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O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Joel Coen - 2000
With their latest work, O Brother, Where Art Though?, The Oscar-winning team returns to the period-piece films of their earlier career (Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy) and showcase once-again their pitch-perfect ear for hilarious and outrageous dialogue, as well as their penchant for the fantastic. Based on Homer's Odyssey, the movie stars George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, along with Coen-mainstay John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as fugitives from a chain gang who embark on a mystical and musical journey through 1930s Mississippi. History and allegory are expertly entwined as, along the way, the three escapees encounter a blind prophet, are tempted by sirens, do battle with a Cyclops (in the form of a one-eyed Klansman), fall in with George "Baby Face" Nelson on a bank heist, and cut a blues record with a young guitar prodigy who bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Robert Johnson.
To Have and to Hold
Anne Bennett - 2006
Set in Ireland and Birmingham, this is the latest from emerging star of the genre Anne Bennett. Carmel Duffy is the eldest child of a brutal and abusive marriage, and she can’t wait to leave home. She’s equally determined to have no husband or children of her own – what she wants more than anything is to be a nurse. As soon as she turns eighteen, she heads for Birmingham and begins her training.With her beautiful auburn curls, she draws plenty of attention and her resolve to concentrate on her career is tested when Dr Paul Connolly comes onto her ward and into her life. Gradually he wins her heart, and they agree to marry, both certain that they want no children. They have valuable jobs to do – all the more so when World War Two looms. But those years will change everything: their relationship, their priorities, their very characters. Carmel will find that the future is very different to the one she thought she wanted for so long…
The King's Speech: The Shooting Script
David Seidler - 2011
With his country on the brink of war and in desperate need of a leader, his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), the future Queen Mother, arranges for her husband to see an eccentric speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). After a rough start, the two delve into an unorthodox course of treatment and eventually form an unbreakable bond. With the support of Logue, his family, his government and Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall), the King will overcome his stammer and deliver a radio-address that inspires his people and unites them in battle.As David Seidler writes in his introduction, "The King's Speech is about a great deal more than a speech impediment. It is about friendship. I'm talking about mentoring and support and a great deal of humor. We lose these deep, meaningful friendships at our peril."The Newmarket Press Book includes:A fascinating introduction by screenwriter David Seidler about how and why an idea that came to him almost thirty years ago evolved into the award-winning screenplayComplete Shooting ScriptComplete cast and crew credits
Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
Julie Andrews Edwards - 2008
But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.
Things The Grandchildren Should Know
Mark Oliver Everett - 2007
Left to run wild with his sister, his father off in some parallel universe of his own invention, Everett's upbringing was 'ridiculous, sometimes tragic and always unsteady'. But somehow he manages to not only survive his crazy upbringing and ensuing tragedies; he makes something of his life, striking out on a journey to find himself by channelling his experiences into his, eventually, critically acclaimed music with the Eels. But it's not an easy path. Told with surprising candour, Things The Grandchildren Should Know is an inspiring and remarkable story, full of hope, humour and wry wisdom.
Scarlett
Alexandra Ripley - 1991
The most popular and beloved American historical novel ever written, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind is unparalleled in its portrayal of men and women at once larger than life but as real as ourselves. Now bestselling writer Alexandra Ripley brings us back to Tara and reintroduces us to the characters we remember so well: Rhett, Ashley, Mammy, Suellen, Aunt Pittypat, and, of course, Scarlett. As the classic story, first told over half a century ago, moves forward, the greatest love affair in all fiction is reignited; amidst heartbreak and joy, the endless, consuming passion between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler reaches its startling culmination. Rich with surprises at every turn and new emotional, breathtaking adventures, Scarlett satisfies our longing to reenter the world of Gone With the Wind, and like its predecessor, Scarlett will find an eternal place in our hearts.
No Cure for Cancer
Denis Leary - 1992
. . terribly, angrily funny."--The New York Times Absolutely brilliant . . . the real cutting edge of American comedy.--The Boston Globe
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Neil Simon - 1972
His wife Edna takes a job to tide them over, then she too is sacked. Compounded by the air-pollution killing his plants, and with the walls of the apartment paper-thin, allowing him a constant earfull of his neighbors private lives things can't seem to get any worse...then he's robbed and his psychiatrist dies with $23,000 of his money. Mel does the only thing left for him to do-he has a nervous breakdown and it's the best thing that ever happened to him..."A gift for taking a grave subject and, without losing sight of its basic seriousness, treating it with hearty but sympathetic humor...A talent for writing a wonderful funny line...full of humor and intelligence. Fine fun."-New York Post "Creates an atmosphere of casual cataclysm, an everyday urban purgatory of copelessness from which laughter seems to be released like vapor from the city's manholes."-Time
The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film
Emma Thompson - 1995
This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee - 1962
A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening's end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With the play's razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "a brilliantly original work of art--an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come."
Just Kids
Patti Smith - 2010
An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.
Visit to a Small Planet
Gore Vidal - 1956
Visit to a Small Planet was first presented on February 7, 1957 at the Booth Theatre, New York City.The action of the play takes place in the house of Roger Spelding outside Manassas, Virginia.The time is next summer.Act IEarly evening of a summer's day.Act IIScene 1: The next morning.Scene 2: That evening.Act IIIAn hour later.
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote - 1965
There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. At the center of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.