production and the phenomenon it became, packed with scores of interviews with the film’s cast and crew.

    Dick's brilliant and troubling SF novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, still rules as the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential SF film ever made. Future Noir is the story of that triumph.The making of Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry.A fascinating look at the ever-shifting interface between commerce and the art that is modern Hollywood, Future Noir is the intense, intimate, anything-but-glamerous inside account of how the work of SF's most uncompromising author was transformed into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic.

    and China “In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday DemonFrom trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world. Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

    Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Some Kind of Wonderful are timeless tales of love, angst, longing, and self-discovery that illuminated and assuaged the anxieties of an entire generation. Fondly nostalgic, filled with wit and surprising insights, don't you forget about me contains original essays from a skillfully chosen crop of novelists and essayists on the films' far-reaching effects on their own lives -- an irresistible read for anyone who came of age in the eighties (or just wishes they did). Featuring new writing from: Steve Almond * Julianna Baggott * Lisa Borders * Ryan Boudinot * T Cooper * Quinn Dalton * Emily Franklin * Lisa Gabriele * Tod Goldberg * Nina de Gramont * Tara Ison * Allison Lynn * John McNally * Dan Pope * Lewis Robinson * Ben Schrank * Elizabeth Searle * Mary Sullivan * Rebecca Wolff * Moon Unit Zappa