Book picks similar to
Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture by Michael Anderegg


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The Seven Samurai and Other Screenplays


Akira Kurosawa - 1992
    "Ikiru "(1952) tells the painful and intimate story of a Japanese civil servant coming to terms with old age and death. In "Seven Samurai "(1954) the inhabitants of a small Janpanese village employ a roaming band of samurai to defend them. In "Throne of Blood" (1957), based on "Macbeth," a samurai is encouraged by his wife to kill his lord.This edition also includes a critical introduction to each screenplay.

Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone


Christopher Frayling - 2005
    With an American TV actor named Clint Eastwood and a script based on a samurai epic, Leone wound up creating "A Fistful of Dollars", the first in a trilogy of films (with "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") that was violent, cynical, and visually stunning. Along with his later masterpiece, "Once Upon a Time in the West", these films came to define the Spaghetti Western

Young Winstone


Ray Winstone - 2014
    But how do these uncompromising and often haunting performances square with his off-duty reputation as the ultimate salt-of-the-earth diamond geezer? The answer lies in the East End of his youth. Revisiting the bomb-sites and boozers of his childhood and adolescence, Ray Winstone takes the reader on an unforgettable tour of a cockney heartland which is at once irresistibly mythic and undeniably real. Told with its author's trademark blend of brutal directness and roguish wit, Young Winstone offers a fascinating insight into the social history of East London, as well as a school of hard knocks coming-of-age story with a powerful emotional punch.

Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, Vol. 1


Alexander Schmidt - 1874
    The lifetime work of Professor Alexander Schmidt of Königsberg, this book has long been the indispensable companion for every person seriously interested in Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and prose of any sort, or English literature. It is really two important books in one.Schmidt’s set contains every single word that Shakespeare used, not simply words that have changed their meaning since the seventeenth century, but every word in all the accepted plays and the poems. Covering both quartos and folios, it carefully distinguishes between shades of meaning for each word and provides exact definitions, plus governing phrases and locations, down to the numbered line of the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare. There is no other word dictionary comparable to this work.Even more useful to the general reader, however, is the incredible wealth of exact quotations. Arranged under the words of the quotation itself (hence no need to consult confusing subject classifications) are more than 50,000 exact quotations. Each is precisely located, so that you can easily refer back to the plays or poems themselves, if you wish context.Other features helpful to the scholar are appendixes on basic grammatical observations, a glossary of provincialisms, a list of words and sentences taken from foreign languages, a list of words that form the latter part of word-combinations. This third edition features a supplement with new findings.

Notes from Underground & Scenes from the New World


Eric Bogosian - 1993
    Back-in-print early work by the author of subUrbia and Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll.

Bringing Down The Krays: Finally the truth about Ronnie and Reggie by the man who took them down


Bobby Teale - 2012
    They had the East End buttoned up too tight and someone had to undo it. Slowly, I realised that someone had to be me...' Bobby Teale and his brothers, David and Alfie, were the three men the Kray twins trusted most. They weren't in the Firm, they were closer than that. They were old family friends, confidants, companions... But then things changed. Witnessing Ronnie and Reggie become increasingly psychotic - taking murder, torture and rape to sickening new levels - Bobby knew he had to take action. Unknown to his brothers, he became a police informer; risking not just his own life but those of the people dearest to him too. Using the codename 'Phillips', he was forced to live on his wits, feeding back information to Scotland Yard. With bent cops on their side the Krays knew they had a grass in their midst, but before they could flush him out, Bobby's evidence saw the London gangsters get locked up for life. Bobby fled the country, but now 40 years on he's back. And he wants to set the record straight. With the help of his brothers, the man brave enough to stand up to the Krays has rewritten history as we know it; dispelling the myths and tearing apart the gangsters' glamorous veneer to reveal the true, sadistic nature of Ronnie and Reggie. Crammed full of explosive, new revelations, Bringing Down The Krays is the last great untold story of Britain's most infamous crime family.

Graham Crackers: Fuzzy Memories, Silly Bits, and Outright Lies


Graham Chapman - 1991
    It contains never-before-published photos, never-before-produced comedy sketches, details on Graham's very unconventional life, thoughts on Monty Python, and tales of mad adventure with the Dangerous Sports Club and pals like The Who's Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, and much, much more.You'll learn who really wrote the "Dead Parrot Sketch", where the Ministry of Silly Walks came from, and many other factoids that will do you absolutely no good whatsoever. Graham Crackers includes a foreword by John Cleese, a backward by Eric Idle, and a sideways by Terry Jones, living Pythons all.

Blood Brothers: A Family Saga


M.J. Akbar - 2006
    Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family —based on his own—and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign' world of the Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents—conversion, circumcision, the arrival of the plague of electricity—and a fascinating array of characters: the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj; the worker's leader, Bauna Sardar; the storyteller, Talat Mian; the poet-teacher, Syed Ashfaque; the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana; the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg; and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala, interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. Blood Brothers is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco


Garry Mulholland - 2002
    Along with that song, every one of these singles helped reshape the culture’s style, language, and performance. This is the story of how music and the world change, how bands reach a peak and dominate the scene briefly before fading away, and about the undeniable power of certain songs (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for example). Here are punk and grunge, disco and rock, funk and electronica, rap and hip-hop. Every incisive, illuminating, and outspokenessay defies the accepted view of music journalism. From Elvis Costello’s “Alison” and The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” to Bjork’s “Hyperballad” and Missy Elliot’s “The Rain”, it’s a truly provocative read.

Masters of Cinema: Tim Burton


Aurélien Ferenczi - 2008
    1958) is the youngest of Hollywood's most successful directors. He has the knack of making films with a very broad appeal, taking the silliness out of the representation of children, while remaining in touch with the child within himself and his audiences. Burton emerged as a director and storyteller after working as an animator for Disney. His meeting with Johnny Depp enabled him to give physical form to the heroes of his imaginary worlds, where fear is mixed with laughter, strange is normal and those who are not normal, such as "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), must be preserved. After "Beetlejuice" (1988) and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005), the resolutely boyish Burton, now in his fifties, presents his version of "Alice in Wonderland" (2010).

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."

European History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Europe, Starting from the Neanderthals Through to the Roman Empire and the End of the Cold War


Captivating History - 2019
    Initially quite isolated from one another, the people of Europe evolved intricate social systems and relationships with one another that eventually bonded them through trade and marriage. They built farms, villages, cities, and entire empires to protect their cultures and convert others to their ways of thinking, only to have it all crumble under the strength of the next warlord. Europe’s past is characterized by fighting and warfare, and it is punctuated with great works of art, philosophy, science, and technology. Even its recent history is much the same—that’s why so much of the globe was once ruled by European monarchies. Despite all the infighting and territorial exploits, Europeans have managed to create some of the most beautiful pieces of literature, architecture, political structures, and ideas the world has ever seen. In European History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Europe, Starting from the Neanderthals Through to the Roman Empire and the End of the Cold War, you will discover topics such as Prehistory The Neolithic Revolution The Bronze Age Early Tribes of Europe The Iron Age Prehistoric Britain The Classical Greeks The Roman Empire The Vikings The Dark Ages The Holy Roman Empire The Rise of Wessex The Norman Conquest Marco Polo and Renaissance Italy Joan of Arc Isabella I of Castile The Age of Discovery The Reformation The Enlightenment The French Revolution The Industrial Age The British Empire of Queen Victoria The Great War The Russian Revolution World War II The Cold War Era And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about European history, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button!

Decoding Bollywood: Stories of 15 Film Directors


Sonia Golani - 2014
    These and other hitherto unfamiliar stories of directors belonging to the 100 crore club like Rohit Shetty and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra; the adventurous Kabir Khan; and the maverick, Mahesh Bhatt take us through the unusual lives of 15 filmmakers of extraordinary films. Sonia Golani achieves the incredible by sitting each director down to candidly discuss the hype around the Oscars; the exclusivity of the 100 crore club ; effect of corporatization and much more. Decoding Bollywood is more about demystifying the world of Bollywood than a mere decoding of 15 directors who have created benchmarks in their respective genres for generations to follow.

Serjeant Musgrave's Dance


John Arden - 1959
    In Arden's introductory note to the text, he describes it as "a realistic, but not a naturalistic" play. The work follows three privates in the British Army and their sergeant, all of whom are deserters from a foreign imperialist war. Serjeant Musgrave and his men, Hurst, Sparky and Attercliffe, come to a northern English coal mining town in 1879. The community is in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by winter snow. The one means of reaching the town is by canal barge. They arrive in the company of the Bargee, a foul-mouthed, disrespectful individual who teases and abuses everyone, especially those in authority. In the local inn the soldiers meet Mrs. Hitchcock, who runs the inn, and the barmaid Annie. The soldiers are greeted by the mayor, parson and constable, who ask them to recruit men in hopes of alleviating some of the town's unemployment as a way to rid the town of their economic dead weight. Musgrave pretends that this is indeed his goal, and asks Mrs. Hitchcock about Billy Hicks, a dead fellow soldier from the mining town. It is revealed that Billy was the father of Annie's illegitimate child, but the baby died, and Annie's sanity has suffered from the loss of both Billy and her child.

Two Strangers


Beryl Matthews - 2015
    Fourteen-year-old Victoria Keats is horrified when her father demands that she go to work for wealthy Mr Preston – everyone knows why he takes young girls into his house. But her violent father, who’s never let her forget she’s not the son he wanted, won’t listen to her concerns – and when she stands up for herself, he throws her out of their dingy little house in the slums.Intelligent, book-loving Vicki vows to make her father regret this day; but she is all alone in the world. Despite her courage and quick wits, it seems likely she will starve – until two men, both complete strangers, provide her with no-strings-attached help.As Vicki’s life improves beyond all recognition, she can’t help but fixate on the mystery of these two good Samaritans: who were they? And why did they help her? She determines to find the men and thank them, but tracking them down may be harder – and more life-changing – than she thinks . . .