Moving Pictures is his fascinating remembrance of growing up amidst the glamour, swank, courage, triumphs, defeats, cabals, and double-crosses of an industry in the making. His utterly candid account includes unsparing portraits of outsized characters in all their power, venality, charm, pettiness, and vindictiveness. As a book on the early days of the movies in Hollywood, this one is hard to beat. Abundantly illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

    Polanski would go on to become one of the best and most infamous directors in Hollywood’s history, with a list of achievements that includes Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown, Tess, Frantic, and more recently, the Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning The Pianist.Yet the most dramatic story has unfolded within his own personal life: in August 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and seven of their friends were butchered by the Manson family. Polanski was in London at the time. Eight years later he was arrested by L.A. police on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home. Polanski fled the country and has since lived in exile in Paris.The director is currently filming Oliver Twist and promises to follow it with his version of the Tate killings. Both projects, dealing with child exploitation and murder, can only fuel the controversy that surrounds him. This biography is timed to coincide with the release of the movies, and will be the first opportunity to read about this talented yet wildly excessive personality in such depth for over fourteen years.

    This work also covers various political and social subtexts of the movies.

    Rutanya frames her diary with anecdotes of Robert Altman, Joan Crawford, Brian De Palma, Bob Dylan, Elia Kazan, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Lee Strasberg, Barbra Streisand, and John Wayne, among others-a rich cast of her life's characters, who in turn entertain, illuminate, and ultimately weave Rutanya's life into Carol Ann's, setting the stage for you to vicariously live through the making of this cult classic, from her audition in the living room of director Frank Perry to the wrap party on the last day of shooting.

    This unique collection of rare photographs celebrates the joy of reading in classic film style. The Hollywood Book Club captures screen luminaries on set, in films, in playful promotional photos, or in their own homes and libraries with books from literary classics to thrillers, from biographies to children's books, reading with their kids, and more. Featuring nearly 60 enchanting images, lively captions about the stars and what they're reading by Hollywood photo archivist Steven Rea, and a glamorous stamped case design, here's a real page-turner for booklovers and cinephiles.

    Discover hidden stories behind movies you love (and, er, don't love so much), and find out just why the most dangerous place to be is in a Tom Hanks film.Fascinating, surprisingly and hugely entertaining, this leftfield movie guide is gold for film buffs, and might just bring out the geek - hidden or otherwise - within you...Includes:Alternative movie endings that were binned Movie sequels you didn't know existedMassive box office hits that were huge gamblesThe collateral damage of Tom Hanks moviesHidden subtexts in family moviesDisastrous things that went wrong on modern movie sets...and much, much more!

    It premiered 37 years ago, in 1973, and, after 31 series it finally came to an end last year – even though all its original protagonists – Compo, Foggy, even Nora Batty – are now dead. Remarkably, for a series of such longevity and international appeal, it is all about elderly people, has little action or plot, and is set and filmed in and around the small Yorkshire town of Holmfirth. Now, Andrew Vine, the deputy editor of Yorkshire’s daily newspaper, has written the definitive history of this television phenomenon. It covers the show’s inauspicious beginnings, with low ratings, its endless reinvention as participants like Bill Owen, Michael Bates, Brian Wilde and Kathy Staff retired or died, the appearance of a string of guest stars from John Cleese and Norman Wisdom to Thora Hird and Russ Abbott (both of whom soon found themselves fixtures in the cast), and the ingenious plot contrivances as the protagonists became too old and frail to attempt any of the slapstick stunts with runaway prams – indeed any outdoor action. Holmfirth is now a year-round tourist attraction, and endless repeats and new DVD box sets will ensure a readership for this book for years to come.

    Never before has the renowned author revealed so much about his own life or written with such immediacy about the forces shaping America. 26 halftones.

    It is a profound and utterly convincing portrait of a man whose career and life has been devoted to the manipulation of imagesand the story of how, at the age of 71, he tries to divest himself of illusions and make peace with his demons and his past.

    Glamour and decadence thrived beside abject poverty, and the German capital’s outpouring of literature, fashion, and film marked it as the most vital European metropolis. As young women of this era, Dietrich and Riefenstahl lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich’s apartment from the roof of her building. Both women seized upon the revolutionary energy of the 1920s, seeking careers on the stage and in film.In 1929, filmmakers were casting what would become the iconic role of Lola-Lola (who made "Falling in Love Again" a sensation) in the groundbreaking sound film The Blue Angel. Riefenstahl—whose work in her "mountain films" had already made her a national emblem for the athletic rigor and spirited independence of the New Woman—hoped for the part but didn’t get it. Only a few years later she became the official filmmaker of the Third Reich. Dietrich, however, won the role and the adoration of millions when she moved to Hollywood and redefined the "vixen" for a new era.While Dietrich's slender and androgynous beauty made her a fashion icon whose influence can be seen to this day, Riefenstahl’s own iconography is no less indelible. With her work on two of the most notorious—if artistically sophisticated—propaganda films of all time—Triumph of the Will and Olympia—Riefenstahl was a progenitor of fascist symbolism. After the war she proclaimed her ignorance of Hitler’s motives, but she could never completely distance herself from her Nazi collaboration. Dietrich vehemently condemned Hitler during World War II and found a renewed sense of purpose touring with the USO, but as a result she could never comfortably return to her native Germany.Both women were "prodigies of will, discipline, endurance, self-reinvention, and exaltation of the body in all its muscular, androgynous, pose-striking pagan glory" (James Wolcott), and both had their grand passions, but neither abandoned ambition for the sake of love. As award-winning biographer Karin Wieland shows, in their later years, both women grappled with controlling their image—Riefenstahl by pursuing an additional career in photography, and Dietrich by eventually hiding at home as her famous beauty was ravaged by time.Skillfully juxtaposing these two fascinating lives, Wieland brings to vivid life a time of international upheaval, chronicling radical evolutions of politics, fame, and femininity on a grand stage. Examining the moral responsibility of the artist, Wieland poses questions as deeply relevant to our century as to the last. A magisterial portrait of two diverging but lasting images of the modern woman, Dietrich & Riefenstahl is "a superb" (Die Zeit) panorama of the twentieth century.

     Mary stands firm against her father’s determination to destroy both her mother’s reputation, and the Catholic church. It is a battle that will last throughout both her father’s and her brother’s reign, until, she is almost broken by persecution. When King Edward falls ill and dies Mary expects to be crowned queen. But she has reckoned without John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, who before Mary can act, usurps her crown and places it on the head of her Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey. Furious and determined not to be beaten, Mary musters a vast army at Framlingham Castle; a force so strong that Jane Grey’s supporters crumble in the face of it, and Mary is at last crowned Queen of England. But her troubles are only just beginning. Rebellion and heresy take their toll both on Mary’s health, and on the English people. Suspecting she is fatally ill, and desperate to save her people from heresy, Mary steps up her campaign to compel her subjects to turn back to the Catholic faith. All who resist will face punishment for heresy in the flames of the Smithfield fires.

    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.”

    The Allies were determined to end the war in Europe quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible. But the Germans were by no means prepared to yield - though they could see the war was lost. Thus began one of the most crucial years in the history of the world, and its climax, the desperate battle for Berlin, brought to a close one of the darkest chapters mankind has ever witnessed. The Allied effort pushed on from all fronts. In the east, Stalin's mighty war machine began its great offensive. From out of the swirling fog and snow, the Soviet steamroller crashed through the German lines on the Vistula, 125 miles south of Warsaw. Driving across the Polish plain towards the Oder, Germany's historic frontier with the east, Russia's advancing armored columns created panic in East Prussia. In the west, Eisenhower and Montgomery joined the race to destroy the heart of Nazi Germany - and defend Europe against Stalin's vaulting ambition. Through vivid, firsthand accounts from soldiers and civilians, privates, generals, and refugees, Fallen Eagle chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the war's closing months - from the devastating, triple air raids on Dresden to "Spring's Awakening," Hitler's last offensive, with which he planned to retake Budapest and retain its oil fields; from the legendary summit in Yalta between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill to an extraordinary account of Hitler's last days.

    This is a biography of the ascerbic and witty film critic Pauline Kael.

    Following the success of Isms: Understanding Art and Isms: Understanding Architectural Styles, this guide sorts the great classic films and directors according to the significant movements that have shaped the development of cinema. Beginning with the early silent era, it spans the entire range of movie history up to the present wave of indie films and the growing fascination with international cinema. Each spread is devoted to a distinct movement and explains when it first emerged, the principal directors, themes, and representative films, and is illustrated with film stills, posters, and photos. Important international cinematic breakthroughs are also highlighted, as well as the careers of international auteurs like Kurosawa, Fellini, and Almodóvar. From prewar Expressionism to twenty-first-century Dystopianism, Film Isms… offers an engaging, new way of understanding movie history.