Essential Bond, The: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007


Lee Pfeiffer - 1992
    There's no one else like him around. There have been nearly twenty films about him, there are more than sixty Web sites dedicated to him, and it's estimated that more than a quarter of the planet has seen at least one Bond film.Now, fans can enter the world of 007 like never before, with this meticulously researched guide examining all the top secret details of the cinematic Bond missions. Officially endorsed by the Bond film producers, it features fascinating facts and behind-the-scenes stories, as well as more than 250 rare production photos, cinema posters, and product advertisements.It's all here: the missions, the gadgets, the vehicles, the legendary villains, the exotic locals, and the even more exotic Bond women. You can meet the directors, writers, stunt men, and technicians who have contributed to the success of the series and have stories of their own to tell. Additionally, there is a unique chapter devoted to the legacy of James Bond, with an overview of the thrillers and spoofs inspired by 007 over the years, as well as a fitting tribute to Mr. Bond's literary father, Ian Fleming.

A Portrait of Joan


Joan Crawford - 1962
    It is full of glamorous moments, heart-warming episodes, and exciting personalities.

Hawks on Hawks


Joseph McBride - 1982
    The distinguished director, Howard Hawks, discusses his techniques of filmmaking, analyzes the artistry of his movies, and portrays his experiences working in Hollywood.

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.”

The Portable Film School: Everything You'd Learn in Film School (Without Ever Going to Class)


D.B. Gilles - 2005
    D.B. Gilles explains the fundamental skills and techniques of screenwriting and making a short film arming you with the two calling cards you'll need to break into Hollywood – without having spent the tuition or a minute in a classroom.

The Hollywood Book of Scandals: The Shoking, Often Disgraceful Deeds and Affairs of More Than 100 American Movie and TV Idols


James Robert Parish - 2004
    Add a famous Hollywood star or two to the mix and the nation is hooked. The Hollywood Book of Scandals provides the full account of 32 big, provocative scandals--complete with all the sexy, scintillating, and often shocking details. Written by veteran show business chronicler James Robert Parish, this book dishes the full dirt on:Bob Crane's mysterious deathElizabeth Taylor's seduction of Eddie FisherRobert Mitchum's arrest for drug possessionJudy Garland's public meltdownErrol Flynn's trial for statutory rapeWinona Ryder's shoplifting trialMore than 100 black-and-white celebrity photos offer readers a close-up look at the leading players in these sordid dramas.

Keepers: The Greatest Films--and Personal Favorites--of a Moviegoing Lifetime


Richard Schickel - 2015
    He has been a reviewer since 1965 (long for Time magazine), has written almost forty books on the subject, and has produced and directed thirty documentaries. He has counted as personal friends many of the leading filmmakers of the twentieth century. Call it “obsession,” “lunacy,” or a “grand passion” (Schickel grants all three), but there’s simply no one who knows film better. Now Schickel gives us the ultimate summing up: a history of film as he’s seen—and lived—it, a tour of his favorites, a master class in what makes a film soar or flop. Schickel’s no-holds-barred, often raucously irreverent opinions can range from panning classics, to spotlighting forgotten treasures, to defending the art of “popular” genres such as horror, westerns, screwball comedy, and noir. Beyond his picks and pans, Schickel offers a wealth of behind-the-scenes anecdotes (a love note from Marlene Dietrich, Frank Capra’s unlikely path to success, Annie Hall’s original title), career studies of our greatest performers and auteurs, and candidly intimate glimpses of his own life in pictures (an evening with Greta Garbo, John Ford’s advice on directing, a “dust-up” in defense of Monty Python). Above all, Schickel gives us a collection of the true gems, the immortal moments that have stuck with him over a lifetime of movie watching—the transcendent scenes, characters, lines, shots, scores, even lighting cues that offer, each in their way, pure “movie magic.” Buster Keaton, His Girl Friday, Ingrid Bergman, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Stanley Kubrick, Pulp Fiction—Schickel reveals all the films and the forces behind them that have kept him coming back for more. An essential addition to any cinephile’s library, Keepers is the curation of a brilliant connoisseur and critic, but more than that, it’s a love letter to film from one of its most dedicated devotees.

Ken Burns: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single)


Tom Roston - 2014
    In this illuminating, in-depth Q & A, “America’s storyteller” lets readers in on his philosophical approach to understanding our nation’s past, as well as a little family secret for overcoming your fears.Tom Roston is a veteran journalist who began his career at The Nation and Vanity Fair magazines, before working at Premiere magazine as a senior editor. He writes a regular blog about nonfiction filmmaking on PBS.org and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in New York City. Cover design by Adil Dara.

Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael


Francis Davis - 1990
    This is a biography of the ascerbic and witty film critic Pauline Kael.

Why Quantum Physicists Create More Abundance


Greg Kuhn - 2013
    You’ll find it fun to read too - written in simple, everyday language.And, if you’re like most people, you’ll find that learning “why” the law of attraction works will pour rocket fuel into your belief in it. And attaining such a level of belief will allow you to unleash the law of attraction more powerfully than you’ve done previously. Why Quantum Physicists Create More Abundance removes your barriers of doubt and resistance concerning the law of attraction. It can be a very powerful tool for you, helping you soar past previous frustrations and manifesting a life much more closely aligned with your dreams and desires.

Notes on a Life


Eleanor Coppola - 2008
    Her first book, Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, was hailed as “one of the most revealing of all first hand looks at the movies” (Los Angeles Herald Examiner). And now the author brings the same honesty, insight, and wit to this absorbing account of the next chapters in her life. In this new work we travel back and forth with her from the swirling center of the film world to the intimate heart of her family. She offers a fascinating look at the vision that drives her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and describes her daughter Sofia’s rise to fame with the film Lost in Translation. Even as she visits faraway movie sets and attends parties, she is pulled back to pursue her own art, but is always focused on keeping her family safe. The death of their son Gio in a boating accident in 1986 and her struggle to cope with her grief and anger leads to a moving exploration of her deepest feelings as a woman and a mother. Written with a quiet strength, Eleanor Coppola’s powerful portrait of the conflicting demands of family, love and art is at once very personal and universally resonant.

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten Movies We Love: Cult Classics, Underrated Gems, and Films So Bad They're Good


Rotten Tomatoes - 2019
    Wet Hot American Summer. Valley of the Dolls. There are some movies that defy traditional critical assessment -- films that are panned by reviewers, but that go on to become beloved classics and cult phenoms anyway.Ever been crushed to learn your favorite movie -- or a new one you're dying to see -- has been given the big green splat from Rotten Tomatoes' infamous Tomatometer? The site's editors stand by their critics and scores, but they also feel your pain: Fresh films shouldn't get all the glory! In Rotten Movies We Love, the RT team celebrates 101 Rotten movies that can't be missed, including:Box office behemoths that bombed with critics: Space Jam, Maleficent, Bad BoysSci-fi treasures so bad they're awesome: Cherry 2000, Zardoz, Masters of the UniverseRare Rottens from Fresh directors: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Marie Antoinette, Legend, WillowDeeply beloved cult classics: The Last Dragon, Empire Records, The Craft, MacGruber Underrated gems ahead of their time: The Strangers, Event Horizon, Practical Magic, The Cable GuySequels worth a second look: Home Alone 2, Rocky IV, Jurassic Park III, Return to OzFeaturing 16 essays from some of the world's most well-known film critics -- Leonard Maltin, Terri White, Amy Nicholson, David Fear, K. Austin Collins, and more -- and punctuated with black-and-white film stills and punchy graphics, it's a fun romp through the quirkier corners of film history, sure to delight any cinephile or pop-culture fanatic.

Film Isms...: Understanding Cinema


Ronald Bergan - 2011
    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.

My Four Hollywood Husbands


Joyce Bulifant - 2017
    While following the path of her own successful career, Ms. Bulifant managed to navigate the choppy waters of husbands' alcoholism, codependency and an extended family of four marriages.James MacArthur played Danno on Hawaii Five-0. Edward Mallory was Dr. Bill Horton on "Days of Our Lives.” William Asher was the famous director-writer-producer of "I Love Lucy", "Bewitched" and the Beach Party movies. Roger Perry starred in "Star Trek" and over 300 TV shows and films. He has also composed music for Barbra Streisand and Bing Crosby.Along the way Bulifant managed to command the spotlight for her own accomplishments. As Gavin MacLeod’s wife Marie on “The Mary Tyler More Show”, a concerned mother in the movie “Airplane”, dancing with Fred Astaire, and her reoccurring role on “The Match Game.”My Four Hollywood Husbands is a rare peek into what happens off the screen. It’s a story of love, a lasting love that is woven through the fabric of the world of entertainment. It’s also a story about perseverance and overcoming obstacles—and that happy endings are indeed possible.

James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano


Dan Bischoff - 2014
    The book is informed by fresh interviews with Sopranos actors, HBO executives, the star’s acting teachers and coaches, his childhood friends, buddies from his days as a nightclub bouncer, and Hollywood figures including the directors of his posthumously released films. Bischoff decodes Gandolfini’s portrayal of mobsters and bad guys from his breakout role in True Romance with Patricia Arquette to the series role that made his career, including his portrayals of real people like Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty. Gandolfini’s personal life--from his marriages and family interactions to his deep friendships with his fellow cast members—enriches and enlivens this book, and deepens our understanding of the star.James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano is a fascinating look at Gandolfini’s complicated relationship to his roots, to the role that made him wealthy beyond his imagination, and to American notions of masculinity, power and fame. Even as he scaled the heights of his profession, creating a character as vivid as Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker and as volcanic as Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski, Gandolfini remained a reluctant celebrity dedicated more to his craft than to his career. James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano delivers a textured, multilayered portrait of the on- and off-screen life of a complex, talented man who rose from an Italian immigrant family in northern New Jersey to join the ranks of America’s most iconic actors.